Many learning tasks involve multi-modal data streams, where continuous data from different modes convey a comprehensive description about objects. A major challenge in this context is how to efficiently interpret multi-modal information in complex environments. This has motivated numerous studies on learning unsupervised representations from multi-modal data streams. These studies aim to understand higher-level contextual information (e.g., a Twitter message) by jointly learning embeddings for the lower-level semantic units in different modalities (e.g., text, user, and location of a Twitter message). However, these methods directly associate each low-level semantic unit with a continuous embedding vector, which results in high memory requirements. Hence, deploying and continuously learning such models in low-memory devices (e.g., mobile devices) becomes a problem. To address this problem, we present METEOR, a novel MEmory and Time Efficient Online Representation learning technique, which: (1) learns compact representations for multi-modal data by sharing parameters within semantically meaningful groups and preserves the domain-agnostic semantics; (2) can be accelerated using parallel processes to accommodate different stream rates while capturing the temporal changes of the units; and (3) can be easily extended to capture implicit/explicit external knowledge related to multi-modal data streams. We evaluate METEOR using two types of multi-modal data streams (i.e., social media streams and shopping transaction streams) to demonstrate its ability to adapt to different domains. Our results show that METEOR preserves the quality of the representations while reducing memory usage by around 80% compared to the conventional memory-intensive embeddings.

Amazon Textract is a machine learning (ML) service that makes it easy to extract text and data from scanned documents. Textract goes beyond simple optical character recognition (OCR) to identify the contents of fields in forms and information stored in tables. This allows you to use Amazon Textract to instantly "read" virtually any type of document and accurately extract text and data without needing any manual effort or custom code. Amazon Textract has multiple applications in a variety of fields. For example, talent management companies can use Amazon Textract to automate the process of extracting a candidate's skill set.

It's no secret that kids – and cats – like to play with cardboard boxes, sometimes more than with what's inside. Now, Amazon is introducing new boxes with a built-in play factor. Starting this week, some Amazon orders will start to be delivered in "more environmentally-friendly" boxes that can be turned into a rocket, car or fort for your pet, a robot costume or a mini-golf windmill, the Seattle-based retail giant shared exclusively with USA TODAY. The new boxes are part of Amazon's ongoing "Less Packaging, More Smiles" program and include a call to action to recycle the boxes and a QR code that directs consumers to Amazon.com/ThisBox for how to make the cardboard creations. Save better, spend better: Money tips and advice delivered right to your inbox.

Amazon has put delivery robots to work during the pandemic and is now expanding its fleet to cities in the South. The online retail giant said Tuesday that it's bringing its Amazon Scout autonomous delivery system to Atlanta, Georgia and Franklin, Tennessee this week. The news comes after a year-long test run in other locales. The cooler-sized rovers help to cut down on human-to-human contact during the nation's current coronavirus crisis. The vice president of Amazon Scout, Sean Scott, said in a blog post that the service helped the company meet increasing customer demand during the pandemic.

Considering the JBL Live 300TWS's price and relatively simple design, I expected an equally simple experience--but I shouldn't have judged a pair of true wireless earbuds on its subdued looks. A couple of weeks on, the Live 300TWS's features still dazzle me, and the music quality is far better than I expected from buds in this price range. The 2.7-inch-wide case alone looks as if it could come from a premium set of earbuds. Smooth, compact, and pocketable, its notification lights have a chic air reminiscent of luxury goods: A ring around the USB-C port along the bottom pulses white while the earbuds charge inside--the better to see where to stick the plug in low light--and it shifts to red once the cable is in. The act of opening the case could be more elegant, though; eventually, I fumbled far less with the lid after learning to pull it up from the sides.

This is a guest post by the Jira Cloud Performance Team at Atlassian. In their own words, Atlassian's mission is to unleash the potential in every team. Our products help teams organize, discuss, and complete their work. And what teams do can change the world. We have helped NASA teams design the Mars Rover, Cochlear teams develop hearing implants and hundreds of thousands of other teams do amazing things.

This is a guest post co-written by Sergio Delgado from YoucanBook.me. In their own words, "YouCanBook.me is a small, independent and fully remote team, who love solving scheduling problems all over the world." At YoucanBook.me, we like to say that we're "a small company that does great things." Many aspects of our day-to-day culture are derived from such a simple motto, but especially a great emphasis on the efficiency of our operations. Although we're far from the first years in which our CTO programmed the entire first version of our SaaS tool, when I joined the company, we were only five developers, of which only three were in charge of backend services, and none were dedicated to it 100%.

AI (Artificial Intelligence) is the new human-machine that understands customers better than anyone did before! The aim is nothing less than establishing a bridge between technology and its users by being more human-like. AI is being built to make life and businesses easy and convenient, and;eCommerce is one area that's already feeling the AI magic! A report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) shows those retailers who have implemented personalization strategies, gain almost 6 to 10%; a rate that is two to three times faster than other retailers who haven't adopted the same strategy. In fact, AI is predicted to boost profitability rates by almost 59% in the wholesale and retail industries by the year 2035!

According to Tractica, the worldwide AI software market is projected to generate a revenue of USD 118.6 billion by 2025. Another report by Juniper Research unveils that the global retail investment on the artificial intelligence is expected to grow to $7.3 billion per year by 2022. Considering these facts, it would be no wrong to say that the artificial intelligence is taking every industry by storm, and the fashion industry is no exception. By training machines and software to do human work with complete perfection, the technology is helping the industry to minimize redundant tasks and pay attention to other important activities. AI, along with its other subsets such as machine learning, NLP, and computer vision, is providing various automated solutions to fashion manufacturers, retailers, designers, and others to bring the best outcomes.

COVID-19 has accelerated online sales penetration, and the trend is here to stay. The ecommerce game is becoming more competitive than ever: companies who used to only sell in-store are now launching their own DTC websites. To stand out, not only do your products have to be excellent and your brand appealing, your ecommerce experience has to do more than just follow best practices. Started in 2007, they pride themselves on being "antithesis of a typical beauty brand", choosing instead to be wild, wonderful, wacky, and beautiful. Their packaging, product names, brand voice, and website all reflect that.