Amazon makes a dash for it
Amazon’s experimenting with an online service you can hold in your hand and talk to. Whether or not that’s the internet you want, it’s a sign of the internet that’s yet to come
Amazon’s done something no-one else has thought of: it’s turned a website into a device.
The latest idea from the online retail giant is something called Dash (fresh.amazon.com/dash ), and it comes from combining bits of two other Amazon services.
The first is Fresh, the company’s groceries department which is only available (for now) to American customers. It works just like online supermarkets do over here – you order the stuff you want, and it gets delivered to your door at a time that suits you.
The second is the voice-activated remote control that comes with the new Amazon Fire TV. The idea is, you just press a button and say what you want, and the box finds it for you.
Take the guts of that remote control, add a barcode scanner, and connect the whole thing to your existing Amazon account and hey presto – you have an online shop that hangs on a hook in your kitchen.
Whenever you remember something you need, grab the Dash and say it out loud. If you can’t remember the name, or if there’s an old one right in front of you, just scan the barcode. Everything you say or scan is added to your next Amazon Fresh order and delivered in the usual way. No more of that tedious messing about with websites.
Of course, a system like this is simpler by necessity. You can’t speak an item’s name into Dash and then flick through eight pages of very similar variations of the same product, seeking out the best deal or the lowest price. That’s the price you pay for the ultimate convenience.
Dash isn’t on offer in the UK yet, but it’s a fascinating new way of connecting the web with people.
The web is more a thing made of data than a thing made of pages. The pages we click on are just an interface, and when technology comes along that offers a better interface, we should grab it and make use of it.
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