Amazon’s new smart speaker, the Echo Look, received a mixed reaction following its unveiling this week.

Some say it could inspire confidence while others voiced privacy concerns.

The $200 (£154) gadget, not yet on sale, features a camera to capture full-length selfies and video which can be stored to create a personal “look book”.

It uses smart assistant Alexa to give a verdict on outfit choices and recommend clothes to buy.

It is listed as available “by invitation only” on the Amazon website and is aimed at the US market only.

“With this data, Amazon won’t be able to just sell you clothes or judge you. It could analyze (sic) if you’re depressed or pregnant and much else,” tweeted Zeynap Tufekci, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina.

“Not just a privacy disaster; people don’t understand what algorithms can infer from pictures. You are disclosing a lot of health info, too.”

Amazon said that it would not share any personal information with advertisers or third party websites.

But Fiona Blake, who runs a closed Facebook page where hundreds of women share photos of their outfits and offer each other supportive fashion advice, said she thought the Echo Look sounded like a good idea.

“People struggle with looking in the mirror and taking photographs of themselves,” she said.

“This is brilliant daily inspiration. You could flick through your own personal Pinterest board [of outfit choices] – that is key for getting up, getting dressed and getting out there.

“I’m happy for someone to recommend something. I can’t get to every high street shop. I don’t mind being sold to but I know a lot of people don’t like that approach.”

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Professional stylist Donna McCulloch, from Sulky Doll stylists, said people should not rely on an app to tell them what to wear.

“If you are unsure about an outfit, then trust your own gut instinct and try a different look instead,” she said.

Despite the rising competitive threat of T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless has spent the last few years simply refusing to seriously compete on price. That stubbornness has extended to the company’s refusal to match T-Mobile’s unlimited data plans, eliminated by Verizon back in 2011. In a truly competitive market, you’re supposed to listen to your customers and try to provide whatever they’re clamoring for. But Verizon’s tack has been the exact opposite; the company spending the last few years trying to tell consumers they don’t really want simpler, unlimited data options — and that these plans are unnecessary and unviable.

For most of this time, Verizon Wireless’ excuse du jour was that it didn’t have to compete on price or service because its network was just that phenomenal. But a report last week by Open Signal found that T-Mobile, once considered an under-cooked upstart, was finally fielding a network that nearly matches Verizon in terms of both speed and overall coverage:

“Our testers were able to find a Verizon LTE signal 88.2% of the time, cementing Big Red’s place at the top of our 4G rankings. But T-Mobile has been systematically closing the gap. In the fourth quarter its 4G availability was less than two percentage points below Verizon’s, the closest we’ve seen that difference.”

Initially Verizon tried to downplay the results, insisting that because Open Signal uses crowdsourced data, that the results souldn’t be taken seriously. That didn’t go over particularly well over at T-Mobile:

But Verizon then did a 180, announcing late last week that the company would finally be offering unlimited data again, and without throttling video, music or games as a result (which is now standard practice at both T-Mobile and Sprint). Of course the industry’s definition of “unlimited” remains as murky as it has always been, with Verizon quick to note that by “unlimited,” they actually mean somewhere around 22 gigabytes per month, after which your connection will likely be throttled:

“On all Verizon Unlimited plans you get our fast LTE speeds. To ensure a quality experience for all customers, after 22 GB of data usage on a line during any billing cycle we may prioritize usage behind other customers in the event of network congestion. While we don’t expect to do that very often, network management is a crucial tool that benefits all Verizon customers.”

Still, a good move is a good move. And Verizon’s decision will likely push AT&T (which currently only sells you unlimited data if you bundle your wireless connection a with DirecTV service) to follow suit. Granted competition in telecom is fickle and inconsistent, and non-price competition — where theatrics trump actual value — is generally the rule of thumb. And should rumors of a new Sprint, T-Mobile merger be accurate, we could very quickly be facing three large

Instagram is growing faster than it ever has before.

The photo and video app, which is owned by Facebook, now has 700 million monthly active users, adding 100 million new users in just over four months. That’s faster than the six months it took the company to jump from 500 million to 600 million users, which was faster than the nine months it took to jump from 400 million to 500 million.

So things have picked up significantly in the past year.