To stay competitive, Walmart and Target turn to startups for help

Ten startup teams are holed up in Minneapolis through next month to use a new retail-focused accelerator there to launch everything from voice-based search technology for retailers to interactive games that help kids learn STEM concepts. Their workspace is a typical startup bullpen — an open zone filled with things like boxes of food, Apple products, whiteboards with rows of Post-its and signs hanging from the ceiling that mark each startup’s turf.

Their host is none other than Target, which built an 8,000-square-foot space at its headquarters in the city for the inaugural accelerator it launched earlier this summer. Never mind that Target employs some 341,000 people and does more than $73 billion in sales a year — it also wants to try and bottle some innovation from scrappy startup entrepreneurs as it attempts to chart a path forward.

That’s as good a starting point as any in understanding a high-stakes shift in priorities underway at big legacy retailers like Target and Walmart. Indeed, they’re increasingly caught up in a Silicon Valley-style scramble for top talent like coders and engineers. They’re also launching and staffing up skunkworks labs and working with startups — all in an effort to slingshot themselves into the future.

Some of the ideas Target is pursuing include the accelerator it founded in partnership with Techstars, as well as its “Food + Future coLab” focused on food innovation.That effort was launched in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab and Ideo. The idea behind the lab is to bring together teams from each of those founding organizations to come up with big ideas related to food.

Target in recent weeks began testing a concept at one of its Boston stores that came out of the lab. Essentially, it allows people to scan fruits and vegetables to identify their nutritional value — and to pay for the item based on its freshness.

Walmart, in its own way, is racing toward the same goal.

Earlier this month, the retail giant said it would pay about $3 billion to buy e-commerce startup (and Amazon competitor) Jet.com. In recent weeks, the company also rolled out its Walmart Pay payment system to all of its US stores.

And while it’s not readily apparent from visiting any of its nearly 5,300 US locations, Walmart also has a San Francisco Bay Area outpost called WalmartLabs — a kind of skunkworks unit focused on the retailer’s digital products and services like Walmart Pay.

“We’ve got several new things in the works I can’t announce,” Walmart Chief Technology Officer Jeremy King told Engadget. “But let’s just say you’ll see us make it even more compelling to use your phone in the store.”

What it all amounts to is two of the biggest, most traditional retailers in the US looking West for inspiration. And their experimentation is certainly worth watching. It might fall flat, but there’s also a chance they could successfully infuse enough Silicon Valley-style innovation into their playbooks to reinvent themselves — and the retail experience — in the process.

In a way, they don’t have much choice. While the retail industry is eking out barely 1 percent growth, e-commerce is zipping along at 15 percent, according to the latest Deloitte Retail Volatility Index, published by the consulting firm Deloitte.

Target, which said earlier this year that it plans to spend more than $2 billion starting in 2017 on tech and supply-chain improvements, has been busy on several fronts to try and capture some fresh digital mojo.

The company is hiring staffers for a tech project codenamed “Goldfish” that will be housed out of Target’s Sunnyvale, California, office, which opened in 2014 to focus on things like online and mobile data analytics. A job posting for engineers is short on details but says, “We’re a brand new team, intent on changing the way people shop.” West Stringfellow, whom Target hired last year as its first entrepreneur-in-residence after stints at Amazon and PayPal, is behind the mystery project, though he’s staying put in Minneapolis.

Among the teams participating in Target’s accelerator is L.A.-based MakersKit, which provides DIY craft kits and instructional videos for all ages. Others include MakerBloks, a Montreal-based startup that creates interactive games and craft materials to help children learn about electronics, technology and STEM ideas; and ItsByU, a startup that provides kits for users to create their own wedding-flower arrangements.

The teams are going through 14 weeks of programming and mentorship from executives like Target’s chairman and CEO himself, Brian Cornell. According to the company, 50 percent of the startup teams have female cofounders, and two are international — one from Canada and one from Hong Kong. There are also a couple of family-run outfits, with a husband-and-wife team as well as a team of sisters.

“We’re looking first and foremost to help these startups,” said Stringfellow, who is now Target’s vice president of internal innovation and operations. “If there’s a symbiotic opportunity, great. If not, that’s OK, too. We’ll be learning from their discipline, focus, excitement and passion, and a second-order effect will be us taking some of that and applying it to our products and teams and practices.”

The approach to digital and innovation efforts at WalmartLabs is a little different.

The company’s division focusing on new technologies and digital products is keeping its roadmap mostly hidden. But it generally focuses on innovation that can be built into features across Walmart’s operation.

WalmartLabs’ Bay Area presence is split between Sunnyvale and San Bruno, where it shares a parking lot with Twitter. King says being there lets the division compete with big tech companies for engineering and coding talent. And according to King, at least, it wins that hiring race more often than not.

At the inaugural TAP Conference last year, WalmartLabs director of innovation Ojonimi Bako spelled out its basic M.O. — the unit has a degree of freedom to experiment, separate from the rest of the company. The best of these ideas could eventually be scaled across the company. The lab is also free to pursue its own acquisitions of other companies, of which there have been 15, King says.

Together, Walmart and Target’s respective approaches show how legacy retailers can compete in the digital age. And they’re not alone. Over in Europe, retailer John Lewis — which operates 46 shops across the UK as well as a web presence — has an accelerator program of its own, called the JLAB.

The five retail tech startups John Lewis selected for the latest round of the program are built around everything from programmable robots to advanced computer-visioning. They get access to mentors and capital. John Lewis, in turn, gets to learn from them in a way that could potentially help the 152-year-old retailer stay relevant in the 21st century.

There are plenty of other examples. Consumer-goods giant Unilever has a corporate accelerator called the Unilever Foundry. Disney and BMW also host their own startup incubators.

Efforts like these from the retailers might end up successfully connecting them with smaller, faster-moving companies. And those companies might have different skill sets and insights the bigger brands can tap to improve their own operations.

Or maybe not.

Walmart CTO King, for his part, says traditional retailers too often are content to just build what he calls “toy shops,” where “10 to 20 people form a group to maybe build an app or play with beacons.”

Indeed, after a few years of operation, upscale department store Nordstrom recently dismantled the tech-focused “innovation lab” it had set up six years before. Nordstrom spokesman Dan Evans told Engadget innovation is now required across the whole company, not just for one unit.

“We no longer have a specific innovation lab, as we folded the responsibility of innovation across our technology teams so that each group has a stake in how we innovate for the customer,” he said.

It’s an admission of how tough it is to get the balance right: to maintain the core of what you as a retailer do, while at the same time trying to figure out why the world is changing around you, and what you can do about it.

Kasey Lobaugh, chief retail innovation officer for Deloitte Consulting, says he’s seeing a growing number of retailers deciding to pursue one or both of these paths, launching so-called innovation labs, many of them in Silicon Valley, and setting up incubators or accelerators.

Those innovation labs, though, have “been of marginal success so far,” Lobaugh says. “Largely what those centers have done is focus on technologies to apply to the current business. Like, not changing the business model, just doing something like adding beacons so we can communicate with an app and maybe send the customer interesting marketing material while they’re shopping.

“The second thing retailers have started to do,” he continued, “is say, ‘Maybe we need to be more like a startup, maybe figure out ways to be around startups.’ And so they launch an incubator to figure out what they’re doing and maybe learn from them. I’d say the jury is still out on how successful that will be.”

To Walmart’s King’s point about “toy shops,” Lobaugh notes how Uber did a lot more “than just develop a mobile app and tack it onto a taxicab company.” And therein is the cautionary note for retailers who think innovation centers are some sort of magic bullet.

“The analogy I would use for what retailers are doing with their innovation centers — and this is painting with a broad brush — but they’re thinking about, ‘How can I tack a mobile app onto my taxicab company?” he said. “Instead of thinking about, ‘How can I use technology to recast my business to be able to compete in a very different environment?’”

Meanwhile, at Target, Walmart and many of their competitors, that’s exactly the work that’s happening now. Expect it to continue. The retailers are more open now to looking for new ideas in unexpected places. Even if that place is a small, tech-savvy startup that couldn’t be more removed from the world of big-box retail.

Images: Target (Innovation lab teams); Walmart (@WalmartLabs); Mike Blake / Reuters (storefront)

Unique ‘Celebration’ Apple-1 Sells for $815,000

A rare “Celebration” Apple-1 computer has fetched $815,000 in an auction hosted by charity auction site CharityBuzz, one of the highest prices an Apple-1 has sold for at auction. During the final minutes of the auction, bids reached $1.2 million, but it appears the last bid was pulled just seconds before the auction ended.

The “Celebration” Apple-1, so named by computer historian Corey Cohen, features a blank “green” PCB board that was never sold to the public and was not a part of a known production run.

The auction included an original Apple-1 ACI cassette board, pre-NTI, with Robinson Nugent sockets, a period correct power supply, an early Apple-1 BASIC cassette labeled and authenticated by original Apple employee Daniel Kottke, Apple-1 manuals, marketing materials, and Cassette Board schematics.

Unlike other Apple-1 computers that have fetched lower prices, the Celebration Apple-1 is not in working condition but could be restored to full functionality with minor tweaks. Cohen recommended against such restoration to preserve the board’s uniqueness. “The Apple-1 board is a not just a piece of history, but a piece of art,” he said.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak originally created and sold 175 Apple-1 computers during the summer of 1976, marking the launch of Apple computer, a company that’s grown to be one of the largest and most influential in the world. Of those 175 machines, only 60 or so are still in existence, making them quite valuable to collectors.

Several Apple-1 computers have surfaced at auction over the past few years, selling for prices between and $365,000 and $905,000.

10 percent of the proceeds from the CharityBuzz auction will benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Tags: Apple-1, CharityBuzz
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Where to buy the Honor 8 in the UK

A whole lot of phone for £369.

It’s official: the Honor 8 is coming to the UK, with a £369.99 SIM-free price tag. It’s launching first, unlocked and SIM-free, on Amazon, as well as Huawei’s vMall platform, along with free bundled goodies.

As for other retailers and carriers, we’ve got the first details on UK availability down below. It’s worth noting that for now, the only model available in the UK is the 32GB Honor 8, as opposed to the more expensive 64GB variant.

Amazon UK

Amazon is offering a free Fire TV Stick with Honor 8 purchases while stocks last. All three color options — black, blue and white — are priced at £369.99.

See at Amazon UK

vMall

The Huawei-branded ecommerce store has the Honor 8 for sale at the launch price of £369.90 in black, white and blue, with a free “anniversary package” worth £69.99 while stocks last. Buyers can pick between a combination of vouchers from Gameloft, Truecaller, Elec and Deezer, up to the value of £69.99. The first 2,000 Honor 8 customers get three free months of insurance on their new device.

See at vMall

Expansys

Expansys was named as one of the partners carrying the unlocked Honor 8, however there’s no mention of it on the retailer’s site just yet.

See Android phones at Expansys

Clove

Clove has the Honor 8 available to order in all three colors, priced £369.99.

See at Clove

Three

Honor has announced that three will exclusively carry the Honor 8 “in the coming weeks,” but there are no pricing details available at present.

See Android phones at Three

Picking up an Honor 8 in the UK? Still on the fence? Shout out in the comments and share your thoughts!

Best OBD2 car readers for Android

What’s the best OBDII reader for Android? Here’s a few to get you started!

Car repair can be costly (DUH) and that Check Engine light could mean myriad issues with your car. Or, it could be a simple fix that you could do yourself – so why take it to your dealer or mechanic without knowing the problem first? Some places will charge you $100 or more just for the scan.

Don’t get swindled again. Get yourself your very own Bluetooth OBDII reader/scanner and figure out what’s wrong with your car, right on your phone or tablet!

• BAFX Products 34t5
• Panlong Car Diagnostic scanner
• ScanTool OBDLink LX
• iSaddle Super Mini

BAFX Products 34t5

The BAFX Products 34t5 claims to work on all vehicles in the U.S. from 1996 or later, so chances are that if you’re driving, this will work with your vehicle. All you need is a third-party app (which range from free to rather expensive paid apps), and you can connect the 34t5 to your Android phone or tablet to read out diagnostic information.

While reading out diagnostic codes, you can even clear them out at will, thus turning off your check engine light – even for manufacturer-specific codes!

Depending on the third-party app your choose, you can get real-time sensor information right on your phone, life speed, balance rates, RPM, O2 readings, and lots more.

If you feel the need for speed, this reader will even send you ⅛, ¼, ½, and 1 mile times.

Don’t spend $100 just for someone to scan your car; spend about $22, read it yourself, and maybe you’ll even be able to fix it on your own!

See at Amazon

Panlong Car Diagnostic scanner

Panlong’s small OBDII scanner is perfect for the do-it-yourselfer on a budget – you can find these on Amazon for around $13.

This reader will work on any car sold in the U.S. from 1996 or later – it just might not work with some hybrids. All you need is a third-party app, like Torque or DashCommand and you’ll be able to read and clear trouble codes, while receiving real-time data readings – and you’ll be able to turn off that damn Check Engine light!

If inexpensively is the way you like to maintain your vehicle (who doesn’t?), then opt for the Veepeak Mini scanner.

See at Amazon

ScanTool OBDLink LX

The ScanTool OBDLink LX is a professional-grade OBDII reader that features its own app, which allows you to scan, read, and clear trouble codes in all cars sold in the U.S. since 1996 (except hybrid or electric vehicles).

All you have to do is plug it in, pair it with your phone, open the app, and you’ll see real-time diagnostic data, as well as information about performance.

You can even use your Windows PC to access and compile your information without ever having to see a mechanic. Fix the stuff you can fix yourself and only take it in when absolutely necessary.

Being a professional tool, the OBDLink LX claims to service a wider range of vehicles, given more complex algorithms, and the Amazon reviews seem to agree.

It may be about $50, but if you love your car and worry that the cheaper readers might not actually do the trick, then check out the OBDLink LX. $50 is better than the $100 the dealers will charge you!

See at Amazon

iSaddle Super Mini

The iSaddle Super Mini supports all OBDII protocols and works on just about every car sold in the U.S. since 1996 (except hybrid and electric), allowing you to diagnose what ails your vehicle to help determine whether or not it really needs a trip to the shop.

For Android users, iSaddle works exclusively with the Torque app feeding you diagnostics and performance data via Bluetooth.

If you’re unsure about the DYI approach to car repair, the iSaddle’s only about $12, so you really have nothing to lose if you want to try it out yourself. If you can fix the problem yourself, go for it, but you still have the option of taking it to your dealer or mechanic if you’re out of your element.

See at Amazon

What do you use?

Do you read your car or truck’s trouble codes with another scanner that we didn’t mention? Do you read your own codes or just take your car to the shop whenever the Check Engine light comes on?

Let us know in the comments below!

Your phone may never get Android 7.0, but does it really matter?

Unless you bought a phone from Google, it’s going to take a while to see Nougat — if you ever see it at all. But that doesn’t matter as much as you might think.

Android and updates seem like a mystery to many of us. If you’re not familiar with the way a big open-source software distribution works, it can get a little confusing trying to sort out who gets what version and when. Reading the things you see online often make it worse, too — we’re all talking about how Android 7.0 is here, and when phones will be updated, or if they will be at all. Then the obligatory comparisons to Apple’s iOS or Microsoft Windows (which are both a thing that is built and distributed as a whole) start and more confusion just happens. It’s nobody’s fault: most of us think about Android as a thing on its own, but it’s not. Since it’s the time of year for a whole new version, we get to start the process all over again.

Free as in beer

Nobody “owns” Android, and that’s why everything is so different. Android is, for all intents and purposes, a Linux distribution like Ubuntu. Google maintains the source code but they don’t turn it into a piece of software and hand it out. They get patches and additions from a bunch of qualified folks and make sure everything works as intended, then let anyone and everyone take it to do whatever they like with it. It’s important to understand what Android is, and how it gets distributed, when we think about the software on our phones.

You have two choices when it comes to operating system version updates — buy phones direct from Google, or waiting.

Two kinds of updates

Updates are important, but so is understanding how they work for Android. The important updates aren’t the ones you hear about on a stage somewhere, no matter what someone else wants you to believe. The ones that get put out every month by the Android team at Google or the Knox team at Samsung or whoever is in control of releasing maintenance and security patches for the Android distribution they custom-built for your phone. These are the patches that make sure your phone does exactly what it was promised to do when you bought it and does it securely.

The small monthly updates are the important ones.

Google does a pretty good job and keeping Android versions up to date. They may do a lot of other things poorly, but they are still pumping out software fixes as far back as Ice Cream Sandwich. They also make it easy to see what was patched, and how, in case you want to build it yourself on your customized version. That’s where the folks who make your phone come into the picture.

Google takes these patches and puts them into the version of Android they make for their own phones. Remember, even phones like the Nexus 6P need their own version of Android built. Samsung and HTC and Huawei and everyone else is free to do the same and build a small patch for the phone in your hands. Carriers can and will try to ruin the process, but with them out of the picture it really is this simple. Once you get it, you install it and there is absolutely nothing wrong with your Lollipop phone, or even with your KitKat phone. It works as advertised, and you’re generally safe from the nasty things you hear about malware unless you do something silly like trust people you shouldn’t when installing software from outside of Google Play.

New features

The other kind of update gets all the press and all the attention. They usually bring new features or change how things work, and people like me take the time to write about them. They are great updates (once they work the way they should) and they’re worth talking about. But those low-key monthly updates are far more important. You don’t buy a refrigerator or a golf cart because of the great things that will come next year, so you shouldn’t buy a phone for the great things that come next year. The things it does this year need to still work.

Because of the way Android is distributed, Google knows that 100 different phones may be running 100 different operating systems, but they all will be fully Android compatible — running Android at the core if you want to think of it that way. That means they can all run the same apps and access the same services, and if they use Google Play they are even more compatible with Android apps and services. While Google builds a custom version for their own phones, they also focus on making apps run better and do more of the things we usually think of as system features. Android is and always has been about apps and online services. It always will be.

You have two choices when it comes to Android version updates — phones direct from Google or waiting.

Enter Google Play Services. It’s a horrible solution for keeping more versions of Android compatible with each other when it comes to running apps, but it’s also the best solution. Google can not force any company to update a phone they built — Android is free to use, and as long as the phone met the standards required to run Google Play when it was built, it can run Google Play. Thinking Google can (or even wants to) yank permission to use their apps and store away from a manufacturer is silly. Stop thinking it. Instead, Google Play Services handles much of the behind-the-scenes stuff an app needs to run. Things like location services or security. Google can do whatever it takes to make Play Services compatible with most versions and update it independently from the operating system, and that’s exactly what they do. When you see Play Services eating up your battery, that’s because so many apps are using it.

Te reiterate — if your phone runs Lollipop and has the latest version of Play Services (and you would know if it doesn’t because you changed it yourself) do you really need Nougat? Your phone still does all the things it was supposed to do and can run almost every app available. Most app-based security is handled by Play Services as well. Combined with the latest Security Patch for the core system itself, your phone is fine and you should be happy using it.

Is Android N important?

Yep. Android 7.0 Nougat is a major update, even if the user-facing features don’t reflect it. Changes to the ways apps can run in the background, changes to the way updates are handled and changes to the overall security model are a major shift from what we have with Lollipop. Eventually, these changes will be required to run apps and use Google’s services. Think of it as Android’s Windows 7 moment — things look familiar, but everything you can’t see has been improved.

I want Nougat. That’s why I have a Nexus 6P. But I also know that any other phone on my desk that is current for its version of Android is still a fine phone and does what I need it to do. I’m fine waiting on Nougat for phones like my HTC 10 or my Galaxy S7 edge, as long as the monthly patches — the important updates — keep coming.

Android 7.0 Nougat

• Android 7.0 Nougat: Everything you need to know
• Will my phone get Android Nougat?
• All Android Nougat news
• How to manually update your Nexus
• Join the Discussion

SwiftKey says sync errors fixed in latest update

The now Microsoft-owned keyboard app for Android is still going through some growing pains.

SwiftKey had an issue arise in July with some users getting the predictions of other people, including names and email addresses. Today, SwiftKey has pushed out an update claiming the “sync service is fixed.”

SwiftKey disabled a number of syncing and prediction features in late July while they worked to fix the issue. While some features appear to be working again with the most recent update, it appears the sync service is still throwing errors at the moment. SwiftKey also acknowledges in the change log that email and number predictions are still turned off, so we’re not out of the woods just yet.

But we’re another step closer. If you account was affected, are you seeing your old library yet? Are you still seeing any extra languages? Tell us in the comments below!

Homeland Security is investigating the Leslie Jones hack

The Department of Homeland Security is looking into yesterday’s hack of actress Leslie Jones’ personal information and photos. Deadline reports DHS confirmed Thursday that its New York office has an open investigation into the attack, but the on-going investigation prohibited the release of any further information. Jones’ website was hacked and nude photos from her iCloud account were posted there along with images of her passport and driver’s license. This comes just weeks after the actress was attacked online following the premiere of the Ghostbusters reboot she starts in.

“ICE Homeland Security Investigations in New York does currently have an open investigation,” a Homeland Security spokesperson explained. “As a matter of agency policy, we are unable to disclose any information related to an active investigation.”

As Deadline notes, the involvement of DHS could suggest that the hack originated from outside of the US. It’s still early in the process and the forthcoming investigation should reveal more details on the matter. Jones briefly left Twitter earlier this summer following a coordinated attack by conservative writer Milo Yiannopoulos in response to the Ghostbusters film. Yiannopoulos was permanently banned from Twitter shortly after and one theory that made the rounds yesterday was that this hack was in retaliation for that ordeal. The Breitbart editor released a statement saying he was “distressed” to hear about the attack. “I know we had our differences after my review of Ghostbusters but I wish her all the best at what must be a deeply upsetting time,” he said.

This isn’t the first time celebrity iCloud accounts have been breached. Nearly two years ago, the so-called Celebgate saw personal and explicit photos of over 100 celebrities swiped and released on the internet. In that case, a Pennsylvania man used a phishing scheme to obtain usernames and passwords for both iCloud and Gmail over the course of about two years. Last month, a second man plead guilty to the same crime, which included accessing accounts of 30 celebs.

Source: Deadline