Amazon wants to make talking to robots an everyday event with Echo June 25, 2015 Amazon is aiming to make talking to robots as normal an event as turning on the TV or checking your phone. The company has ambitious plans to make voice control ubiquitous in households and has started by launching the Amazon Echo, a wireless speaker you can control through voice commands by saying “Alexa”. Alexa is [...]
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has unveiled his space travel company Blue Origin’s new rocket – as well as launch plans from Cape Canaveral September 16, 2015 Amazon’s Jeff Bezos unveiled his space exploration company Blue Origin’s new rocket, announcing plans to fly from a classic launch pad in Cape Canaveral in Florida. The space travel startup announced a $200m investment to build a rocket manufacturing plant in the area, with plans to launch them from a pad that hasn’t been used [...]
More money for proptech: HouseSimple raises £13m from Carphone Warehouse boss June 6, 2016 More money is flowing into up and coming property technology (proptech) companies, with the founder of Carphone Warehouse leading a new multimillion pound investment in online estate agent HouseSimple. Sir Charles Dunstone lead the £13m funding in the firm which ditches the high cost of traditional agency fees, along with his business partner Roger Taylor. An institutional investor [...]
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has unveiled his space travel company Blue Origin’s new rocket – as well as launch plans from Cape Canaveral September 15, 2015 Amazon’s Jeff Bezos unveiled his space exploration company Blue Origin’s new rocket, announcing plans to fly from a classic launch pad in Cape Canaveral in Florida. The space travel startup announced a $200m investment to build a rocket manufacturing plant in the area, with plans to launch them from a pad that hasn’t been used [...]
Why British homeowners still aren’t buying into the idea of the home connected by smart tech June 29, 2016 Take any object in your home and you can guarantee that at some point a Silicon Valley startup has tried to create a web-enabled version of it. The ever expanding “Internet of Things” (IoT), as it’s clunkily termed, now includes almost every household item under the sun. Many are useful, such as thermostats, light bulbs, [...]
As the EU says 20 per cent of Netflix content should be made in the European Union, is this a good reason to back Brexit? May 26, 2016 Len Shackleton, professor of economics at the University of Buckingham and fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, says Yes. A quota for tedious German family sagas or subsidised reworkings of Napoleon’s triumphs, compulsorily advertised on the Netflix homepage, may not itself drive voters to Brexit. But attempting to regulate video-on-demand is symptomatic of the Commission’s ever-expanding [...]
FTSE 100 index closes flat on last day of the month as supermarkets come into focus February 29, 2016 The FTSE 100 index closed slightly higher on the quiet last day of the month after the G20 disappointed over the weekend. The UK's blue-chip index closed 0.02 per cent higher at 6,097 points. "It was almost as if investors forgot about the leap day and no investments were planned on a quiet last day of the month," said [...]
Amazon might be planning to launch online food service Fresh in the UK – but against Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda and other major players, has it bitten off more than it can chew? September 23, 2015 If there were an award for the company that most shaped the retail zeitgeist over the past 10 years, then Amazon would most certainly be a contender. Its innovations have changed the way we shop. Such a pioneering status inevitably creates a great deal of interest. However, along with the interest come some hype: including the [...]
Retailer Amazon paid just £11.9mn in tax in 2014 June 25, 2015 The online retailing goliath Amazon’s UK business paid just £11.9mn in tax last year, despite earning £5.3bn in sales from British shoppers. Amazon’s Luxembourg arm, called Amazon EU Sarl, took in the £5.3bn of sales, with UK sales rising by 14 per cent in 2014. However, the British-based Amazon.co.uk Limited subsidiary recorded a profit of [...]
Retailer Amazon paid just £11.9mn in tax in 2014 June 25, 2015 The online retailing goliath Amazon’s UK business paid just £11.9mn in tax last year, despite earning £5.3bn in sales from British shoppers. Amazon’s Luxembourg arm, called Amazon EU Sarl, took in the £5.3bn of sales, with UK sales rising by 14 per cent in 2014. However, the British-based Amazon.co.uk Limited subsidiary recorded a profit of [...]