Over 96% of Americans are shopping online, with an estimated 36% allocating their shopping budgets to e-commerce, spending an average of five hours per week making online purchases. Adweek reported that 81% of consumers conduct research online before making purchasing decisions, with more than half of shoppers spending over 75% of their time doing so. More notably, 36% of shoppers spend over 30 minutes researching online before making a purchase, with 65% spending at least 16 minutes searching the net before spending. In 2016, 93% of consumers in the U.S. also redeemed an online coupon or discount code, accounting for more than 126 million people. As traditional storefront shopping swiftly transitioned online, the personal experience slowly began to diminish, eliminating the engagement with associates to offer helpful information r assist with making smart purchasing decisions.

The new Nintendo Switch game console is displayed at a pop-up Nintendo venue in Madison Square Park, March 3, 2017 in New York City. One of the first post-launch shipments of Nintendo Switch is coming into GameStop this week, offering us not only an important measure of how well launch momentum is keeping up, but also how well Nintendo is able to keep producing units and getting them out to retail. This is a shipment for brick-and-mortar stores only, and instocknow still doesn't show anything available on major online retailers save eBay. So if you're looking to buy one, don't expect to do so from your computer. I've spent a good chunk of the morning calling GameStop stores in random parts of the country, and I've found that things are a bit all over the map.

If you make a purchase by clicking one of our links, we may earn a small share of the revenue. Our picks and opinions are independent from any business incentives. Alright, so you got yourself an Alexa-enabled device--an Echo, Echo Dot, or Amazon Tap. I'm sure you've already spent plenty of time fooling around and getting to know your new smart assistant, but there's a crazy amount of possibilities you might not have even known about. Keep reading to discover my list of the strangest, most useful, and all-around best things you can do with Alexa.

Hot on the heels of its addition to the Amazon app on the iPhone, Alexa is looking to make its presence known on Android, too. Huawei has announced that the virtual assistant is on its way to the Mate 9, making it the first Android phone to receive Amazon's AI aide. With Alexa on the Mate 9, you'll be able to do many of the things the Echo and Dot can do, including control your home automation devices while you're away. Huawei is touting its smart home capabilities as the flagship feature of Alexa on the Mate 9, but it can also handle many of the other skills Alexa has on Amazon's devices, including the ability to play games, shop at Amazon.com, get news updates, track your workouts, and play podcasts. Furthermore, you can use it to get information about people, places, and events, check your Google or Outlook calendar, find local businesses, and get weather and traffic updates.

On Monday, Walmart said that it's launching a tech incubator to invest in robotics, augmented and virtual reality, machine learning, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. Walmart has invested in or bought other startups in the past, but the company said the latest initiative is about "making big bets on the ideas that will transform the future of retail." The innovation hub is called Store No. 8, after an early experimental store Walmart founder Sam Walton used for new ideas. "We are creating an ecom incubator and budgeting capital to build startups," Marc Lore, president and CEO of Walmart.com and founder of Walmart-acquired Jet.com, said at the Shoptalk conference in Las Vegas. "It'll be wholly owned by Walmart but made of independent companies."

Dipayan Dev Dipayan Dev has completed his M.Tech from National Institute of Technology, Silchar with a first class first and is currently working as a software professional in Bengaluru, India. He has extensive knowledge and experience in non-relational database technologies, having primarily worked with large-scale data over the last few years. His core expertise lies in Hadoop Framework. Dr. Hadoop has recently been cited by Goo Wikipedia in their Apache Hadoop article. Apart from that, he registers interest in a wide range of distributed system technologies, such as Redis, Apache Spark, Elasticsearch, Hive, Pig, Riak, and other NoSQL databases.

Amazon said alcohol is now among tens of thousands of items available for Prime Now free two-hour delivery via an Alexa voice order. In what could be the highest, best use of voice recognition technology to a generation of digital natives, Amazon's digital assistant has added beer runs to its skills. Beginning Tuesday, Amazon Prime customers who have an Alexa-powered device, like the Echo speaker, can order beer, wine and spirits in Seattle, and beer and wine in Columbus and Cincinnati. Amazon will deliver the alcohol within two hours. Parents needn't worry: customers must show valid ID to receive the order.

Across enterprises, ever-expanding stores of data remain unstructured and unanalyzed. Few organizations have been able to explore nontraditional data sources such as image, audio, and video files; the torrent of machine and sensor information generated by the Internet of Things; and the enormous troves of raw data found in the unexplored recesses of the "deep web." However, recent advances in computer vision, pattern recognition, and cognitive analytics are making it possible for companies to shine a light on these untapped sources and derive insights that lead to better experiences and decision making across the business. In this age of technology-driven enlightenment, data is our competitive currency. Buried within raw information generated in mind-boggling volumes by transactional systems, social media, search engines, and countless other technologies are critical strategic, customer, and operational insights that, once illuminated by analytics, can validate or clarify assumptions, inform decision making, and help chart new paths to the future. Until recently, taking a passive, backward-looking approach to data and analytics was standard practice. With the ultimate goal of "generating a report," organizations frequently applied analytics capabilities to limited samples of structured data siloed within a specific system or company function. Moreover, nagging quality issues with master data, lack of user sophistication, and the inability to bring together data from across enterprise systems often colluded to produce insights that were at best limited in scope and, at worst, misleading.

In what could be the highest, best use of voice recognition technology to a generation of digital natives, Amazon's digital assistant has added beer runs to its skills. Beginning Tuesday, Amazon Prime customers who have an Alexa-powered device, like the Echo speaker, can order beer, wine and spirits in Seattle, and beer and wine in Columbus and Cincinnati. Parents needn't worry: customers must show valid ID to receive the order. The rollout is actually an extension of Amazon Now, which as of Tuesday is part of Alexa's skill set. It's available in the more than 30 cities that have the two-hour delivery service for Prime members.

Wal-Mart is making strides in its pursuit to be a leader in ecommerce. Wal-Mart executives announced Monday they will be developing "Store No. 8" in Silicon Valley in hopes of making improvements to its online retail experience. Store No. 8 will experiment with autonomous vehicle and drone delivery, virtual reality and personalized shopping. Last summer, Wal-Mart purchased Jet.com, an online retailer, for $3.3 billion in an effort to compete with Amazon, the dominant force in online shopping. Marc Lore, founder of Jet.com joined Wal-Mart's ecommerce team following the purchase.