In this industry, it's a tired old cliche to say that we're building the future. The proliferation of personal computers, laptops, and cell phones has changed our lives, but by replacing or augmenting systems that were already in place. Email supplanted the post office; online shopping replaced the local department store; digital cameras and photo sharing sites such as Flickr pushed out film and bulky, hard-to-share photo albums. AI presents the possibility of changes that are fundamentally more radical: changes in how we work, how we interact with each other, how we police and govern ourselves. Fear of a mythical "evil AI" derived from reading too much SciFi won't help.

The U.S. has many rituals that define the progress of the year, some quite traditional like Christmas and Thanksgiving, and some with an air of shared ridiculousness like Black Friday. It is now a deep-seated American tradition to revel in the shared gluttony and community of Thanksgiving and then exercise those calories off the next day in the way we Americans know best - shopping! The term Black Friday comes from 1950's Philadelphia to describe the barely controlled chaos of thousands who poured into the city for the Army-Navy game the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Since the 80's, the world has changed, particularly in the world of retail, in which the shopper has changed as much as the shopping center, with technology playing a massive role in those changes. For example, in I the past couple of years, Big Data and Machine Learning have gone from being fringe technologies to must-haves.

Predictive maintenance is one of many appealing use cases for the Internet of Things (IoT). Using sensors to predict the health of a fleet of machines in the field can prevent down time without conducting unnecessary maintenance. Further, predictive maintenance allows for maintenance to be conducted at the most cost effective time. Allowing you to shift your operations from being reactive to proactive. Predictive maintenance has applications for the automotive, aerospace, health, and smart city industries, just to name a few.

It's hard to believe that Black Friday and the 2016 holiday shopping season are almost here. The good news for those of us shopping for personal consumer electronics and tech gadgets for friends and family this holiday season is that there are some real bargains. Tech innovation has improved dramatically over the last year and because of competition the pricing has come down significantly. This year, I've structured the holiday tech gift guide a little differently. I had the opportunity to review many products this year, but I've narrowed the guide down to my top 30 featured products -- from tablets and phones to cameras and drones. I'm also putting together a future gift guide of less costly tech items in categories like kids, health/fitness, home/security and audio so be on the lookout for that. Always remember to check online for the lowest current prices on these items as most will be discounted as we get closer to the holidays. Remember, Hanukkah begins on the evening of December 24 this year. The Surface Pro 4 is the perfect holiday gift for a loved one looking for a device for work or play -- especially for the student who doesn't want to schlep around a heavy computer laptop. Powered by an Intel Core processor, it offers up to nine hours of battery life. Paired with the $60 Surface Pen you can use it for detailed sketches and handwritten notes.

Artificial Intelligence is the buzzword of the year with immense anticipation and excitement attached to it, but also often a fear of the unknown. So much so, that tech behemoths Facebook, IBM, Google's parent company Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft recently announced a partnership to discuss AI best practices. While there are the science fiction-driven angles of AI, like robots, self-driving cars, Internet of Things, and augmented reality, there are also more practical applications that affect business owners every day, especially those working in the virtual customer service world of online retail. Gartner predicts that by 2020, 85% of interaction between customers and retailers will be through artificial intelligence customer service programs. Brands are rushing to build out their customer service approaches leveraging AI to create accurate product catalogs, fine-tuned search capabilities, and truly personalized online experiences.

Amazon Kindles are great gifts for kids. Starting today and extending through Cyber Monday (or until supplies last), Amazon is offering discounts on some of its devices through the certified refurbished store. Inside you'll find deals on the Amazon Echo, three versions of the Fire TV, and Kindle e-readers. If you don't mind the refurbished tag, this is the lowest price we've seen on the Echo so now's the time to snag one up. Especially as the list of compatible devices continues to grow every day.

To many, hoverboards may seem like last year's fad, but don't tell Walmart or Target. In revealing their respective Black Friday deals on Thursday, both major retailers announced deep discounts on theelectric-powered skateboards as part of their Thanksgiving night "doorbusters." It shows there is still life in the consumer product that looked like it might be a goner after a rough year. After being last year's holiday hit, schools and colleges banished them. Some were recalled after reports of fires and they were banned from airlines.

AI is rapidly becoming ubiquitous. From intelligent traffic signals to intelligent robots, and from Siri to Google Now, AI is all around us. But how can AI can improve the online customer experience? Ecommerce profits have gained huge profits in the last 15 years. There are still some online stores, however, which operate the same way they did years ago.

Are you a heavy user of Amazon's Prime services? Are you ready to jump into 4K streaming? Then the slightly older $99 Amazon Fire TV is probably your best bet. It streams UHD video just as well as the Roku 4, and more or less matches it in terms of content--from the big players, at least. The user interface is slick, and Amazon's Alexa voice assistant can go head to head with Siri.

Few industries are as competitive as ecommerce. Not only are online retailers competing with other online stores and brick-and-mortar locations, but also the overall noise that is the Internet. We live in a world where consumer attention span is getting shorter and shorter: 40 percent of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load, and the average shopping cart is abandoned more than 68 percent of the time. I'm hard pressed to find an ecommerce site that is not constantly scrambling to engage more and drive more sales. Technology is finally helping with those efforts in a big way.