Artificial Intelligence

Palo Alto, Calif. -- Curbside, a new startup that specializes in same-day pickup from local stores, launched its service on Monday with several retailers on board, including a pilot with Target Corp.

The new service is currently available in 10 Target stores across the greater San Francisco Bay area, including the retailer’s Metreon and Geary St. locations downtown.  

Dayton, Ohio - Nearly two-thirds (62%) of 400 digital marketers surveyed view improving customer satisfaction as the top reason to invest more in technology. Becoming more customer-centric is a top-two priority for 49% of respondent organizations.  

Scandit, a developer of software-based barcode scanning technology for smartphones, tablets and wearable devices, has released an integrated suite of mobile apps that aims to enhance the consumer shopping experience and retail operations.

Scandit’s Mobile App Suite for Retail provides a series of fully customizable, cross-platform mobile applications for retail employees and customers including: Clienteling, Mobile Point of Sale (mPOS), Mobile Shopping (mShopping), Self-Checkout, Shopping Lists and Procurement.
 

Vantiv, a leading provider of payment processing services and related technology for merchants and financial institutions, has appointed Larry Drury as its chief marketing officer. Drury will report directly to CEO Charles Drucker.

Twitter is giving over every message ever tweeted to the data scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s famed Media Lab. The social media giant is also giving $10 million (throughout a five-year period) to fund the new Laboratory for Social Machines (LSM), which will be based at the Media Lab.

The new initiative aims to build new tools that will analyze and enable communication on social platforms. Twitter will provide full access to its real-time, public stream of tweets, as well as the archive of every tweet dating back to the first.  

Greensboro, N.C. - Convenience store operator Mapco recently partnered with Gilbarco Veeder-Root to install the Impulse upselling platform across 220 sites by the end of 2014. Mapco, which operates 375 stores in the Southeast, is using the Impulse platform to drive dynamic digital content at both the point-of-sale and through their mobile application.

First Data Corporation has bolstered its senior leadership team as part of its ongoing transformation from a payments processor to a collaborative technology company and solutions provider for merchants and financial institutions around the world.

The company promoted two executives to new roles: Barry McCarthy to lead four strategic businesses including the STAR Network and Sanjiv Das to lead First Data’s international business. The company has also brought in two new hires: Andrew Gelb to lead the financial services business and Adam Rosman as general counsel.

New York -- Twitter is giving over every message ever tweeted to the data scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s famed Media Lab. The social media giant is also giving $10 million (over five years) to fund the new Laboratory for Social Machines (LSM), which will be based at the Media Lab.