The shape-shifting robot mannequin, previously only available with a male physique, now comes in female form too. Score one for robot gender equality. The robot is part of a virtual fitting room service for online retailers created by Estonian start-up Fits.me. Customers shopping for clothes at a participating site enter their measurements online (height, chest, arm length, torso, and so on), then see photos of a real-life mannequin shaped just like them (only headless) "trying on" items in various sizes and styles. To be clear, shoppers are not watching the robot try on clothes in real time. When a retailer signs up for the service, Fits.me snaps pictures of the bot trying on the garb in the shop's inventory and stores those photos in an online database that shoppers access later.

Wal-Mart is launching its first iPad app and is refreshing its iPhone app just in time for the holidays. Both applications will enable consumers to shop online or see what's available locally. Orders can be shipped or picked up. The apps are being released ahead of the end-of-the-year shopping frenzy, which many retailers are hoping will be one of the busiest mobile commerce events ever. "As customers use more smartphones and tablets, the Wal-Mart customer is doing the same thing," said Gibu Thomas, the company's SVP of mobile and digital.

A list of transactions from a grocery store is shown in the figure above. Frequent items are a list of items that commonly appear together. One example is {wine, diapers, soy milk}. From the data set we can also find an association rule such as diapers - wine. This means that if someone buys diapers, there is a good chance they will buy wine. With the frequent item sets and association rules retailers have a much better understanding of their customers. Although common examples of association rulea are from the retail industry, it can be applied to a number of other categories, such as web site traffic, medicine, etc. How do we define these so called relationships? Who defines what is interesting? When we are looking for frequent item sets or association rules, we must look two parameters that defines its relevance. The support of an itemset, which is defined as the percentage of the data set which containts this itemset.

Cognitive computing is rapidly infusing every aspect of our lives. As 2017 approaches, the cognitive revolution--riding on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and data science -- is coming home to roost more rapidly than many realize. Here are my predictions for the many ways in which you may encounter cognitive technology. Most e-commerce applications now include in-line chatbots that pop out automatically and/or at your request to answer your questions, recommend products for you to purchase, and otherwise make your customer experience more seamless and satisfying. Behind the natural-language conversational interface are cognitive algorithms that are built and tuned by data scientists through real-world experiments, A/B tests, machine learning, and predictive analytics assets in line to merchants' applications.

Many retailers continue to struggle to keep up with the disruptions that digital natives have brought to the industry. Companies such as Amazon introduced recommendation engines and rating systems. And in the last decade, the iPhone and Android mobile devices have put even more power into consumers' pockets. Shoppers can be in one physical retail location and search for a better deal elsewhere using their smart phones. The world is shifting underneath retailers' feet.

Virtual reality and artificial intelligence products took center stage at this year's International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the platform where the world's trends in scientific and technological innovations are put on display, with companies from China, which accounted for one third of the leading exhibitors at the event, visibly demonstrating their newfound stature. Suning also hosted the "China Innovation North America Summit Forum", giving 3C (computers, communications and consumer electronics) home appliance makers around the world a presentation on how to fast track their products into the Chinese market. The organizer of the exhibition was extremely complimentary in his comments about Suning. In a chat with Suning's exhibition team, Consumer Technology Association president and CEO Gary Shapiro said CES is a platform that connects all the participants in the world of high tech, while Suning is an important sales platform for innovative technological products and services, and, as a result of the role that Suning plays, he looks forward to seeing further cooperation between the two parties. Executive vice president of IT at Suning Commerce Joshua Xiang explained: "With the success of its transition to e-commerce, Suning plans to introduce intelligence into the retail industry as a new driving force for the further development of online retail".

Technology is the future of retail. Digital data, machine learning, cloud-powered analytics and the Internet of Things will separate the wheat from the chaff in tomorrow's retail industry. A recent Sector Insights government report said that retailers will need to embrace the latest technology trends, such as big data, and have the skills to work with digital systems if they are to be successful in the future. The retail industry is on the whole a voracious adopter of modern data-centric technology, aping the manufacturing world by using big data analytics to streamline supply chains, and using smartphone apps and wireless beacons to harvest customer data to deliver better service. However, despite having the technology to collect and access large amounts of digital data, retailers fail to put it to effective use.

Virtual reality and artificial intelligence products took center stage at this year's International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the platform where the world's trends in scientific and technological innovations are put on display, with companies from China, which accounted for one third of the leading exhibitors at the event, visibly demonstrating their newfound stature. Suning also hosted the "China Innovation North America Summit Forum", giving 3C (computers, communications and consumer electronics) home appliance makers around the world a presentation on how to fast track their products into the Chinese market. The organizer of the exhibition was extremely complimentary in his comments about Suning. In a chat with Suning's exhibition team, Consumer Technology Association president and CEO Gary Shapiro said CES is a platform that connects all the participants in the world of high tech, while Suning is an important sales platform for innovative technological products and services, and, as a result of the role that Suning plays, he looks forward to seeing further cooperation between the two parties. Executive vice president of IT at Suning Commerce Joshua Xiang explained: "With the success of its transition to e-commerce, Suning plans to introduce intelligence into the retail industry as a new driving force for the further development of online retail".

Summary: In this review of Mary Meeker's annual Internet Trends report for 2016 we'll look for the advanced analytics that makes these trends possible. It's that time of year again when Mary Meeker, the great seer of the internet once again releases her annual Internet Trends 2016 report. If by chance you don't know who Ms. Meeker is she is a partner in the VC firm Kliener Perkins and is acclaimed by Forbes to be the 77th most powerful woman in the world. She started issuing these reports in 1995 at Morgan Stanley and was and is still widely regarded as a guru of the internet. Say what you will, and she is a bit of controversial character, she gathers and analyzes voluminous amounts of data and has a well deserved track record for spotting big picture trends before they are widely recognized.

Will skills be as vibrant as apps?