Business / Technology

A signature feature of Amazon’s new Fire phone is Firefly, an app that identifies products, music and TV shows and makes it easy to order them from the company.

It worked well with pop music but stumbled when I tried scanning a few common products in my kitchen. Perhaps it will get better after the phone goes on sale and people start feeding Firefly more data about products they’re scanning.

Here’s a video of the test:

The Fire phone that Amazon.com begins shipping Thursday is an impressive debut with several cool features. But the price is a bit high for a device designed to help you buy more stuff from Amazon.

Amazon image

Microsoft pretty much confirmed in today’s earnings report that it scrapped the Surface Mini at the last minute.

A “dream team” of professional gamers from China won the historic $5 million prize at The International video-game tournament that concluded today at Seattle’s KeyArena.

Team Newbee in photo provided by Valve.

The physical embodiment of the more humble, mobile and cloud-focused Microsoft debuted last week for $129.

While sympathizing with the thousands of Microsoft employees losing their jobs, Seattle and the state of Washington should breathe a sigh of relief that the company left its headquarters largely intact.

Microsoft image

Seattle’s new technology chief is open to the idea of creating a city-owned broadband service to compete with vendors like Comcast.

A new report says the big Microsoft layoffs will be announced Thursday, followed by an employee meeting with Chief Executive Satya Nadella on Friday.

Hell hath no fury like Alan Mulally scorned, apparently.

Washington state needs to brace itself for the next big Microsoft update.

Microsoft image of Nadella during a July event.