Artificial Intelligence

Seattle – Amazon.com is reportedly using robots from Kiva Systems at three distribution centers. According to the Wall Street Journal, the robots bring merchandise from shelves to warehouse workers and can potentially reduce the cost of filling an order by 20% to 40%, for an annual savings of more than $900 million.

Amazon purchased Kiva for $775 million in March 2012 and according to a recent financial disclosure now has 1,400 Kiva robots in service helping fulfill orders. The retailer declined to comment on the project.

Target has unveiled a section of its website that features products that are trending on hot social media site Pinterest.

The Target Awesome Shop is a shoppable catalog that features a curated crop of products from several lines, including beauty, each of which is among those most pinned on Pinterest in the last few days, but only if they have at least a four-star guest review.

Dallas – Fifteen Dallas-area retailers are pilot testing Cartwheel Register, a free mobile checkout app that provides an intuitive and secure store system while creating a next-generation shopping experience for customers. Retailers in the pilot include gift shops, cafes, clothing boutiques, bakeries, caterers, food trucks and salons throughout the city and surrounding areas. Each business will use Cartwheel Register to perform credit, debit, cash and Skip Wallet transactions.

San Jose, Calif. -- Retail Next announced today the acquisition of Nearbuy Systems, a provider of location-based Wi-Fi Analytics solutions for retailers. Based in San Mateo, Calif., Nearbuy is the largest provider of in-store opt-in analytics, enabling retailers to enhance one-to-one engagement and personalization strategies.

By Connor Marsden, U.S. Lead, Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Guangzhou, China -- Vipshop Holdings Limited, a Chinese online discount retailer for brands, has appointed Lily Fan as the company's VP of human resources, effective Dec. 2.

Cambridge, Mass. -- Akamai Technologies and Prolexic Technologies have signed a definitive agreement for Akamai to acquire Prolexic, a provider of cloud-based security solutions for protecting data centers and enterprise IP applications from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

Animated forms that smile and wink add tech twist

A must-see fashion exhibit at The Brooklyn Museum in New York City is doing double duty, offering a retrospective of the 30-year-plus career of avant-garde designer Jean Paul Gaultier, while also providing a showcase for a collection of show-stealing, crowd-pleasing mannequins. But what do mannequins in a museum exhibit have to do with retail?