Pre-orders for the Nintendo Switch may be sold out, but retailers around the world are promising stock of the upcoming video game console at launch. Walmart is the latest of these. Walmart Supercenters that are open 24 hours will have stock of the Nintendo Switch available at 12:01 am local time for $299. Both the gray model and the blue and red model will be available. This follows news that video game retailer GameStop will also have the Switch in stock at launch.

Mobile World Congress 2017 -- Telef--nica has taken a bold leap into the age of artificial intelligence with its launch today of a new digital assistant called Aura, which appears to be the product of a two-year research initiative at the Spanish telco that has been a closely guarded secret. Unveiled in Barcelona on the cusp of this year's Mobile World Congress, Aura sounds and works much like Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL)'s Siri or Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN)'s Alexa, allowing customers to check on details of their Telef--nica service -- and ask for problems to be resolved or new features to be provided -- using a voice interface on a mobile device. Judging by the demonstration at Telef--nica's offices in Barcelona, Aura works at least as effectively as the digital assistants developed by the web giants but differs in one important respect: It stores and can act upon all of the information about a particular user that is relevant to his or her relationship with the operator. In fact, Telef--nica balks at the "digital assistant" label, preferring to think of Aura as a "cognitive intelligence" system than a neat bit of voice-recognition software.

Two years ago, at a retail-marketing conference called "The Internet of Things: Shopping," a consultant took the stage and predicted that by 2028, half of Americans will have implants that communicate with retailers as they walk down stores' aisles and inspect various items. By 2054, he added, this would be true of nearly all Americans. The rest of the vision went like this: Based on how long shoppers hold an item, the retailer's computers would be able to determine whether or not they like it. Other signals from the implant would indicate whether consumers are nervous or cautious when they look at the price of the product they're holding--an analysis that may prompt the retailer to try to put them at ease with a personalized discount. After hearing these prognostications, no one in the audience voiced any doubts that consumers would want such an implant.

Applied machine learning

Forget the images of men in hard hats standing before factory gates, of men with coal-blackened faces, of men perched high above New York City on steel beams. The emerging face of the American working class is a Hispanic woman who has never set foot on a factory floor. That's not the kind of work much of the working class does anymore. Instead of making things, they are more often paid to serve people: to care for someone else's children or someone else's parents; to clean another family's home. The decline of the old working class has meant both an economic triumph for the nation and a personal tribulation for many of the workers.

Discussing the ways digital machines and artificial intelligence (AI) will change our lives seems like a stimulating conversation for a dinner party, but truthfully, the Internet of Things is already reshaping the way we interact with our world and it's only the beginning. Industries are transforming and careers are rising or falling. The predominant perspectives on AI range from utopian, where machines create technological miracles and marvels, to dystopian, where labor is replaced by software and malevolent robots. The reality is, smart machines and AI will enable all of us to do more than is humanly possible. What To Do When Machines Do Everything explains what's real, along with a powerful framework for embracing this change, to ensure you and your business stay competitive in the next decade.

There's an awkward moment at the outset of every new technology when marketers and agencies begin spasmodically craving it. This craving is often blind to whether the investment would solve a business challenge or if that money would be better spent by letting junior staffers roast marshmallows on a giant burning pyre of cocaine. To date, much of the conversation around chat bots has been focused on replacing rote customer service for existing clients and "driving loyalty," as spurious as that phrase has been shown to be by the good folks at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. So we're going to look at something different: four ways that chat bots could increase marketing effectiveness outside of giving existing customers a better experience. In short, how could chat bots be used to actually grow a brand and reach new customers?

Today the focus is on the Customer Obsession Conference. The Customer Obsession Conference, part of IRX 2017, is for retailers who want to explore new digital approaches to putting the customer at the centre of the shopping experience. Organisers of the conference, run in association with Monetate [IRDX VMOT], aim to identify and share effective ways to use content, social, search and other digital marketing tools to deliver satisfaction and results across channels. They're looking at data, journey mapping and personalisations as tools for campaigns to drive behavioural change. The conference opens with a keynote address looking at the new role of the CMO as technology and integrated IT systems become ever more important, and how the boardroom as a whole will change to adapt around new digital priorities.

Ocado, the world's largest online-only supermarket, has been evaluating the feasibility of robotic picking and packing of shopping orders in its highly-automated warehouses through the SoMa project, a Horizon 2020 framework programme for research and innovation funded by the European Union. One of the main challenges of robotic manipulation has been the handling of easily damageable and unpredictably shaped objects such as fruit and vegetable groceries. These products have unique shapes and should be handled in a way that does not cause damage or bruising. To avoid damaging sensitive items, the project uses a compliant gripper (i.e. one that possesses spring-like properties) in conjunction with an industrial robot arm. The variation in shape of the target objects imposes another set of constraints on the design of a suitable gripper.

To stay on the leading edge in any industry, you must accept that the only thing that is constant is change. You must always be ready to analyze and adapt to take advantage of new advancements and stay ahead of the competition. We all know that, but never have I put it into practice more than as the founder and CEO of VineSleuth/Wine4.Me, where we are developing technology that allows shoppers to get the wines they want, simply, and retailers to reach those wine buyers, personally. This is made possible through artificial intelligence. In building our patented process of wine evaluation and predictive analytics, as well as our mobile applications and kiosks, we've had the opportunity to work with some of the best minds in wine, sensory science and artificial intelligence.