Microsoft brings Ads to shopping carts

Posted By: Tina Wood | Jan 14th @ 8:42 AM

Okay, so you're at home and you grab a scrap piece of paper where you begin jotting down your grocery list. Eggs, Milk, Flax Seed, anti-aging cream and suddenly, out of nowhere, a giant gust of wind comes roaring through your house only to rip that grocery list you've worked so hard on right out of your hands and out of your three story window, blowing it on to the streets below to never to be seen or found again. Well never fear, grocery cart mounted consoles are here. Microsoft has teamed up with MediaCart Holdings Inc. to save you from the archaic form of scrap paper grocery lists by giving you the ability to type your shopping list into a designated website... I know crazy huh, it gets better. From there, you simply swipe your loyalty card on the MediaCart console at the grocery store and presto up comes your shopping list.

You can also scan your items and place them in your cart where the console will give you a running tally of your bill as it checks off items on your list. In case another giant gust of wind comes you don't have to worry about it blowing your calculator out of your hands either.

The system also uses radio-frequency identification to sense where the shopper's cart is in the store. The RFID data can not only help food makers understand shopping patterns, but the technology can also be used to send certain advertisements to people at certain points.

East Coasters not only get the Oscars before we do but they they will get to test the cart mounted consoles before us as well. ShopRite supermarkets will begin testing in the second half of 2008.

Tags: Seattle

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Comments (10)

Downloads

Bootstrap

She has returned!

Tina

Yes, she has! Beware! Smiley

jamiet

This would be even better if they enabled the ability to import a list from Listas (http://listas.labs.live.com)

-Jamie

Googleman81

*looks around for arztek*

mode101

I am glad you are back tina. I missed watching and reading your posts.

Arztek

Never fear, Arztek's here.

Is there anything that can't be done or incorporated online these days? I was gifted with a limited photographic memory, so I tend to memorize my grocery lists, but it's great to see how this technology could improve our shopping routines. Then again, big brother is always watching.

quikboy

Interesting concept. Though, I think Microsoft should focus more on other product platforms than small little 'ad' projects like this. It's not that important.

But at least it's a step ahead somewhere.

Bootstrap

Dengin

Don't necessarily agree with this. While the GUI-based OS is not something that was developed by Microsoft (I remember TOS), they took the concept and an OS represented with 'windows' is now a worldwide standard, and it changed the way people use computers worldwide. This could very well be the next 'Windows' and change the way people shop.

It could happen...