Technology

The time has come: my college roommate is getting married. I’m extremely excited and happy for her and I have the honor of being a bridesmaid. The problem is I live in Philadelphia and she lives in Syracuse, N.Y. — a little over 250 miles away. That doesn't exactly lend itself to jumping in the car on a Saturday for a quick dress fitting. If only her selected bridesmaid dress was from Sears and we both lived in Canada ...

Retail giant Wal-Mart may not be known as a Silicon Valley tech company, but the world’s biggest retailer is investing in Silicon Valley-style innovation. The company’s tech shop @WalmartLabs, was formed from the acquisition last year of startup Kosmix, which monitored vast streams of social media data to help businesses track sentiment about products and brands. 

Lowe's plans to outfit employees with 42,000 iPhone 4s next month, with custom apps that will make use of the device as a point-of-sale system as part of a technology-heavy retail overhaul. The retailer will introduce a new MyLowes online tool and implement the iPhones in an effort to catch rival Home Depot, which invested more than $60 million on handheld Motorola POS system last year.

Not sure where you are right now, but unless it's Alaska or Antartica, you're probably somewhere where the air is hot and humid. (I know I am, as I write this column from my home office in Brooklyn, N.Y. in early July.) That's why I thought I'd take a look at some cool (get it, cool) retail technology trends I've heard about recently.

Listen in as David Wertheimer, CEO of Canopy, a business unit of web design and engineering firm Alexander Interactive that focuses on the online retail space, discusses the new programming language HTML5 and what it means for your business.

The retail industry is no stranger to technology. It's predicted that the biggest focus and greatest competitive advantage for U.S. retailers in 2011 will be related to retail technology. But technology that assists the sales process and robots that are an integral part of the retail experience are two different things.

Apple’s iPad is responsible for 1 percent of the world’s web traffic, as well as 2.1 percent of web traffic in the U.S., according to the latest numbers from NetMarketShare. Looking at earlier reports, the iPad’s share of web traffic has been steadily growing by 10 percent or more since March 2011. Looking at the overall market share of mobile and tablet devices compared to desktops, it reached 5 percent for the first time in June.

Best Buy recently entered its hat into the cloud arena by soft launching its Music Cloud service. The new service will go up against Amazon's Cloud Player, Google Music and Apple's iCloud, among other music cloud services.

Best Buy is expanding its 257-store Shopkick pilot to a nationwide endeavor. Patrons who have the mobile app open whenever they walk into one of the retailer's locations will earn reward points for items like gift cards, song downloads and flat-screen TVs.

J Vineyards & Winery has incorporated mobile barcodes onto its labels to educate consumers on the particular wine bottle they scan. The company decided to use mobile barcodes because of the growing number of smartphones in the market and to further engage its ever-changing tech-savvy consumers.