Journal #2 - Alexa is coming

"Alexa" is coming to mobile — provided that mobile device is made by Amazon.

Amazon today announced a new tablet, the Fire HD 8, which bears the same name as the Fire HD 8 tablet before it. The new tablet has the same eight-inch, 1280 by 800 resolution touchscreen display like its predecessor; but is also built with 50 percent more RAM (1.5 gigabytes), double the base storage (16GB or 32GB), and a larger battery that Amazon claims will last up to 12 hours.

It is, for all intents and purposes, a very decent piece of tablet hardware, all for $90. And Amazon says its approach to making lower-cast tablets is working: Kevin Keith, the company's general manager of Fire tablets, said that sales have more than doubled in the past year, with last year's $50 six-inch tablet emerging as the best-seller of all of its tablets (at least, by its own internal metrics; Amazon famously doesn't share information around unit sales).