Reading List - Week of December 5

This week in technology and eCommerce, Amazon launched their brick and mortar concept grocery store, Amazon Go. Want your kid to learn to code and have fun? Then you'll want to read all about Kamibot. Slack is entering into a strategic partnership with Google that will enable Slack users to use Google within the app even more. Amazon launches its cloud services in Canada. And one of the biggest tech acquistions to ever happen went down this week when Microsoft officially purchased LinkedIn for $26.2 Billion dollars. Scroll down for full stories.

Amazon launches the beta of their brick and mortar concept grocery store, Go.

Source: New York Times

Hate lines? Ever wanted to enter a grocery store, grab a pre-made meal and go? If you’re an Amazon employee, Christmas has come early. This week Amazon opened the doors to their first ever brick-and-mortar grocery store in downtown Seattle which enables their employees to grab a meal or snack, prepared by in-house chefs (real live people, not robots...yet) and go. Yes, they do have to pay. “Customers” simply use the Go app to enter the store and the app charges their Amazon account and send them a receipt. This is all made possible through the use of sensors, computer vision and a virtual cart that keeps track of what’s taken off of, and placed back on, a shelf. Amazon, whom claims the innovative concept store has been in the making for 4 years, on their official Go site stated “We asked ourselves: what if we could create a shopping experience with no lines and no checkout?...Could we push the boundaries of computer vision and machine learning to create a store where customers could simply take what they want and go?” Amazon hopes to open the store to the public as soon as early next year.

Kamibot Is the Cute New Robot Teaching Kids to Code

Source: TechCrunch

From Kickstater to a real life bot on Amazon, Kamibot is the adorable new robot that is teaching children how to code. The base of the robot is plain but can be jazzed up with printable paper skins that can transform the bot into an animal, monster, or even a doctor. Using a phone or an iPad, kids can use code to program the bot to do different things such drive around or go on a treasure hunt. Kamibot is programed with ultrasound sensors so it can detect obstacles right in front of it or determine how far away they are. With the amount of programming jobs that continue to flood the market, the tech community is doing an incredible job of innovating in new ways to get kids interested in coding.

Slack Announces Strategic Partnership with Google Cloud

Source: BetaKit

Slack is continuing to improve their platform as they announced earlier this week their new partnership with Google Cloud. With stiff competition now in the form of Microsoft, Slack is maintaining popularity by offering services that people actually want. Google Drive is one of Slack’s most used integrations, with Google Drive Files being imported over 60,000 times a day. To further integrations, Slack plans to work with Google developers. A few of the new integrations include a Google Drive Bot that will post comments and requests from access into Slack and allowing users to preview Google Doc files within the app. Slack will also be working with Google Team Drives too. The new integrations are to start rolling out in 2017.

Amazon Launches Cloud Services in Canada

Source: Techvibes

Yes Canadian IT professionals you read that right. Amazon has finally brought its cloud services to Canada after initially releasing a statement about the venture earlier this year. This week multiple data centers went live in Montreal meaning data and workloads can now be stored in Canada. In case you’re not an IT profesh, Amazon is the largest global provider of cloud services to businesses. Large businesses such as Johnson & Johnson, McDonald’s, NASA, and GE are all using AWS. As is technology leaders Salesforce and Workday. This kind of powerful cloud technology in Canada is no doubt going to continue to have an impact on the way companies do business.

It’s Official. Microsoft purchases LinkedIn for $26.2 Billion Dollars.

Source: Venture Beat

Back in June it was announced that Microsoft had plans to purchase LinkedIn. Earlier this week those plans were realized and one of the biggest tech acquisitions–certainly the biggest for Microsoft–of all time occurred. The acquisition came after the European Commission gave the go ahead. “This is a major milestone for the company, one that we believe will accelerate how we connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful,” said LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner. Microsoft has big plans to create synergy between LinkedIn, Microsoft Office 365, and Microsoft Dynamics. In addition, it’s suggested that Microsoft will help LinkedIn get back to its roots after complaints from many of its 400 Million users stating the social network has become cluttered and spammy. Weiner added in a blog post following the acquisition “We’re going to focus on how we leverage Microsoft’s impressive scale and innovation to create more value for all of you.”