Robotics

Maria Diaz/ZDNETAmazon’s early-year Devices and Services event took place today, and the company made it clear that AI will continue to be at the center of its hardware universe. Driving the buzzword of the century is Alexa, arguably the most popular virtual assistant in the world. SVP of Devices and Services Panos Panay suggested that millions of new customers use it every day during the event. Also: Everything Amazon announced at its Devices and Services event todayAnd that’s likely true: Alexa is at the core of Amazon’s most prominent hardware products, including Echo speakers and Fire TVs. Today, the company showcased what’s next for its virtual assistant, now named Alexa+, as it looks to compete with the likes of Google, OpenAI, and others. The new Alexa will be “something that understands you, that can actually take action,” Panay teased, and it will work with tens of thousands of services from Amazon partners. Here’s a rundown of the best new features coming with Alexa+ and how much it will cost. 1. Multimodal, agentic interactions Powered by LLMs, Alexa+ can now process visual information via your device’s cameras to understand and answer questions. In one instance, Alexa was asked to describe the crowd’s excitement and enthusiasm at the event by leveraging the Echo Show 15’s front-facing camera. While its responses were two to three sentences long, they were descriptive and dictated in a fairly approachable tone.The agentic capabilities of Alexa+ extend to browsing, with the ability to navigate the internet via Alexa.com and complete tasks for you on Amazon-partnered websites. For example, Alexa was asked to book a professional repairman for a damaged appliance. It then searched for a nearby repair service and booked an appointment via Thumbtack. Also: 16 incredibly useful things Alexa can do on Amazon EchoIn another demo, a presenter worked with Alexa to build out a shopping list, suggesting items to add or remove throughout the conversation. Surprisingly, the feature supported shopping partners beyond Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh. As Alexa responds, a flowing blue animation appears on the bottom of the device screen. This new change reflects Amazon’s more expressive UI. 2. Conversational chain of commands Besides responding more naturally, with sprinkles of humor, another big unveiling showed how Alexa can now fulfill tasks throughout your daily apps and services, including your calendar and emails. It can book a dinner for you and send invitations for that to your closest contacts, too. We’ve seen similar agentic capabilities with Google’s Gemini. Also: Ring just made outdoor security more affordable with its new $100 2K cameraIn a demo, the virtual assistant was asked to recommend local pizzerias, to which it pulled top-rated storefronts via Yelp. Another example included asking Alexa to remember things, such as “Mary likes Greek and Indian food and is vegetarian but doesn’t like peanut butter.” It did just that without a question. 3. Refreshed home screen on Echo Show Amazon also unveiled a series of new widgets alongside its refreshed Echo Show home screen, including ones that surface recipes, recent apps, weather, shopping lists, and connected smart home devices. Also: 5 Amazon Alexa privacy settings you should change right awayThe adaptive display leverages the larger screen real estate to display relevant information depending on whether you’re far away from the device or closer to it. For example, the Echo Show will display photos and personalized content from afar and switch to a more detailed layout when you approach it. 4. Conducting music with voice For a music demo, Panay asked Alexa, “What’s the song Bradley Cooper sings… it’s like in a duet?” to which it answered, “Shallow with Lady Gaga from the movie *A Star Is Born*.” More impressively, you can now dictate where music is playing from if you have multiple Alexa-enabled speakers in your house. Also: The best Alexa devices of 2025: Expert tested and recommendedFor example, you can ask Alexa to play music on the left or right, with the assumption that speakers are mounted in designated areas. We’ll have to see exactly how reliable this is in real-world tests. And for Amazon’s last trick, Panay asked Alexa to skip to the scene in the movie when “Shallow” is sung, and it did — on the second try. More

Apple Watch Ultra 2 (left) with the Oura Ring 4 (center) and OnePlus Watch 3 (right) Matthew Miller/ZDNETI’m fortunate to have a strong immune system — and I often frustrate my wife by refusing to acknowledge any signs of illness. But the Oura Ring 4 More

SlackIf you use Slack for work, you’re (probably) not fired. But it might be a good time to take a long lunch break.The widely used workplace platform is facing serious issues today, with many users unable to log in at all. Affected users trying to access Slack (myself included) are greeted with a message saying, “We’re having trouble loading your workspace.” The message continues: “This is one of those times when we’re not sure what went wrong, but we do have some suggestions that might help.” Also: 6 Slack tips I swear by to turn a chaotic workspace into a well-oiled machineThose suggestions, including restarting Slack, do not fix the problem.Just before noon ET, reports of problems skyrocketed on DownDetector, a popular site for tracking outages. Reports are subsiding, but many people still say they can’t log in. As of 1 p.m., the official Slack system status page says many features are fine, but shows that messaging, login, connectivity, apps, and workflow are all affected by an unknown issue.Slack hasn’t explained what the problem is, but its latest update, posted at 1:03 p.m. ET today, says, “We’re still working to restore functionality to affected Slack features such as sending messages, workflows, threads, and other API-related features.  We’ll be back with more updates as soon as they’re available.”  More

Kerry Wan/ZDNETDid you know that whenever you turn on your smart TV, you invite an unseen guest to watch it with you? These days, most popular TV models utilize automatic content recognition (ACR), a form of ad surveillance technology that gathers information about everything you watch and transmits it to a centralized database. Manufacturers then use your data to identify your viewing preferences, enabling them to deliver highly targeted ads.Also: The fastest VPNs of 2025: Great speeds and secure connections anywhereWhat’s the incentive behind this invasive technology? According to market research firm eMarketer, in 2022, advertisers spent an estimated $18.6 billion on smart TV ads, and those numbers are only going up.To understand how ACR works, imagine a constant, real-time Shazam-like service running in the background while your TV is on. It identifies content displayed on your screen, including programs from cable TV boxes, streaming services, or gaming consoles. ACR does this by capturing continuous screenshots and cross-referencing them with a vast database of media content and advertisements. More

ZDNETAnother day. Another cloud service changing the rules on stuff we already bought and paid for.This time, Amazon is removing a feature that’s been part of the Kindle experience for more than a decade: downloading files to your computer. Also: This clever Kindle trick lets you download 25 books at once – but it’s riskyI’m not going to bury the lede: You have until Feb. 26, 2025, to download copies of your Kindle books to your computer. After that, Amazon will remove the ability to download books to files you can control yourself.I’m a little disappointed that Amazon doesn’t say anything about this in its main Digital Content management interface. More

Apple/ZDNETApple’s follow-up to the budget iPhone SE — the iPhone 16e — is here. As the more affordable option in the lineup, the tech giant cut a few features to keep costs down and make the pricier models more appealing. One of the notable omissions? MagSafe. Also: What does the ‘e’ in iPhone 16e stand for?While the iPhone 16e More

Handwriting your notes can be a give-and-take. On one hand, you retain information better, boost critical thinking skills, and improve your creative thinking by taking manual notes. On the other hand, it is convenient to type your notes on your tablet or laptop, store them more quickly, and compose them in a neater fashion. With smart pens, you can have the best of both worlds.These pens handle notes and can transform them into digital images, record audio, and edit pre-existing notes. Like the Livescribe Symphony Smartpen, which does all of those useful things, or the Rocketbook, which comes with fewer of the bells and whistles, serving the needs of professionals, artists, or even students. If you want to transform your note-writing game, read on for our best picks to find what suits you and your needs best.Also: The best stylus you can buyWhat is the best smart pen right now?We at ZDNET have scoured the internet to find the best options for smart pens. Our current top pick is the Livescribe Symhony Smartpen More

ZDNETI love a good note-taking app. They help keep me organized and ensure I don’t have to keep every thought that spills out of my head within the sulci and gyri of my brain. At their core, note-taking apps make my daily life a bit easier with:Bulleted lists of tasks.Notes for books I’m writing or planning to write.Shopping lists.Daily thoughts.And so much more.So, yeah, I use note-taking apps all the time. Usually, I try to make use of note-taking apps that are cross-platform so I can access my notes from anywhere. However, when I’m on MacOS, I might start using an app I only recently discovered.That app is called Craft. What can Craft do?Craft offers all the standard features, such as a block-based note-taking system, nested pages and folders, spaces to separate content by purpose, support for text, images, sketches, code blocks, PDF files, and rich link previews, the ability to add any kind of media directly into notes, real-time collaborative document editing, options to share notes as formatted emails, PDFs, Microsoft Word documents, or Markdown files, private link sharing for feedback and comments, automatic syncing across devices, a built-in calendar, templates, drag-and-drop functionality, integration with other apps like Ulysses, Day One, DevonThink, and Things, and export to various formats, including Textbundle for migration to other note-taking apps. Also: How I feed my files to a local AI for better, more relevant responsesThere’s one other feature that was added to the latest release. I’m sure you can guess what that feature is.Why would you need AI for a note-taking app?If you guessed AI, then you are correct. I kicked the tires of Craft and found the AI to actually be quite helpful.For instance, I wanted to create a general housekeeping chore task list, so I opened the Craft AI assistant and typed, “Write a general list of housekeeping chores.” To my surprise, the list presented was really handy — so much so, that I decided to keep it. Also: My 5 favorite note-taking apps for staying organized on a desktopI then gave it another test by typing, “Write me an encouraging statement,” and the results were equally impressive. The final test was to use the assistant to check the grammar and spelling of my notes. Let me show you how it works. More