Part 2: “Our Immortality or Our Extinction”. When Artificial Intelligence gets superintelligent, it’s either going to be a dream or a nightmare for us.
Source: waitbutwhy.com
long read but good.
A self-driving Google delivery truck might be headed into your neighborhood in the near future.
Source: mashable.com
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Doorman Unveils Package Pickup & Shipping Service to Solve the Ordeal of Online Returns.
Source: www.prnewswire.com
Find out how business leaders will embrace automation not just to take advantage of digital change, but also to create competitive advantage
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
WePay, GoCardless and Openbucks are just a few companies offering payment services that are evolving with the online retail world.
Source: www.entrepreneur.com
Do you know what robots, Abe Vigoda, and the Internet of Things have in common? They’re are all part of the future of the retail customer experience, as you’ll learn in this discussion of what’s new and/or interesting in the retail customer experience landscape. This discussion features customer experience consultants Micah Solomon (that’s me, your author) […]
Source: www.forbes.com
In-store sensing starts to give bricks and mortar a leg up on clicks and mortar.
Made from stainless steel and hand built in northern Germany, the machines can be chilled or non-chilled. A variety of locker sizes are available, and users can set an individual price for each individual locker. There is a range of payment options – cash, debit cards, contactless cards. The machines can even give cash change if required.
Source: www.producebusinessuk.com
Drive-through stores next?
Perhaps the ultimate in retail vending styles has been proposed in Russia. Inventor Semenov Dahir Kurmanbievich has applied for a patent for a drive-through grocery supermarket. Watch his video on YouTube.
According to his patent application, the concept solves “the technical problem of improving the quality of customer service while providing maximum convenience and choice of products, reducing time to service customers, cutting the queue time and lowering the time and costs from commercial enterprises associated with the filling and layout of goods”.
He proposes a shop where consumers would drive up to an empty checkout bay, and (while remaining in their car) they reach across to a vertically rotating vending machine, operated by a button, to choose the required products.
Products would be placed on a conveyor belt and passed to the checkout operator who places them in bags. When the shopping is complete, the shopper simply drives up to the checkout, pays, takes the bags through the window and departs.
Of course, such a proposal is still very much in the planning stages – but the indications are that retail vending is definitely set to become more visible, as Dr Gaye concludes: “There are some brilliant ideas around the world. Vending is really going to come to the UK in a big way”.
Last summer, the two companies announced that Target would sell its 1,672 pharmacies to CVS for $1.9 billion, a deal that closed in December
Source: fortune.com
Smart Safe Case Study – how to protect your cash from employees.
Source: kioskindustry.org
Video case study. The hallmark of a smart safe is the inclusion of bill validators which count and validate that the currency is in fact good. The safe will sign a date timestamp to the transaction keeping track of which employee deposited the money and when they did. Basically eliminates the opportunity for internal cash theft.
From Yahoo Finance: CHATSWORTH, Calif., Feb. 02, 2016– Provision Holding, Inc. announced today December 2015 – Provision announces installation of 200 kiosks; Further, to kick off the year, in January 2016, we announced the shipment of an additional 250 kiosks for immediate installation.
Source: finance.yahoo.com
Update letter from Curt Thornton on Provision Holding.
