Microsoft, most notably the number one reason for increase spending on System Administrators and Help Desk staff is entering your supper market. They will be providing software that will have a Smart Shopping Cart with ads that will ‘help’ a consumer to ‘buy’ more things. This technology will use up-links from home PC, RFID technology and coupons. While this is an interesting concept, it is a prototype and just the tip of the ice-berg of things to come. As we get more wireless and screens get smaller the computer will invade every square inch of our everyday mundane life.

“Blue Screen of Death in Isle 5,” I can here over the loudspeaker as a service technician is called out from behind the freezers.

About ten years ago there was a company giving scanners to people to do self check-out, they were attached to carts and as the customer put the item in the cart they would scan it. Today we have self-check out in many stores fixed at the exit. These first prototypes help our direction towards the future where, ads are displayed on carts and a customer can easily access information about the store, a product and maybe one day have Britney Spears tell them how much she loves Eggo’s and don’t fogert to buy her new Album so she can pay alimony.

However we are stuck in the year 2008 where these silly things of computerized shopping carts are the wave of the future, we’ll have to stick with our talking GPS’s and wireless digital cameras. Who knows, by the time Microsoft gets out of the Beta for the product we will have an Apple Driod doing our grocery shopping for us.

Microsoft Smart Shopping Carts – VIA: Information Week