Digital technology is driving new forms of customer engagement that are rapidly eliminating the functional silos between online and offline retail channels. As a result many high street retailers are already experiencing falling footfall in their physical stores as customers increasingly switch to online competitors for better convenience, choice and prices. However, these bricks and mortar (B&M) businesses could use Liquid Big Data (cloud based analytics shared between partners, suppliers and potentially even competitors for their mutual benefit) to integrate the physical and digital customer experience into a unique, responsive personal customer journey online competitors can't imitate. So what might the Liquid Big Data Customer Experience be like for a global retailer selling ready to assemble home furniture, appliances and accessories for example? Traditionally high street retailers focus on their brand as source of differentiation to attract customers to their physical stores.

There's an Echo in Best Buy (and in a quantity greater than one). Tech Times reports that Amazon Echo, the voice-enabled, at-home assistant (whose own voice has a name, of course, and that name is Alexa), has made its way to Best Buy shelves (as well as to the retailer's website). It's been a bit of a long wait for Amazon Echo to connect with the major tech retailer, especially considering that the popular robo-helper has been available from chains, including Staples, Home Depot, Sears and others, going back to the winter holidays. According to Best Buy's website (as Tech Times points out), it is offering the device at the same price point as Amazon itself does -- 179.99 -- with quantities in stock and ready to ship in a day or two. So, any Best Buy loyalists who had been holding out until their preferred chain could avail them of the opportunity to ask Alexa to order them a pizza or a ride (to name just two of Amazon Echo's growing list of capabilities) can, at long last, do so. As for Amazon Echo's sibling products -- the battery-powered, portable Amazon Tap and the Echo Dot, a bridge device that connects to Amazon's web of services -- Tech Times reports that the Tap is expected to hit Best Buy stores (and site) later this month, while no such timeline has been announced for the Dot as of yet.

If artificial intelligence has its way, discounting could disappear, thanks to software that tells retailers exactly what and how many products to buy, and when to put them on sale to sell them at full price. Online shopping could become a conversation, where the shopper describes the dress of their dreams, and, in seconds, an AI-powered search engine tracks down the closest match. Designers, merchandisers and buyers could all work alongside AI, to predict what customers want to wear, before they even know themselves. In the last few years, a trifecta of cheap, ubiquitous, powerful computing; big data; and the development of deep learning have triggered a revolution in artificial intelligence. The computing devices that now fill our everyday lives generate large data sets, which "deep learning" algorithms analyse to find trends, make predictions and perform specific tasks, such as identifying specific objects in an image.

Amazon's acquisition of the robotics company Kiva Systems in 2012 has helped the retail giant efficiently ship almost any product on earth to just about anyone. But those robots are pretty good stagehands as well.

TROISDORF, Germany (Reuters) - Germany's Deutsche Post is testing robots that could help postal workers cope with increasing numbers of parcels on their delivery rounds, a company manager said on Thursday. The volume of parcels being delivered by Deutsche Post in Germany is rising steadily as more and more Germans buy goods online from retailers such as Amazon.com That is making up for declining letter volumes, but posing problems due to the larger size of items involved. "Robots could be used in deliveries in three to five years' time," Clemens Beckmann, head of innovation at the group's parcel and letter division, said in an interview with Reuters. The robots, which look like a table on wheels on which goods can be placed, would follow delivery workers, helping them to transport and carry heavy parcels. If the postie stops walking, the robot stops too, and it only starts again when they move on.

If its first quarter is anything to go by, 2016 may be shaping up historically as the 1491 of space discovery. The month preceding Valentine's Day alone provided what would once have been a year's worth of cosmic news. Blue Origin, the aerospace company owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, took one giant leap toward a new Age of Discovery by relaunching and landing a rocket that had already made a round-trip journey through the stratosphere – a revolutionary moment in private space exploration. A pair of researchers kicked off a frenzied planet hunt by demonstrating that a massive, heretofore undetected planet could be lurking on the outer edge of our solar system. Cosmologist Stephen Hawking suggested that unforeseen effects of rapid scientific progress might, paradoxically, cause the extinction of life on Earth in the next thousand years or so, adding, "By that time, we should have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race." And scientists announced they'd detected gravitational waves, evidence of a billion-year-old collision between black holes, thus confirming the final and most obscure principle of Einstein's theory of relativity – and opening a window that may soon offer a glimpse of the universe's very creation.

Amazon.com Inc. acquired artificial-intelligence startup Orbeus Inc. last fall, sources told Bloomberg, though neither company has announced the deal and wouldn't comment. Orbeus offers artificial intelligence-powered photo-recognition technology called ReKognition that automatically identifies and categorizes photo content. Other companies are making similar moves to acquire AI startups: Apple acquired facial-recognition company Emotient Inc. in January and Salesforce Monday said it had acquired image-recognition startup MetaMind. Amazon's Web Services (AWS) cloud-computing unit is widely seen as supporting its retail profits, which have lagged behind costs. Amazon's net sales grew 21.7% to 35.75 billion in the fourth quarter, compared to sales from AWS that increased 69.4% to 2.41 billion.

Amazon.com Inc., the largest internet retailer in the world, has acquired Artificial Intelligence-based deep learning startup Orbeus Inc. The acquisition underlines the effort made by Amazon to dig deeper into the world of smart software for its businesses in the cloud computing and connected devices spheres. This development was revealed by an Amazon insider who chose to remain anonymous as the company is yet make an official statement about the acquisition. Amazon's CEO Yi Li and other representatives of the company have not commented on the matter either. However, online search has disclosed that the domain name of Orbeus, Orbe.us, is registered in the name of Amazon Hostmaster, which is a part of Amazon technologies Inc., an Amazon subsidiary.

Messaging app Kik has launched an online store for chatbots, to allow brands to talk to users via bots. Chatbots - computer programs designed to simulate conversation with humans - are increasingly being seen as a key way to engage customers.

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) completed a discrete acquisition, last fall, when it took over Sunnyvale California-based artificial-intelligence (AI) startup Orbeus Inc. Bloomberg cites sources that claim that Amazon has absorbed almost all of Orbeus' workforce in its own teams though the financial terms of the acquisition deal remain undisclosed. Orbeus is known for applying machine-learning tools on image processing. Prior to its takeover by Amazon, Orbeus had an AI tool under development that could use neural networks to identify, and categorize the content in various images. Its customers were mostly developers, who could purchase its image-processing application programming interface (API) called, ReKognition. The startup also designed an Android and iOS app called, PhotoTime which helps tag photos instantly.