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With all the acclaim that Amazon.com receives for being an innovative, bleeding-edge technology company/online retailer, it may come as somewhat of a surprise that its workforce is primarily composed of white men. Without knowing any better, I would have thought that the online retail giant had a more diversified workforce.

The mobile payments app — which hasn't been officially released — was created for the sole purpose of getting stores away from credit card fees they pay every time you swipe your card. On Wednesday, those taking part in the CurrentC pilot program received a warning from the consortium of anti-credit card retailers called MCX, or Merchant Consumer Exchange: The program was hacked in the last 36 hours, and criminals managed to grab the email addresses of anyone who signed up for the program.

After accepting Apple Pay at all of its stores on Oct. 20 — Apple Pay's launch day — Rite Aid apparently stopped its support for the technology yesterday, according to a report yesterday in Mac Rumors.

Imagine spilling coffee on your way to a holiday party and needing a new shirt right away. Macy's has a solution: A quick Google search on your smartphone will tell you if that red sweater is stocked at a Macy's nearby, in your size, and at what price. Beginning in November, shoppers can search for an item on their phone and see what's stocked at their nearest Macy's location. Alongside the images are product details like price, size and color, directions to the store, and a link to the item on the retailer's website. 

Whether web designers or developers choose to optimize images — and how they choose to optimize them — has been a longstanding area of opinion and debate. Optimizing images so that they render more quickly in the user's browser should be a priority for every site owner. There are a number of image optimization techniques — ranging from basic to advanced — that site owners can leverage. Here are six:

These days, anyone can sell online and make significant profits. During the budding years of e-commerce, online selling was dominated by large retail corporations with the resources to sell (and ship) far and wide. But new technologies and platforms (think Etsy and Shopify) are giving independent e-tailers the resources, tools and momentum they need to push their bigger counterparts out of the way.

While the quest for faster shipping is an ongoing struggle for retailers and fulfillment companies, it's unlikely that drones or anticipatory shipping alone will be the key to faster deliveries. Instead, these services will be the gateway into a new shipping model — one that's customer centric, highly personalized and characterized by the following:

Google is expanding its delivery service and will start charging a membership fee, intensifying its battle with Amazon.com for consumer spending. Starting this week, Google will charge $10 a month, or $95 a year, for unlimited same-day or overnight delivery on orders over $15. Nonmembers will pay $4.99 an order, or $7.99 if the order costs less than $15. Until now, the deliveries had been free. The service, initially named Google Shopping Express but now known simply as Google Express, lets customers place orders online for products from physical stores run by retailers including Costco, Staples and Walgreens.

The launch of Apple Pay last month is a significant development in mobile payments, which is set to dramatically change the way that consumers shop in-store.

In September, Google made changes to its sitelinks search box, and some merchants are unhappy with the change. They say it's another way for Google to increase the money it makes from advertising. Google explains that with its sitelinks search box, people can reach the site owner's content more quickly from search results. For instance, if you want to find a video on Youtube, you might go to Google.com, enter a search for Youtube, click on the link, and then conduct the search on Youtube. The sitelinks search box removes that extra step.