Microsoft and MediaCart prepping self-checkout carts, with RFID, video and grocery lists for good measure

We've heard plenty of these initiatives before, but with the likes of Microsoft pushing the tech, it might not be too long before we're all pushing a super-connected shopping cart down the aisle. Microsoft's aQuantive acquisition last year has the company looking to new ad venues, and apparently shopping carts are one of those. Microsoft has been working with a company called MediaCart which builds a cart-mounted computer that helps consumers navigate the store, and then checks them out when they're done. Microsoft wants to bring video ads into the mix, and the companies will start testing out the carts in ShopRite markets in the second half of 2008. Shoppers can bring their list to the store with a swipe of their loyalty card, and RFID tracks their movements around the store to pinpoint advertisements and other useful information. That's a whole lot of tech coming soon to a bum near you.

[Ed T @ Jan 14th 2008 10:10AM]

Oh great, now we'll have shopping carts with BSODs!

[Jm @ Jan 14th 2008 10:15AM]

OMG its my dream come true!!!!!

**faints**

[Raheem @ Jan 14th 2008 10:59AM]

BSOD? When was the last time you saw one of those Mr. Apple Fanboy? At least get with the times, it's bound to be the RROD!

[The General @ Jan 14th 2008 11:58AM]

Geez, who said anything about Apple? Linux folk hate BSoD too.

[Paul @ Jan 14th 2008 12:20PM]

I have had more BSoD equivalents on Linux than I have on windows. Just try and get multiple displays to work. Just try to install Linux on a computer that has a Nvidia 5500 FX video card (PCI). In fact, just screw with a couple config files trying to get it to display on your LCD with the correct resolution.

Oh, and on my laptop, I get a boot prompt, and if I hit enter to soon on it, there is a kernel Panic.

Now, on Windows the last time I got a blue screen of death was back trying to set up Windows Server 2000 and being a genius I tried to force install the wrong drivers for a sound card.

I cant speak for Mac but I use Ubuntu Linux and windows regularly and I have to say for everyday use I have gotten many more hard crashes out of linux than windows.

Now before you say, "blah blah shouldnt have screwed with config files blah blah" I want to point out that in windows YOU DONT HAVE TO SCREW WITH CONFIG FILES to get the same things done. I want dual monitors? check the little box "extend monitor to this screen" set my resolution and I am finished.

[ssuk @ Jan 14th 2008 1:15PM]

Obviously you haven't got the memo, they're purple now-a-day.

[Ty @ Jan 14th 2008 1:16PM]

IM IN UR CART LOGGING UR TASTES

[Jm @ Jan 14th 2008 10:10AM]

awsome.... but a little stupid..

[Lars @ Jan 14th 2008 2:39PM]

Stupid? ...or Scary?

"Thank you for using Big Brother automated checkout. We know everything you buy now, muahahaha! Erm.. to uh... custom tailor your next shopping experience of course... yeah that's it." >.> .>

[Sticky Fingers @ Jan 14th 2008 10:11AM]

Those displays are going to "walk away" so fast it'll make those store's carts spin!

[Reginald @ Jan 14th 2008 12:15PM]

There are already shopping carts with self-locking wheels that lock up once the cart has left the parking lot perimeter. I'm sure these carts will have something like that too. Afterall, they are RFID equipped.

If not, maybe I'll just take mine for a really long walk, like to my apartment.

[Paul @ Jan 14th 2008 12:23PM]

While the locked wheels would be an inconvenience I dont think it would really stop someone who wants that display. shopping cards are not exactly heavy, and if you really want it, drive it to the edge of the parking lot, have a truck parked over there, unload your groceries into the truck, throw the cart into the back of the truck, then drive off.

Alternately, the way I understand the carts work is a bit like an electric fence for a dog. I wonder if it is possible to life the cart up high enough to keep the wheels from locking.

[Dave @ Jan 14th 2008 2:31PM]

Why would you want to steal a smashed screen?
(I'm going to smash it)

[beanspants @ Jan 14th 2008 10:13AM]

i still say the fence at the front of the basket to corral 2 liters of cokes is the best shopping cart improvement in a really long time.

[iii @ Jan 14th 2008 10:13AM]

its not like those LCD have any values, we can just leave them sitting on parking lot for hours and hours..

[jjdupree @ Jan 14th 2008 10:15AM]

I doubt this will happen. I think several other initiatives like this never got support from stores or gorcers associations, because along with these comes maps of the store, and ways to direct you right to a product to get in and get out. Which is not the aim of a grocery store from the owners perspective. Its more like a casino in terms of trapping you in and forcing you to go up and down several aisles to find what you need. With the possiblilty that on the way there you might go past something you don't need but want anyway, and will buy it. This is the whole point of putting products on end caps and sometimes even moving things to weird places in the store.

[Erwos @ Jan 14th 2008 10:18AM]

I had this idea a while back - use RFID tags to mark items, and then just use a scanner to find everything nearby (aka, in the cart) and charge for it.

There are, unfortunately, some downsides - easy to use for fraud, and you run the risk of picking up tags of stuff you don't want. Still, cool idea.

[Boywithhair @ Jan 14th 2008 10:19AM]

those will get stolen the day they put those in stores

[ssuk @ Jan 14th 2008 1:18PM]

Any that aren't will be promptly vandalised.

[TVGenius @ Jan 14th 2008 10:30AM]

I'd like to see these tested here in the Arizona desert, where it's 120 in the shade (in the grass, let alone a sprawling Wal-Mart asphalt parking lot) and at any given time 80% of Wal-Mart's carts are abandoned in the parking lot because even the cart wranglers don't want to go outside. I give them about three days before they're broken.

[jjdupree @ Jan 14th 2008 10:53AM]

Haha, it is not just in the Arizona Desert where the Wal-Mart cart wranglers don't want to go outside. This happens here in the spring in Florida when it's 75 outside. Just lazy

[Fall-Apart @ Jan 14th 2008 1:08PM]

Forget the desert - in Canada we get -30C winters... no way the batteries for these screens will survive all winter.

[Boostjunkie @ Jan 14th 2008 10:34AM]

I love the comment at the end.

[paragraph @ Jan 14th 2008 10:42AM]

Acctaully, i've been "lucky" enough to try these out while i worked at a supermarket.

They do deliver RFID information, but it's not always right, and really it dosn't matter much.

The units will shut down when they go outside of the store (or wherver the range is, ours was literally 5 feet from the door)

The checkout thing dosn't work well at all. If it can find the item's barcode, the price was almost always wrong (we didn't have it hooked up to our POS, so we never used the feature anyway).

The one great thing was that there were stations where you could put your cart and it would play a little clip. Usually some sort of ad, but often it helped people decide on things while waiting in line at the butcher etc.

They were neat, but they did crash here and there, and one of them even got out of mediacart, but with the computer sealed up tight i couldn't get any input :(

They do need to make the equipment less intrusive, the carts are much smaller than normal carts, due to the extra crap, but also by design. That was the biggest complaint i ever heard.

[Pete @ Jan 14th 2008 10:53AM]

I hope they make these displays chew-proof, saliva-proof and fork-proof. These babies are in for quite a workout by the under-ten set, let alone when the carts leave the store and get left upside-down in a snowbank or smashed point-blank with chunks of asphalt. The supermarket chain near me once tried to attach security devices to the bottoms of carts, so they would lock up if taken away from the lot. The cost of repairing those boot-stomped, bat-thwacked carts was so prohibitive that the devices were pulled in less than two months. This idea might sound good in a boardroom presentation, but the maintainence and replacement costs out where the rubber meets the road deserve a second look. I don't want the price of my frozen peas to double because little Jonny pushed a cheesestick into the talking box of Cheerios on the screen.

[Parker @ Jan 14th 2008 11:03AM]

A bums dream!

[Jamus @ Jan 14th 2008 11:16AM]

Can you imagine how fast a 2yr old will wreak havoc with one of those things? Sure, they are supposed to sit in the top back part of the buggy, but with a TV right behind them there is no way they will sit still.

[vicferrari @ Jan 14th 2008 11:16AM]

ok so you know those things you wish you would have patient? this is mine, i was in the store one day cause i can never find anything and started to ask the people that worked there if this was a good idea i got mixed results..... but none the less this was my idea down to the map of the store and ads.

[Onetruebill @ Jan 14th 2008 1:04PM]

We will send you a royalty check as soon as you learn to speak english.

[vicferrari @ Jan 14th 2008 1:15PM]

;-) .... you don't have to be smart to be rich ... thats the american dream.

[ssuk @ Jan 14th 2008 1:19PM]

"you don't have to be smart to be rich"
Which is why Texans seem to dominate the patent office.

[Rick Roberts @ Jan 14th 2008 11:20AM]

I think it's an excellent idea. I've long wondered when a company would come up with a cart that would scan my items as I dropped them into the cart. No more standing in check-out lines listening to stupid girls talking on the f***ing cell phones. And no more dealing with cashiers with long disgusting purple fingernails. Yay!

[vicM @ Jan 14th 2008 11:32AM]

Well there is such thing as the "beginning" then with enough support the displays become thin (oled) and accurate with wide adoption of item-level RFID tagging. cant believe how many fans of tech are not supporting their own inevitable future.

[Galley @ Jan 14th 2008 11:40AM]

Bloom stores in the Southeast use handheld scanners. When you're done, you dock your scanner, swipe your credit card, and that's it!

[FThorn @ Jan 14th 2008 11:48AM]

Kroger had screens with specific ads/coupons/info based on your in-store location, about 13 years ago. They stopped it. People were crashing into one another. I liked it. They also had one HUGE revolving front door for these cars to enter/exit, too. Dropped that, too.

[jroc @ Jan 14th 2008 12:03PM]

I hate this rfid big brother crap! and I don't want a national ID card!

[bk @ Jan 14th 2008 12:56PM]

No kidding. Since it's being tracked, and 4 states are already going to RFID in state issued licenses, if you happen to buy fertilizer, petroleum jelly & candle wicks along with your Oreos and other groceries, you're going to have a NSA wiretap faster than you can say '4th Amendment.'

[Valgas @ Jan 14th 2008 12:57PM]

I see diabetes in someone's future.

[GrangerFX @ Jan 14th 2008 1:03PM]

That's great but can they figure out how to stop the shopping cart from pulling to the right and going bump, bump, bump when we push it?

[OnlyShawn @ Jan 14th 2008 1:14PM]

...a bit off topic...

...this comment thread is a great demonstration of why it is a good thing that private profit-seeking individuals have the opportunity to try out new things, vs. having the government/democracy determine what should be done. This may be a bad idea...it may not be....but at least we'll have a chance to try it out. The general person is going to think that every idea is a bad one. Interestingly, he's usually right, because most things fail, and he's always right a (vote-winning) majority of the time. However, he's always wrong about the ideas that succeed.

[BigD145 @ Jan 14th 2008 1:28PM]

The price of food in any store that implements this will rise by a good 10-20%. Most stores can't even keep the batteries in their LRT's from failing after four hours, so these things will fail constantly after about a year. They will be a nonstandard form factor and very expensive to buy new. No store will just go out and replace them.

[Fred Thompson @ Jan 14th 2008 3:24PM]

This looks like another example of over-enthusiastic computer geeks who don't understand the use environment.

Why are there close-circuit cameras in grocery stores? Why are there people to "help" at the self-checkout areas? Why do many of the self-checkout terminals say to give coupons to the attendant after they are scanned?

Shrinkage (theft) is a very real issue in grocery stores. Only a human being can tell if a coupon is fake, an item is mislabeled or not scanned.

This is a stupid idea.

[Baba Booey @ Jan 14th 2008 3:49PM]

We get that whole talk in the store I work at about shrink. Also btw I'm a student, not an under-educated adult.

[Towncivilian @ Jan 14th 2008 3:58PM]

Shit, this might make shoplifting a little bit harder.

[David @ Jan 14th 2008 6:32PM]

Hooray! Less eye contact all around!

[Z @ Jan 14th 2008 6:33PM]

Ugh... this is so stupid. More ads? Yeah, we need to be further inundated with yet even MORE ads. Can we go anywhere or see anything anymore without seeing an ad? I'm so sick of all this. If they eventually put these dumb things on carts, them I'm either gonna figure out ways to hack them, or I'm going to start carrying around a hammer and put a hole in the center of every screen I come into contact with. OK, not really, but it makes me feel like doing that.

Some ads in some places in life are fine, but enough is ENOUGH! The last thing I want to have to mess with when I'm shopping for food is having to deal with advertisements. Besides, when you have the products two feet in front of your FACE, that's already advertising, isn't it? Why would anyone need some stupid screen yammering in their ears about this and that?

These idiots who think we never want to be left alone for a single moment without ads are lunatics.

No wonder I love reading books so much... it's the only place left you can go to be informed, enlightened, and entertained withOUT ads.

I already do everything I can to boycott or ignore excessive amounts of ads:

- In the theatre, it's called "not looking at the screen while using my iPod, DS Lite, or WM Phone along with earbuds.
- With TV, it's called "only watching TV shows when they come out on DVD (no commercials), coupled with using the greatest buttons on my remote control (Next Chapter, FF, Menu, and for live TV - Channel and Mute).
- Online, it's called "using the Esc button to stop many of the moving/blinking ads, scrolling down when I can to avoid having to look at them, using Pop-Up Blocker software, and using the Mute button on my computer.

And barring all this, there is this thing called "the Power Button", to do what's called "turning things OFF, getting up, and going and doing something else, like reading, taking a walk, taking a nap, studying, pursuing hobbies, going for a drive, etc."

Meditation and quiet time is important to balance out all this ad nonsense.

[TOM @ Jan 14th 2008 9:42PM]

I guess in the future, no one will buy produce???