Artificial Intelligence

Waconia, Minn. - Mackenthun's Fine Foods is rolling out a suite of nutrition tools through a partnership with ShopWell, a personalized nutrition app. Shoppers in Mackenthun's will be able to learn about the health benefits of foods, find healthier alternatives for their nutrition goals, and avoid allergens.

2Checkout, a global online payments provider, has appointed Shawn Budde as CEO. The hire caps a months-long executive search headed by former CEO Tom Dailey, who continues to serve on the board of directors and is an active investor in 2Checkout.

Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. - Timesly, a facial detection time clock app for iPad, has launched, allowing employees to clock in or out of work by snapping their photo using Timesly’s FaceCheck technology. Now available for download via the App Store, FaceCheck uses the iPad’s camera to detect and hone in on the user, adding their picture to a log of every photo ever captured of that person.

FaceCheck will soon include true facial recognition technology, at no additional cost.

Canadian Tire plans to manufacture digital innovation at a new “App Factory,” that is part of the retailer’s recently open Cloud Nine Digital Innovation Centre.

Located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the 28,000-sq.-ft.- facility serves as the core digital hub for the Canadian Tire family of companies and a store network of roughly 1,700 locations. The center will possess 20 times more computing power and 10 times more network bandwidth than the company’s existing technology infrastructure.

Hoffman Estates, Ill. – Sears is offering a new service called Get Advice to members of its Shop Your Way omni-channel loyalty program. Shop Your Way members can post online requests for advice on shopping decisions and receive answers from both Sears associates and other loyalty members.

In addition to posting answers, members can also vote on answers they think are the most helpful. The service is designed to generate answers within minutes and currently is only open Shop Your Way members shopping at Sears and not Kmart.

New York – Nine basic attack patterns that vary from industry to industry are the source of 92% of the 100,000 security incidents analyzed by Verizon since 2004.

Kroger has unveiled a bold initiative to digitize every aspect of its physical store in an effort to measure a breadth of operational metrics to enhance the shopper experience.

Armonk, N.Y. -- IBM said Tuesday that its Watson unit has invested in Fluid, a digital commerce firm, to develop personalized shopping applications using IBM’s cognitive computing tools.