Artificial Intelligence

The latest posting from the McMillanDoolittle blog:

Target announced a partnership with Instacart in Target’s hometown of Minneapolis. This is Target’s first experiment with same-day delivery of products, and it coincides with the expansion of their grocery and fresh business.

Target Corp. has operated an innovation lab in San Francisco since 2013, but now the retailer is eyeing a more accelerated and outward-focused approach to innovation.

In collaboration with Boulder, Colorado-based startup accelerator Techstars, Target is creating a new retail accelerator program that will launch next year in Minneapolis.

Target Corp. is going high-tech with efforts to improve employee fitness. All 335,000 U.S. employees of Target will be offered free or subsidized wearable digital activity trackers from Fitbit Inc.

As part of the program, management will have a dashboard that can track individual employees by activities such as how many steps they take in a day. The basic FitBit Zip device will be provided free, or Target will help employees pay for a costlier FitBit wristband device.

Silicon Valley’s Winchester House confounds visitors from around the world. An eccentric heiress spent decades adding endless rooms and hallways, doors that lead to nowhere, and random structural additions — turning a home into an inscrutable, imposing and meandering oddity.

SAP is setting some big goals for a suite of future integrated digital enterprise technologies. The enterprise technology firm wants to transform the relationships companies have with their customers.

Sephora is offering some colorful store services. The specialty beauty retailer is unveiling two new features of its Color IQ foundation service, which it operates in partnership with Pantone, in all U.S. stores.

These two new complimentary in-store services let customers filter through Pantone’s SkinTone library and determine their most flattering colors from more than 3,500 lipstick shades and more than 400 concealer shades.

Barnes & Noble wants its shoppers to celebrate innovation and creativity by hosting its first ever "Maker Faire."

The nation’s largest retail bookseller has formed a new partnership with Maker Media, publisher of Make: magazine and producer of Maker Faire, to launch the first-ever Mini Maker Faire in stores nationwide. The retailer is asking shoppers to participate at their local Barnes & Noble store the weekend of Nov. 6-8 to share their inventions, ideas and more.

Visual marketing platform provider Olapic, which turns consumer-generated photos and videos into brand assets for use in marketing, is teaming up with a major social network.

Olapic is now part of the Facebook Marketing Partner Program.