Walmart was sued July 25 by a California advocacy group for the disabled, who complained that the retail giant isn't meeting federal or state laws because its PIN pads are too high for customers in wheelchairs to use.
On July 17, a wide range of third-party products on Amazon showed special pricing: one cent. The pricing glitch was, yet again, caused by some third-party integration and a coding error.
How much is that doggie in the window? For internet users, the answer may soon be, "It depends on who you are, and how much I know about you." And this trend may upset a host of laws concerning deceptive trade practices, fair pricing and even contract, trespass and computer crime laws.
Just when you thought cloud computing couldn't get any more complicated and fraught with hidden gotchas, the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue has jumped in to sprinkle taxation magic on your cloud business cases. What the Keystone State did - and other states are likely to follow - doesn't make cloud any less profitable, but the specifics of the cloud deployment could now impact tax costs.
Flashy customer-facing technology is fine, but it's nice to see a retailer giving employees something shiny to look at, too. U.K. online grocer Ocado is now using what looks like a 3D animated video game to give managers a better view of highly automated warehouse operations.
The Big Data space is filled with so many posers, fakers and wannabes, it's ridiculous. Everybody is trying to catch the Big Data wave by getting their name attached to this hot new trend.
Buy low, sell high. Pretty simple. But a case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court tests whether manufacturers can prevent retailers from buying their products for the lowest price simply by, for example, printing the labels for the products outside the United States.
When IBM announced it was selling its entire POS business to Toshiba TEC for $850m, it was arguably the most explicit sign yet that the retail POS hardware business is on its last legs. Not IBM's POS business, but retail POS activity in general.
When Amazon announced its $775m cash deal to buy Kiva, a robot automation fulfillment center player, it put many of its existing retail clients in a bind. This includes current Kiva clients - Walgreens and Saks, among others - plus other recent (and possibly current) customers, such as Gap, Crate & Barrel, Staples, Dillard's, Toys 'R' Us and Office Depot.
If a customer slips and falls in a large box store and then decides to sue the store, it would certainly be appropriate for the retailer to examine the videotapes relating to the slip and fall, see whether the customer did - in fact - fall, observe how that person was behaving before the fall and afterward, and determine what the condition of the floor was at the time of the incident.
