Tag Archives: amazon

We Want Information

We want information and we want it now. Grocery bill balance? Document word count? Tell me!

Dashing through the store

Last spring I discussed the demise of Amazon’s Just Walk Out in favor of Dash Carts.

Even though the Just Walk Out system was a model of zero friction, it was also a model of zero information.

“It’s masterful, really. You just throw your purchases into your cart, and a battery of cameras record and price everything automatically.

“In reality, a battery of cameras and third world workers record and price everything semi-automatically. But I digress.

“Anyway, all your purchases are recorded and totaled, and your payment method is charged as you just walk out.

“THEN you find out how much you just spent.”

Too late?

In contrast, the lower tech Dash Cart solution—shopping carts with scanners—allows customers to “scan items as they shop, view their basket total in real time, and pay using contactless payment at the end.”

High friction because the shopper has to scan every item instead of letting “AI”—either cameras or low-paid remote employees—do the work.

But the shopper has immediate information.

Writing through the words

And I need immediate information while performing Bredemarket work.

Two of my packages are based on word count. The Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service delivers between 400 and 600 words, the Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service between 2,800 and 3,200.

Approximately. I don’t get bent out of shape if the final work product has 3,317 words. And as you know if you saw one of my recent videos…

Tactical goals.

…I currently charge $500 for the short service and $2.000 for the other. And if a particular work product falls between these two word counts, I charge accordingly.

The upshot is that I have a vested interest in knowing the number of words in my Microsoft Word documents.

  • I can go to the Word Count menu item and get the word count.
  • Or for working documents in which the seven questions (and more) are embedded in the bottom of the file…
Tactical goals again.
  • …I just select the portion of text that contains the work product itself, go to the Word Count menu item, and get the word count of only the selection.
  • Or I can use fields. On a recent project, I used a Word field, NumWords, to display the word count without requiring me to go to a menu item or select anything.

There’s only one problem with using fields: NumWords is static and requires me to manually refresh the field to update the current word count.

But Microsoft Word lets you do things several different ways.

  • I could bypass menu items and fields altogether if I would simply remember to look in the lower left corner of my Microsoft Windows desktop app for Word, where the word count has been displayed all along.
Microsoft Word page and word counts, automatically updated.

Sometimes the answer is right in front of you.

Frictionless.

If you need content of varying word lengths, talk to Bredemarket.

Stop losing prospects! Use Bredemarket content for tech marketers
Content for tech marketers.

Bredemarket 2026 Tactical Goals 1 and 2

Long-time Bredemarket fans may recall when Bredemarket established and publicized annual goals. I haven’t publicized my overall goals since 2022, but I am publicizing these two tactical goals for 2026 to (1) hold myself accountable, and to (2) enlist your help. Both are awareness goals, designed to bring Bredemarket to the attention of the identity, biometric, and technology marketing leaders who are my hungry people.

Tactical Goal 1

In calendar year 2026, achieve 100 WordPress views (as measured by “Most Viewed,” not “Most Downloaded”) for each of the three “essentials” videos:

  • Landscape.
  • The Seven Questions I Ask.
  • Bredemarket: Services, Process, and Pricing.

For your convenience, you can find and view all three videos at a single Bredemarket blog post “Bredemarket Essentials November 2025.”

Tactical Goal 2

In calendar year 2026, achieve 1,000 YouTube views for each of the same three “essentials” videos.

Again for your convenience, you can find all three videos in this YouTube playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDHu4DNJv1KYQaR9Pvo0z4KzaZZweM02C

How you can help

You can help me realize my goals by doing one or both of the following (I ask, then YOU act):

  • If you have not seen all three of these videos yourself, visit either the Bredemarket blog post or the YouTube playlist and view the ones you haven’t seen. No need to view the ones you’ve already seen; I’m interested in meaningful views, not statistical inflation.
  • Share the videos with identity, biometric, and technology marketing leaders who can use Bredemarket’s services.

For me, 100 or 1,000 annual views of a video is a stretch goal. Even looking at lifetime statistics, my most popular WordPress video, my discovery of the Amazon Fresh Upland opening, has less than 100 views, and my most popular YouTube short, the metal strips that protect palm trees from squirrels, has less than 3,100 views. (I believe my most popular video ever was my Instagram reel of the San Antonio Avenue bridge: over 6,800 views.)

Maybe I should ditch the wildebeests, wombats, and iguanas (and koalas) and concentrate on squirrels. On a bridge. Eating Amazon Fresh groceries.

Google Gemini.

Amazon Fresh Upland: The Reviews Are In

I’ve talked at length about the new Amazon Fresh store in Upland, even before it opened. Now that it’s been open for over a half year, I was wondering how others felt about the store.

The average Yelp review, based upon 51 reviews as of December 18, is about a 3.5, which is good. But what’s interesting is the polarity of the reviews, with 28 5-star reviews and 12 1-star reviews.

You can’t please everybody, but some of the 1-star reviews are interesting.

“very, very few employees at this location are incompetent and have no customer service skills. also no manners or decency.”

I think the reviewer meant “competent,” but hey.

“No matter what time of day I go there, there are always workers blocking the isles with large carts. That makes it impossible to shop.”

Again, “aisles.” But the reviewer noted a common complaint: the store appears to prioritize delivery orders over people coming in-store to shop, and multiple reviewers have noted the rudeness of the workers fulfilling delivery orders.

And apparently the rudeness does not coincide with speed.

“The order wasn’t ready for pickup hours after scheduled”

However, this particular review was written just a few days after the store opened, so some hiccups are expected.

Google Gemini.

And those who love the store LOVE it.

“Nice clean store. Cheap prices. The dash cart is awesome. Very helpful employees.”

And

“The store is clean, spacious, and very easy to navigate. Shopping here is simple and enjoyable. The staff is friendly and ready to help, which made the experience even better.”

So it appears that experiences can vary anywhere. Hopefully this store will last longer than the La Verne one.

Google Gemini.

Continuous Authentication HAS To Be Multi-Factor

If you authenticate a person at the beginning of a session and never authenticate them again, you have a huge security hole.

For example, you may authenticate an adult delivery person and then find a kid illegally making your delivery. 31,000 Brazilians already know how to do this.

By LukaszKatlewa – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49248622.

That’s why more secure firms practice continuous authentication for high-risk transactions.

But continuous authentication can be intrusive.

How would you feel if you had to press your finger on a fingerprint reader every six seconds?

Grok.

Enough of that and you’ll start using the middle finger to authenticate.

Even face authentication is intrusive, if it’s 3 am and you don’t feel like being on camera.

Now I’ve already said that Amazon doesn’t want to over-authenticate everything. 

Grok.

But Amazon does want to authenticate the critical transactions. Identity Week: 

“Amazon treats authentication as a continuous process, not a one-time event. It starts with verifying who a user is at login, but risk is assessed throughout the entire session, watching for unusual behaviours or signals to ensure ongoing confidence in the user’s identity.”

That’s right: Amazon uses “somewhat you why” as an authentication factor.

I say they’re smart.

My Thoughts on the Amazon Ring-Flock Safety Partnership

Amazon didn’t get a lot of good news today, and there was another negative news item that people focused on the AWS outage probably missed.

Anthony Kimery of Biometric Update wrote an article entitled “Ring’s partnership with Flock raises privacy alarms.” I offered the following commentary on LinkedIn’s Bredemarket Identity Firm Services page.

Perhaps I’m industry-embedded, but this seems fine to me. Consent appears to be honored everywhere.

“Under the deal, agencies that use Flock’s Nova or FlockOS investigative platforms will soon be able to post Community Requests through Ring’s Neighbors app, asking nearby residents to share doorbell footage relevant to an investigation.

“Each request includes a case ID, time window, and map of the affected area. Ring says participation is voluntary and that residents can choose whether to respond, and agencies cannot see who declines. Users can also disable the feature entirely in their account settings.”

On the other hand, Senator Ron Wyden doesn’t trust Flock at all and says that “abuse of Flock cameras is inevitable.”

Heck, abuse of citizens by the U.S. Senate is inevitable, but citizens aren’t demanding that the Senate cease operations.

Amazon’s Take on “Familiar Faces” is Not Available Everywhere

(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)

Biometric Update reports that Amazon’s Ring products are offering a feature called “Familiar Faces.”

“In September, Amazon revealed a revamped Ring camera lineup featuring two notable AI features, Familiar Faces and Search Party. Familiar Faces uses facial recognition and lets users tag neighbors or friends so future alerts identify them by name rather than generic motion.”

If this sounds, um, familiar, it’s because Google also has a similar feature, called familiar face alerts, in its Nest offerings.

And like Google, Amazon’s Familiar Faces won’t be available to everyone. If you are, um, familiar withg the acronym BIPA, you will know why.

“The feature is slated for December, though it will be disabled in places with stricter biometric laws such as Illinois, Texas, and Portland.”

Amazon Stale: Southern California Amazon Fresh Closures in La Verne and Elsewhere

It took years, but the long-planned Amazon Fresh grocery store finally opened in Upland, California in May.

Amazon Fresh, Upland, California in April.

But that doesn’t mean it will STAY open. 

Four other Amazon Fresh stores will close next month, including one in nearby La Verne.

“At one Fresh supermarket in La Verne, California, employees were told to gather for an all-hands meeting on Wednesday, according to an internal message viewed by CNBC. They learned at the meeting that the store would close in mid-November….

“The other three stores that are closing are in cities of Mission Viejo, La Habra and Whittier.”

The La Verne Amazon Fresh store only opened in April 2022, and therefore only had a life of 3 1/2 years.

Which serves as a reminder that a business can have a crowded grand opening one day…

Amazon Fresh, Upland, California on May 1.

…and disappear the next.

What steps are you taking to ensure YOUR business survives for the long term?

Stop losing prospects! Use Bredemarket content for tech marketers
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So this doesn’t happen to you?

Google Gemini AI image.

Amazon Not So Fresh, Mate

You may recall my series of several different posts about the long-awaited opening of an Amazon Fresh store in nearby Upland, California.

Meanwhile, they may be CLOSING Amazon Fresh stores across the pond in the United Kingdom.

“The tech giant said Tuesday (Sept. 23) that it had launched a “consultation” with employees about the proposed closure of the Fresh locations in England…”

Why? Because apparently UK shoppers don’t want to come to stores. They want the stores to come to them.

“By early 2026, Amazon aims to double the number of Prime members in the U.K. with access to three or more online grocery delivery options through its partnerships with Morrisons, Iceland, Co-op and Gopuff. This expansion will allow more than 80% of U.K. Prime members to shop at least one of Amazon’s grocery partners.”

Funny innit? Amazon shook things up by abandoning its online-only presence with its purchase of brick-and-mortar Whole Foods and its establishment of Amazon Fresh. Now it is partially retreating into its delivery model.

Revisiting Amazon Rekognition, May 2025

(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)

A recent story about Meta face licensing changes caused me to get reflective.

“This openness to facial recognition could signal a turning point that could affect the biometric industry. 

“The so-called “big” biometric players such as IDEMIA, NEC, and Thales are teeny tiny compared to companies like Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon. If the big tech players ever consented to enter the law enforcement and surveillance market in a big way, they could put IDEMIA, NEC, and Thales out of business. 

“However, wholesale entry into law enforcement/surveillance could damage their consumer business, so the big tech companies have intentionally refused to get involved – or if they have gotten involved, they have kept their involvement a deep dark secret.”

Then I thought about the “Really Big Bunch” product that offered the greatest threat to the “Big 3” (IDEMIA, NEC, and Thales)—Amazon Rekognition, which directly competed in Washington County, Oregon until Amazon imposed a one-year moratorium on police use of facial recognition in June 2020. The moratorium was subsequently extended until further notice.

I last looked at Rekognition in June 2024, when Amazon teamed up with HID Global and may have teamed up with the FBI.

So what’s going on now?

Hard to say. I have been unable to find any newly announced Amazon Rekognition law enforcement customers.

That doesn’t mean that nothing is happening. Perhaps the government buyers are keeping their mouths shut.

Plus, there is this page, “Use cases that involve public safety.”

Nothing controversial on the page itself:

  • “Have appropriately trained humans review all decisions to take action that might impact a person’s civil liberties or equivalent human rights.”
  • “Train personnel on responsible use of facial recognition systems.”
  • “Provide public disclosures of your use of facial recognition systems.”
  • “In all cases, facial comparison matches should be viewed in the context of other compelling evidence, and shouldn’t be used as the sole determinant for taking action.” (In other words, INVESTIGATIVE LEAD only.)

Nothing controversial at all, and I am…um…99% certain (geddit?) that IDEMIA, NEC, and Thales would endorse all these points.

But why does Amazon even need such a page, if Rekognition is only used to find missing children?

Maybe this is a pre-June 2020 page that Amazon forgot to take down.

Or maybe not.

Couple this with the news about Meta, and there’s the possibility that the Really Big Bunch may enter the markets currently dominated by the Big Three.

Imagine if the DHS HART system, delayed for years, were resurrected…with Alphabet or Amazon or Meta technology.

We are still in the time of uncertainty…and may never go back.

(Large and small wildebeests via Imagen 3)