Before blind pre-orders for the OnePlus 3 could even kick off, online retailer Oppomart is spoiling the fun. They've already gone live with a retail listing for the phone, potentially revealing the price and hardware specs ahead of the official reveal.

MailChimp expanded its email marketing technology platform this week with predictive intelligence, unveiling Product Recommendations Wednesday in a blog post. The platform, aimed at supporting small businesses, predicts which items a subscriber would most likely buy based on their past purchases and online behavior. Product recommendations are added as content blocks to the bottom of email marketing newsletters. Small businesses can personalize emails with items each subscriber will most likely buy, Neel Shivdasani, data scientist at MailChimp, wrote in a blog post. To access the new feature, MailChimp customers need to connect their online store to MailChimp so that the company can access product images, links and inventory amounts.

Amazon wowed the internet with its drone delivery project, a prototype drone that brought a small package right to a customer's door. This was the future of drones in retail, said Amazon, promising a universe where customers never had to set foot in a store. Now Wal-Mart, Amazon's erstwhile physical competitor, is getting in on the drone game, but they're not bothering with delivery at all. No, when Wal-Mart flies drones, as it plans to do in the next 6 to 9 months, it will fly them inside warehouses. To cut costs on labor, naturally.

Everyone from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to Bill Gates is talking artificial intelligence at Code Conference 2016. When he's not building electric cars or helping to create the idea for a high-speed transit system, Elon Musk really wants citizens of Earth to go to Mars. During a wide-ranging interview at The Code Conference, the CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX discussed everything from life on Mars to the possibility that life is just an elaborate computer simulation. This wouldn't be the first time Musk has shared some wildly ambitious ideas and thoughts. Let's break down the three most interesting things Musk shared during his Code talk: Musk predicts the first humans will travel to Mars eight years from now, arriving on the red planet by 2025. Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, with a goal of "enabling people to live on other planets," according to a description on the space tech company's website.

While Musk's description of an injectable human-computer link may sound like science fiction, top tech executives repeatedly said that artificial intelligence (AI) was on the verge of changing everyday life, during discussion at a conference by online publication Recode this week. It is no secret that tech companies are diving into AI analytics research, an industry that will grow to 70 billion by 2020 from just 8.2 billion in 2013, according to a Bank of America report citing IDC research. AI, which combs through large troves of raw data to predict outcomes and recognize patterns, is already used in web search systems, marketing recommendation functions and security and financial trading programs. The technology will spread to driverless cars and service robots in the future, the Bank of America report said. Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet Inc's Google, said he sees a "huge opportunity" in AI.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant "neural laces" in their brains to keep up, Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told a crowd of tech leaders this week. While Musk's description of an injectable human-computer link may sound like science fiction, top tech executives repeatedly said that artificial intelligence (AI) was on the verge of changing everyday life, during discussion at a conference by online publication Recode this week. It is no secret that tech companies are diving into AI analytics research, an industry that will grow to 70 billion by 2020 from just 8.2 billion in 2013, according to a Bank of America report citing IDC research. AI, which combs through large troves of raw data to predict outcomes and recognize patterns, is already used in web search systems, marketing recommendation functions and security and financial trading programs. The technology will spread to driverless cars and service robots in the future, the Bank of America report said.

Amazon has three big pillars: the retail marketplace, Amazon Prime, and Amazon Web Services. But there certainly would be room for a fourth pillar. It's possible that Amazon Studios, which is producing original video content for Prime Video, could be that fourth pillar, but it's also possible that the Alexa voice assistant, which is packaged inside of the Echo speaker, could end up being the fourth pillar, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos told Recode's Walt Mossberg today at Recode's Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Google revealed its own Echo competitor earlier this month, and Apple is also working on an answer to the Echo. But Bezos does not seem to be worried about that.

While Musk's description of an injectable human-computer link may sound like science fiction, top tech executives repeatedly said that artificial intelligence (AI) was on the verge of changing everyday life, during discussion at a conference by online publication Recode this week. It is no secret that tech companies are diving into AI analytics research, an industry that will grow to 70 billion by 2020 from just 8.2 billion in 2013, according to a Bank of America report citing IDC research. AI, which combs through large troves of raw data to predict outcomes and recognize patterns, is already used in web search systems, marketing recommendation functions and security and financial trading programs. The technology will spread to driverless cars and service robots in the future, the Bank of America report said. Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet Inc's Google, said he sees a "huge opportunity" in AI.

Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) playbook, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) is developing drones for their supply chain management. The company's VP of Emerging Sciences, Shekar Natarajan, showed off the big box retailer's new distribution center tech in Bentonville, Arkansas on Thursday. The main reasons to implement drones in distribution centers is to replace inventory quality assurance employees, while also cutting inventory checks from a month to one day. Also, with the use of drone technology, Wal-Mart can improve the safety of all of the U.S. distribution centers. As for how it works, the drones would be able to take 30 images per second from a mounted camera that is linked to a command center.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) said Thursday it was six to nine months from beginning to use drones to check warehouse inventories in the United States, taking a step closer to using the technology to compete better with rivals. In October 2015, the world's largest retailer applied to U.S. regulators for permission to test drones for home delivery, curbside pickup and checking warehouse inventories as it planned to use drones to fill and deliver online orders. Federal regulators are still considering rules for commercial operation of drones that would be involved in package delivery - viewed as the next frontier for big retailers such as Walmart and Amazon Inc (AMZN.O). Walmart's Vice President of Last Mile and Emerging Sciences Shekar Natarajan demonstrated the use of drones to reporters in one of the company's regional distribution centers. "We are still in early phases of testing and understanding how drones can be better used in different types of business functions," he said.