MediaCart Does Everything But Carry Home The Shopping

MediaCart is coming soon to a supermarket near you. The next-gen shopping trolley has a host of features which are purported to help the shopper: a live, voice controlled guide to help you find what you are looking for (the cart uses WiFi triangulation to locate itself), a barcode scanner to both check prices and allow you to skip the checkout, and a slot for your loyalty card, effectively a log-in which will store your purchase history and preferences.

What it's really about, though, is advertising. Microsoft provides the software for the MediaCart, but tellingly the company is also handling advertising. In a fit of corporate doublespeak, Microsoft's Scott Ferris babbled:

[W]e’re continuing to push the envelope in the digital advertising realm to enable new and innovative ways for advertisers and agencies to create brand loyalty and engage with their target audiences in a highly relevant, measurable and targeted way.

The carts are coming to Britain within a year, and to US ShopRite stores soon. The real fun will start, though, when the hackers get ahold of the lithium-ion powered, Windows CE trolleys. There's something deliciously ironic about the idea of watching "Dawn of the Dead " on a shopping cart, in a mall.

Product page [MediaCart via Mail on Sunday]