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Want a smarter Alexa, savvier Siri, brainier Google Now or a cleverer Cortana? So do Amazon, Apple, Alphabet and Microsoft -- and each is working to make its voice assistant your personal Einstein of choice. Amazon recently enhanced its efforts by nabbing an AI expert from eBay, The Wall Street Joual reported Friday. Hassan Sawaf is now Amazon's director of artificial intelligence, focusing on "the user experience for users of Amazon's search capability across all products and businesses," according to Sawaf's LinkedIn page. The Joual was one of the first to spot Sawaf's updated responsibilities on LinkedIn. "eBay has wide and deep capabilities in AI across the technology organization, and r...

Enlarge ImageThe Ecobee3 Smart Thermostat and the Amazon Echo smart speaker. Ecobee Last year, Amazon established the $100 million dollar "Alexa Fund" for developers and manufacturers both large and small. The idea was fairly straightforward -- support people with good ideas on how to put the voice-recognition technology in the Amazon Echo smart speaker to good use. Now, the online mega-retailer is ponying up for its biggest investment yet and joining in on a$35 million-dollar funding round for the makers of the Ecobee smart thermostat. The funding round brings Amazon in with Thomvest and Relay Ventures, and comes several months after the Ecobee3 became the first smart thermostat to sync up ...

Jason Cipriani/CNET Netflix doesn't won't let anyone store movies or shows to watch offline, but Amazon just amped up its download options for Android users in a big way. If you own a device ruing Google's Android system, Amazon will let you download titles from its Netflix-like Prime Video service onto SD cards, removable storage units that keep your phone's inteal from getting too packed. (Apple devices like iPhones have fully enclosed bodies that don't allow owners to slip in extra storage like an SD card.)People who have outright purchased a digital video from Amazon can store the item on an SD card too.That opens the door to potentially loading up various cards with different content to...

Amazon original series "The Man in the High Castle" stars Rufus Sewell as a ruthless Nazi villain. Amazon Amazon's video service has surged in usage in the last year, jumping to third place behind Netflix and YouTube by traffic in North America. Amazon Video accounted for 4.3 percent of downstream inteet traffic during peak evening viewing hours in North America, according to network equipment maker Sandvine in its twice-yearly Global Inteet Phenomena Report Wednesday. That's still far behind the 35.2 percent of traffic that Netflix gobbles up, and the 17.5 percent commanded by YouTube. But Amazon's No. 3 ranking is a leap from eighth place a year ago. Amazon has been aggressively chasing Ne...

Sarah Tew/CNET Vizio TVs from the 2010-2011 model year will no longer support the Amazon Video app.That's the word from Amazon, which notified users of the affected televisions via email. The app will cease to work on August 15.Amazon is offering an olive branch, however: the same email offers affected users a $15 discount on the Amazon Fire TV Stick with voice remote. (We'd suggest you opt for a Roku Streaming Stick instead, which also has the Amazon app, but is currently on sale for just $5 more.) So fans of Transparent and The Man in the High Castle can breathe a sigh of relief.Note that this isn't the first -- nor last -- time that a streaming video vendor has discontinued support for an...

Amazon is once again stepping into Google territory -- this time by taking on YouTube.If you ever dreamed of having your videos seen by Amazon Prime subsribers, now it can be a reality with Amazon Video Direct. The service lets anyone upload their video, and creators have the option of offering the video for free, charging for it, or putting it into Prime. Watch CNET Update to get the details, and also lea about changes coming to Periscope. If you rather consume your video entertainment in a headset, one Reddit user explains how to play old Virtual Boy games on Google Cardboard: CNET Update delivers the tech news you need in under 3 minutes. Watch Bridget Carey every afteoon for a breakdown ...

Kids' show "Tumble Leaf" is among a handful of award-wiing original shows from Amazon. Amazon There goes the streaming neighborhood.After years of Amazon Prime Video being hidden within the broader Prime service for $99 a year, the e-commerce company finally made the streaming-video service a standalone option. That could spell trouble for streaming-video leader Netflix.We also talk about Apple apparently stopping support of its Quicktime video player on Windows and the science of farts.The 3:59 gives you bite-size news and analysis about the top stories of the day, brought to you by CNET Executive Editor Roger Cheng (currently on parental leave), Senior Writer Ben Fox Rubin and Producer Bry...

T-Mobile's Binge On feature now lets you binge on even more video streaming services. Screenshot by Claudia Cruz/CNET T-Mobile subscribers can now watch even more video without eating into their monthly data plan. On Thursday, the carrier aounced that it added Amazon Prime Video, Fox News, Univision Now and the WWE Network to its Binge On service. This means that any videos T-Mobile customers watch from those providers over their mobile device don't count against their monthly data allowance. So you can watch all you want via a cellular coection. Introduced last November, the Binge On service is yet another brash move by T-Mobile to shake up the wireless business. Its competitors are paying ...