Tech News

Amazon is quietly piloting a new tier for its Prime membership in India, providing customers with access to popular benefits such as free two-day delivery and ad-supported Prime Video in standard definition at a lower price.

The new tier, called Prime Lite, is currently available to select customers at a discounted annual price of $12 (999 Indian rupees). This is a cost-effective alternative to the regular Prime membership, which is priced at $18 (1499 Indian rupees) per year, or $2.20 (179 Indian rupees) per month. [H/T OnlyTech]

Amazon’s Prime membership has been available in India since 2016. It was priced at $12 a year for some time, though the company increased its pricing to $18 in December 2021. In the U.S., the Prime subscription is available at $139 per year or $14.99 per month.

Amazon has listed the benefits of its Prime Lite membership on its Indian website and included the new tier in its terms and conditions page.

The new offering comes just weeks after Amazon launched Prime Gaming in India. The gaming-focused service is complementary to Amazon Prime and Prime Video subscribers.

The company did not respond to a request for comment Saturday.

Amazon quietly tests even cheaper Prime membership in India by Jagmeet Singh originally published on TechCrunch

After updating its iOS app to display both algorithmic and chronological timelines side-by-side, Twitter is rolling out this update to the web interface.

Earlier this week, the company renamed “Home” (algorithmic timeline) and “Latest” (chronological timeline) to “For You” and “Following”. The “For You” timeline now appears first in both the iOS app and the web.

While you have to swipe between these timelines on the phone, you have to click on the timeline tabs to switch between them on the web. The good part is that at least in the web version, Twitter seems to remember users’ choices. So even if a user closes the tab or the window and reopens Twitter, they will see whatever timeline you selected earlier.

Twitter said in its announcement that this view is coming to the Android app soon, too. Algorithmic timeline for everyone!

One advantage of the new web view is that if you use Twitter lists, the revamped interface makes it easier to jump from one pinned list to another. Earlier, the only way to access lists on the web was to through More > Lists.Quite tedious.

On Friday, third-party Twitter clients started experiencing massive issues with users of many apps being unable to access content or log into their accounts. Developers of these apps said that they tried to contact Twitter but didn’t hear back. At the time of writing the issue is still persistent.

Twitter brings its “For You” and “Following” dual-timeline view to the web by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

Sealed built a business around predicting energy use and getting homeowners to ditch fossil fuels. So, naturally, the company’s first acquisition is a startup that tracks energy on a granular level.

Sealed did not disclose the terms of the deal, but said in a statement that scooping up Burlington, Vermont-based InfiSense would help it “cut home energy waste.”

Headquartered in Manhattan, Sealed finances and oversees electrification upgrades, such as replacing oil or gas heaters with electric heat pumps and insulation. Ridding homes of fossil fuels can lower energy bills, cut household emissions and improve your health. You may have seen this topic in the news recently, because potential stove regulations are now the latest flashpoint in a culture war over clean energy.

To that point, InfiSense’s sensors and software monitor air quality in addition to energy use in buildings, and Sealed plans to share this sort of air-quality data with customers down the line.

Sealed is unique in covering installation and weatherization costs upfront. Instead, it charges a fixed fee based on the energy its machine learning algorithms predict homeowners will save over time. If Sealed underestimates a homes’ energy use, it eats the cost — hence the need to hone those predictions.

The “lifeblood of our company is our ability to predict people’s energy usage over time, and that relies on great access to data,” co-founder and CEO Lauren Salz said in a call with TechCrunch. Currently, Sealed’s algorithms rely on monthly energy data from utilities, but buying InfiSense will give it “access to a deeper level of data from customers,” Salz said.

Sealed plans to install InfiSense’s sensors in some of its customers’ homes, but Salz said it won’t require them. The data Sealed gathers will inform its predictions as well as enable it to offer curious customers an up-close look at their energy usage and air quality.

Sealed buys sensor startup InfiSense to fuel energy-saving services by Harri Weber originally published on TechCrunch