UI Concept for Sharing Files between Devices - Check out this User Interface concept.  While this example is to move an article from one device to another, why not consider an interface like this for a digital wallet?  It would be far more intuitive for a virtual cash register to show on a tablet, and a wallet on a mobile.  The cash register ‘sees’ a customer’s mobile wallet and they can ‘slide’ some virtual cash onto the cash register.  It seems over the top, but it’s increasingly achievable.  Using a visual interface that provides a bridge from the physical interaction of today to the virtual transaction of tomorrow can add a cool factor that could drive mobile payments more than what we see today.

Projected Interactive Retail Display – We’ve all seen how Microsoft Surface is able to react to physical objects.  Perch Interactive has put together a projected display to interact with physical objects in a store – translating the experience to one that online shoppers, and one would assume the millennial types, will understand, recognize, and enjoy.  This appears to be an incredible way to provide product information and recommendations to clients.  This should work particularly well in the low light environments of Abercrombie and Fitch type environments.

Ikea Canada recently released a new shopping app for iOS to complement their current catalog app.  The app has the quirky and fun look and feel that Ikea always uses to great effect on the mobile app.

The start screen shows a number of offers.  Touch them for more details, and then be directed to applicable product.

There is also a great product lookup sorted by area that is simple to navigate and very responsive.  Products can be added to a shopping list that keeps individual prices and a cumulative total to plan your shopping trip.

My favourite aspect of the app is that when you touch an item you can see the availability of the item by location by selecting the store and even better, it tells you exactly where the item is located in store by aisle and location.

Given the size of the average Canadian Ikea store, this is a wonderful service to save time and walking!  The app wisely reminds you of the time that you checked the inventory and has a refresh button right on the page.  What a thoughtful idea.

The app provides all details on all sites, including a direct link to maps to allow users to enter their home address and get driving directions.  The app also has some direct links to useful and important information such as catalogs and product recalls.  All of the images and text are laid out in a manner very easy on the eyes in what one assumes to be a bid to make it easy to use while navigating the friendly Ikea maze.

While there is nothing here that is earth shattering, this is a well thought out and simple to use app that is appears easy to use in store.

Lowe’s Canada put out something a bit more creative last week.  In partnership with LG and Red Piston, Lowe’s Canada released an iOS and Apple App to provide an augmented reality experience with a recently released advertisement.

Users who download the Lowes Virtual Experience app to their iOS or Android device can see and interact with a a 3 dimensional virtual refrigerator, washing machine, or dryer in real time on the display of their screen as an overlay of the camera view in their current environment.

Users place the ad (you can download a copy of the ad here) on a counter top with good lighting – preferably at waist height.  With the app open, the greater part of the window displays the view from the camera.  When the User points the camera at the flyer on the counter a 3 dimensional rendering of the product associated with the ad will be shown above the ad on the screen as an overlay to the camera view.

Users can tap on small blue icons to open the doors of  the appliances.  The doors are animated to open as though the unit is really sitting on the counter in your environment.   Small green icons provide useful commentary on the benefits of the product.   If users walk around the ad, or rotate it without blocking the image on the ad, all sides of the product can examined in excellent detail.

While the app only has a couple of products to examine for the present, it’s a very clever use of augmented reality.  The app provides a big wow factor for those to whom I have shown it, and almost all feedback has been positive, saying what an interesting, novel and useful solution it is.

For those of you in Canada, be sure to download the app and the ad and give it a try. Let me know your thoughts on it!

The past number of months has seen an unprecedented change in the physical composition of Canadian Currency.  I have spent many hours over the past weeks and months discussing new physical currency, and I’ve not seen a single resource of detailed information on this subject anywhere.

For the greater good of Canadians trying to navigate the various changes, here is an overview of all of the changes and what retailers need to consider.

A large part of the challenge in navigating these changes is that there is no single body responsible for all of these changes together.  The Bank of Canada is responsible for design, production and distribution of Canada’s paper currency.  The Royal Canadian Mint is responsible for minting Canada’s circulation coins.  As far as the decision to eliminate the penny, the Governor of the Bank of Canada works with Canada’s Minister of Finance on monetary policy.

To provide a simple straightforward overview, all of the changes that have occurred and are planned to occur to Canada’s notes and coins are highlighted in the chart above.   Note that these dates are based on publicly available information as of April 30, 2012 and are subject to change as per the Bank of Canada and the Royal Canadian Mint.  Ensure you consult their sites to validate if any changes have occurred.

Note Changes 

To enhance security and provide more durable currency, Canada has a plan to replace all paper based currency with polymer notes.  Two out of five replacement circulation notes have been released so far, and the other three notes will be replaced in the next year or so.

Key changes include a change to polymer from paper, as well a transparent window down the side, a maple leaf with a clear border, and various other security features.  The notes are obviously physically different though they are physically the same size.

For full details on the changes to notes, I recommend the following links:

Bank of Canada – Bank Notes

Bank of Canada Polymer Notes Retailer Resources

Bank of Canada – Checking Notes

As per the notes in the Bank of Canada website, retailers and all consumer facing organizations that handle cash should ensure staff are prepared to accept the new notes.  Ensure that they are  aware of the security features of the new series.  Retailers should also ensure that any cash handling equipment is able to handle the new polymer notes.  While they are the same size and most cash drawers will not require any changes, there are many technology solutions in place that are more sophisticated and they may require changes to handle the new notes.

Retailers should be certain to contact solution providers to validate if changes are required to any equipment.

Coin Changes

As part of cost reduction initiative, $1 and $2 coins were changed to steel composition from nickel this April.  The new coins are physically the same size as the previous releases, but are noticeably lighter compared to older coins.  While I’ve not actually weighed the coins and compared them on a sensitive scale, this change may impact weight based coin counting.  The new coins have distinctive maple leaves stamped into them so that they are easily recognized as steel based coins.  Canada 2 Dollars is also stamped around the outside diameter of the $2 coins.

For full details on the changes to the $1 and $2 coins, I recommend the following link:

Royal Canadian Mint – New $1 and $2 coins

Retailers should also ensure that any cash handling equipment is able to handle the new coins.  While they are the same size and thickness and most cash drawers will not require any changes, there are many technology solutions in place that are more sophisticated and they may require changes to handle the new coins.

Retailers should be certain to contact solution providers to validate if changes are required to any equipment.

Canada Penny Elimination

As part of the 2012 Canada Federal Budget, it was made public that the penny will be discontinued in 2012 based on their declining utility and a cost of production that exceeded value.  The coins are no longer being minted as of April 2012, and the Government of Canada has indicated that Financial Institutions will no longer distribute pennies as of Fall 2012.

Canada will use a rounding strategy like those used in Australia, New Zealand and Sweden to make the change.  All cash transactions will be rounded to the nearest nickel after applicable taxes.  Transactions ending in .01 and .02 will round to .00.  Transactions ending in .03 and .04 will round to .05.  Transactions ending in .06 and .07 will round to .05.  Transactions ending in .08 and .09 will round to .10.

Debit and credit based transactions will still be rounded to .01.

For full details on the changes to the $1 and $2 coins, I recommend the following links:

Budget 2012 – Eliminating the Penny

Fact Sheet and FAQ – Businesses

Fact Sheet and FAQs – Rounding

The Penny Elimination project represents some interesting challenges to retailers.  With the rather vague deadline of Fall 2012, it’s unclear when the new rounding process should be implemented.  I expect the Retail Council of Canada to call for some additional clarity around the timing as fall 2012 approaches.  I encourage retailers to voice these or any other concerns to the RCC.

While the government documentation notes that there are no changes required to cash registers, and that is technically true, there will be some work required.  Large scale retailers are unlikely to leave the rounding in the hands of store staff, and change calculations should be rounded based on tender.  There will also be changes required to self service solutions like ticketing kiosks and self-checkouts to accommodate the logic changes to transactions.

Retailers should be certain to contact their solution providers to validate what changes are required and to get a plan in place to time the change.

GPS to Table

When you place your order in a casual dining situation – like Panera – you receive a coaster with a number on it.  You find a place to sit and place the coaster on the table.  As your order becomes available, a server can see on restaurant floor plan exactly what table you are sitting at.  The coaster recognizes the RFID tag under your table and identifies your placement on a floor layout map in the back of the store.

What a useful solution we didn’t know we needed!  Now we just have to watch out for those people that like moving tables around in restaurants – they may take your salad.

Virtual Sunglass Changeroom – Adding to the difference between those $5 sunlasses and their more costly brethren, Bloomingdales have added a wrinkle to their sunglasses window shopping experience.  Taking the Virtual Mirror experience highlighted in 2010 to the street, customers walking by the store can look at images of themselves in a monitor with the sunglasses on their face in either front or side perspectives.    If they like them, they can select a button which saves a picture of them wearing the shades to the sunglass bar inside where a sales person can assist them.

Learning from Music and eBooks – Starting this month, Marvel comics will be releasing all of their new releases digitally coincidental with the release of the physical comic book.  Seems like the lessons of the music, movie and digital readers have not been overlooked by Marvel Comics.  Hopefully other content providers are wise enough to embrace new technology and make it a winning situation for all as Marvel appears to have done and avoid “the Internet”  doing it for them – to the detriment of their business.

Scan and Ship – Looks like the HomePlus experiment of scanning virtual shelves to populate a shopping cart on the mobile has started a bit of a trend.  Well.ca did the same thing in Canada, Giant in the US and others have been giving it a try as well.  It’s a simple extension of current technology and has a low barrier to entry, so why not?  Smart phones are increasingly common, there is some novelty to it, and most everyone is now comfortable with online purchases.  Sounds obvious, but this wasn’t always the case.

Phone Booth 2.0 – It seems NYC is experimenting with touchscreen kiosks in former phone booths.  Once again, why not?  It’s a good use of current space.  The phone booths provide some infrastructure needed for a kiosk or digital signage implementation – a metal frame with some weatherproofing, connectivity and proximity to a large base of potential users and viewers.  The offering is at no cost to the city, and presumably would be paid for by advertisements and chargeable services.

Biometric ATMs – NCR offered iris scan solutions some years ago but it never caught on; ahead of its time perhaps.  A Japanese bank is experimenting with ATMs that use palm readers to identify users.   In the past, I would have a lot of questions on the potential value and concerns around privacy.

Customers today are increasingly interested lightening their wallet and not having to remember to carry a card.  Millennials are more confident with technology and are willing to try something for the fun factor.  Corporations are always interested in providing the appearance of being forward thinking and tech savvy.  The Japanese are used to using a mobile to interface with an ATM, so perhaps this is a natural progression.

Wayfinding – It’s easy to forget a time we didn’t have google maps and cheap and easy to use GPS units, as they have become so embedded in our lives.  Taking that ease of direction into buildings – like malls or stores has ever been the elusive last mile.  Wayfinding projects in store are challenging because of the constantly shifting nature of retail.  As displays and stores are constantly rearranged, even if someone sets up a kiosk to find items in the store, it is either wrong, or requires constant updating – a challenging effort that rarely seems to reward the work required.  Perhaps the first step towards crossing this mile comes is a tool from Google.  Google is offering Google Maps Floor Plans to start to map out the indoors.  While it doesn’t get products in place, it does begin to provide some help in larger venues.

I’d like to think that at some point Electronic Shelf Label could have a unique id on them that could be shared with a mobile device that would allow the user to find an item based on the location of the ESL.

As someone who has had an iPad since it was possible to get one and who has logged many a mile on it, it is a dream device for me personally. Convenient, simple, and incredibly multi-faceted, I use it every day and constantly. One of the most entertaining things about having an iPad is finding new uses for it and new apps to try.

For those of us who embrace it, it should come as no surprise that retailers are experimenting with it – evaluating different applications and apps in the store. There are many offerings that are fundamentally predicated on using an iPad as a POS: Square, Revel, Paypal, and there is an upcoming NCR solution to be released in June. (And yes, for full disclosure, I’m an NCR employee)

While payment processing is certainly a key element of the decision for these solutions, let’s set that aside for the moment and consider iPad from a hardware perspective. As much as we all want to skip the whole question and play with apps, the hardware should be fully considered from a usability and ROI perspective. In some ways the iPad is a hardware platform that can enable solutions we have dreamed about for years; in others it falls short.

———————————————————————————————————

The Positives:

Hardware Cost – iPad 2 units are now available at reduced rates, and can be had for as low as $419. Given that a retail hardened POS terminal is more like $800 to $1,000, the up front purchase price is certainly attractive – particularly for a small business. Keep in mind that a stand will also be necessary which will add $100 to $200 to the cost depending on the model and type, but it’s still quite affordable to obtain.

Displays – Because iPad is put out in such volume and has the latest technology, they have vibrant bright screens. The touchscreen is capacitive (my option of choice), and does not require calibration. In a nutshell, the touch display looks great and they work very well.

Durability – iPad is made for the consumer market – notorious for hard usage. For general use in a specialty or relatively clean and simple QSR environment, it will suffice as well. While I had initial misgivings about its durability, my experience with retailers is that it has lasted better than anticipated in real world retail environments. It’s definitely getting use and doing well.

Small Footprint – As you can see from pictures of the unit, it requires little space on a counter and can provide just about the smallest footprint possible; especially if you want to go full urban hipster mode with no receipt printer or cash drawer.

Software Updates – While the focus is on hardware, the apple ecosystem is hard to ignore as a point of the solution. Depending on the application used, software updates can be very simple even for the novice user. If the solution is cloud based, users would not have to do anything other than perhaps change the address to which their browser is pointing. For app based users, the app store is a familiar interface, and updating apps is a relatively simple matter.

Network – Cloud based offerings are a tremendous area of growth and I embrace them myself. I use Dropbox, iCloud and more. The challenge with a retail business is that when these services are down, the business is down. In the past I would have expressed concern about this, but reliability of these services is quite high and improving. Data centers like Apples and Amazons make this possible.

Extensibility – The iPad is a great platform to add apps as discussed. Many retailers are using the iPad for manager’s tools, inventory, and more. Why not add point of sale capability to the units?

On the whole, the iPad represents a tremendously viable point of sale platform for the right environment, subject to the availability of apps and payment processing interfaces to suit retailer and customer needs.

———————————————————————————————————

Cost – While the iPad is slightly cheaper to obtain, the jury is out on how long they last. I’ve worked with some retailers who have used notebooks in retail environments for point of sale or sales tools. They lasted about 3 years. While you could argue that a user could just throw the unit out and buy another one, remember that retail hardened POS terminals are designed to last 7-10 years, and I’ve seen some last much longer. There are retailers running DOS because it’s working just fine. Also, while the hardened units are slightly more expensive, they do allow for simple modular repair, dual hard drive capability, remote supportability, software lockdown and more.

Displays - The iPad screen looks bright, but if I had come out to retailers and told them I had the best new point of sale solution in the world and it has a 9.7 inch screen, I would have been laughed out the door – and rightfully so. The screens are a bit small for a point of sale application in my experience. I’ve seen 12″ work well, and most retailers seem to think 15″ provides a good combination of real estate and visibility for the client and the retail associate. Some also accept 17″ displays, but it depends on the environment and the point of sale platform. The reflection on the iPad display can be difficult to read in brightly lit retail environments – particularly with the new intense lighting in some stores.

Durability – The consumer market is one thing, but the whole gamut of retail is another. While the iPads have been lasting well to date, and I’m sure they will do so, they haven’t yet had to deal with 7-10 years of dust. They haven’t dealt spills of a full drinks and survived (I have a friend who left an iPad outside in the rain over night; sadly it could not be resuscitated.) They are not made to deal with the head of direct sunlight – a challenge in some glassed in environments. (if you’ve ever used one outside in the sun, you may have experienced the automatic shutdown). While the iPads work very very well, they may be less able to accommodate more rugged requirements like DIY warehouse stores and intense QSR environments.

Small Footprint – While the iPad itself is smaller, if you have to use a cash drawer, printer and scanner, you won’t save that much real estate. Also note that the peripherals are effectively the same as those used on a regular point of sale device today, though some others have come out. I expect there will be some answers around this.

Batteries - One thing they never show in the pictures of these solutions is the power cord – it doesn’t look as pretty without the cable plugged in. The batteries do last a long time, but the units will always be on in a retail environment. Some solutions provide a battery pack which adds some battery life, but wherever there are batteries, there are people forgetting to charge them. It will be important to include a reminder to charge overnight – perhaps a dock – and to always keep a cord on hand.

Software Providers – Another brief comment on software. While Square and Paypal are both huge names right now, they are effectively offering a POS solution as a loss leader for payments processing. That means that retailers are locked into a POS solution based on their payments module. Retailers won’t care about this until they realize that to move they will have to update all of their inventory on to another system. This solution model is working very well today, and it may very well continue to do so and I hope it does. I think it can work, but it is a risk to consider. Retailers are in business for the long haul, and well as they have done, this is a new business model with relatively new players.

Chip and Pin – I’ve seen some interesting solutions to deal with Chip and Pin (using a pin pad to enter a code for card payments – we do that here in Canada) on iPod touch units with sleds. In America, they can use dongles in the headphone jack of the iPad, or in the bottom port, but in Canada that does not fly. Without Chip and Pin, this thing is a non-starter in the Canadian environment. There needs to be integration to a pin pad solution, but I’m not yet aware of one. Most pinpads are currently on RS-232 (sorry no ports on iPad), or on IP – that might work. Someone has to make that work before this can happen in Canada. Let me know if you have heard of any!

Solution Roadmap – iPad and all iDevices are on notoriously short roadmaps. Seen an iPod Classic lately? Didn’t think so. As a consumer device, it is entirely Apple’s prerogative to release new units every year – to change the size – to max out the screen resolution, to change the IOS platform, to add and remove ports and more – all at their whim. This may be fine, but it may start to impact a user that has an older unit. Will they be forced to upgrade because of changing specs? Will they have to source a different mount, a different payment device, a different peripheral at short notice as the units change every year?

Network – iPad only uses wifi. While this may not be a problem for some retailers, others are concerned about providing access to wifi networks in their businesses. I’ve also found that while I’ve had some rock solid experiences with wifi, some of my apple products will constantly lose connectivity with my wifi network, and the only way to fix it is to reset the router/modem. It’s a small issue, but worth thinking about.

I point out these issues not to rail against the iPad, but to point out potential obstacles. Sometimes in the rush towards new technology, these items can be overlooked. Better to have the issues in mind when looking to implement and consider them carefully prior to moving forward to ensure the best possible customer and store staff experience possible.

———————————————————————————————————

We are so close to our money and monetary system, that we rarely stop to think about it.  The book underscored that point for me more than any other.  Money and gold are really just proxies of value that we perceive as instruments that can ‘hold’ value for us over time and make value transferable.  Taking the time to think about it, it’s quite incredible that we have somehow all agreed to this arrangement as a society; but we have.

I was also deeply affected by reading ‘Digital wallet’ will transform smartphone and how we spend in the Globe and Mail last week.  While the article revealed nothing new and was sketchy on details, the vitriole in the 335 comments was somewhat disconcerting.  Many of the comments from unsurprisingly anonymous accounts expressed outright hostility towards the idea.

While I have been enthusiastically anticipating and already using digital alternatives to cash, there are many individuals who are vehemently against a digital wallet.  As described in “The End of Money”, there are massive and pervasive concerns around this technology in the general public.

Some concerns outlined in the 335 Globe and Mail comments included:

• being forced to use a particular payment network
• transactions being tracked by banks, government, network owners and others
• no privacy for transactions
• account numbers and value being stolen
• being forced to have and use a mobile device
• being forced to use a mobile network like Rogers, Bell or Telus and paying them a cut of transactions
• providing no additional value to citizens
• ‘hackers’ taking over the system (by the way, the terms hackers and cyber anything have to be removed from the common lexicon – this is not the age of the information superhighway)
• criminals stealing account information just from proximity the owner (NFC)
• what to do when there is no electricity or your mobile device has no power
• corporate organizations usurping or becoming a crucial transport to the sovereign responsibility of government for currency

• On March 26, a new $50 note was released to reduce counterfeiting of large denominations and increase acceptance of these notes.
• Last week it was announced that pennies will be no longer be minted, and will be removed from circulation in Canada to save the cost of producing them – which has exceeded their value for some time.
• The Royal Canadian Mint is in the midst of releasing new versions of the $1 and $2 coin (okay, loonies and toonies) which replace nickel composition with steel – once again, to reduce the cost of minting.

For most, these are news items for discussion with friends and colleagues.   For retailers and other consumer facing organizations, these are logistical issues that have to be carefully considered and dealt with.  Vending machines, self-checkouts, self service kiosks, cash drawers, cash counting equipment, counterfeiting measures, store associate training, taxes on purchases, rounding to five cents on cash purchases, end of day balancing procedures, and more all have to be considered.  All of them require time, effort, and more cost.

While the average consumer may consider these issues irrelevant to them, these are costs that are passed on to them one way or another.  If a retailer can find a way to deal with transacting more cheaply in a way that suits a target market, they should do so, tradition or no, and use that competitive advantage to win business.

So, what is the answer?  The answer is choice.

The issue I had with the comments on the Globe and Mail article was that people were basically responding as though they are being told cash is being eliminated and they have to use an electronic wallet.  That is not the case.  There will be cash, there will be debit and there will be credit for the foreseeable future.  There will also be electronic wallets.  These digital modes of transaction are currently options; not requirements.

There are all sorts of people and transactions in the world, and they should all be able to transact in the manner that they wish.  Cash, Debit, Credit and eWallets can all play a role.  [Don't believe the eWallet hype? - check out mPesa.]

Electronic wallets are imperfect for many reasons.  It’s absolutely true.  So are debit and credit cards.   There is fraud, there is theft, there are many inconveniences associated with using cards.  And yet 65-70% and more of many Canadian retailers’ transactions are made via debit and credit.

Somewhere, somehow, somebody is going to evaluate the list of bullets in this post and see opportunity; see a missed chance to do things better.  With emerging technologies, and changing consumer attitudes to mobile and electronic transactions, it’s only a matter of time until mobile digital wallet options become a bigger proportion of the payments people make.

As retail technology professionals, we should ensure that all of the infrastructure we put into place provides the flexibility to accommodate future payment modalities – whatever they may be.  Reading “The End of Money” provides a great background on why we should be ready for these new payment models.  Understanding the history helps to drive us into the future.

From my perspective, the Government of Canada is responsible for the money supply including the Bank of Canada and the Royal Canadian Mint.   They should be considering how Canada can move from a cash based society to a cashless society.  They should remember that they are not printers or minters – they represent monetary value in Canada and should continue to play that role electronically if it suits their constinuents.   They have already made a jump moving to polymer from paper.  Perhaps their next move should be silicon.

All of the national banks around the world should be considering this or find a way to harness private enterprises in this effort – before Apple-Square-Google-Paypal-Starbucks-BumpPay-GeodeWallet or others do it for them.

Update:  The Royal Canadian Mint has obviously been thinking the same way.

Mobile Pizza

Produce Image Scan – Toshiba TEC recently showed off a new scanning solution that enables scanning of produce with images in order to speed checkout.  The imagers can apparently recognize the produce held in front of them instead of the more traditional methods of requiring a barcode, PLU code or the use of a pick list on paper or electronically.

Interestingly while this is touted as a new solution, I have seen versions of this technology for some years now – most often by scale manufacturers.  Imaging is certainly much better than it was even a few years ago, so this technology must have improved since I looked at it last, but I still see some holes.

- Can it tell the difference between organic and traditional produce?  Not sure how that could possibly happen based on colour and texture.  Last I checked, there is a serious price delta between those two items – both in cost and price.   This sort of shortcoming is a real problem for North American supermarkets, as this is a potential revenue and margin loss at checkout in a very small margin business.

- Can it still tell the colour and texture through plastic packaging?  In most North American supermarkets, produce is not purchased without some sort of packaging – particularly if more than 1 item is purchased.  Might work, but I would want to see that.

- The spokesman says it will come with a database, but what does this do to store infrastructure?  Does it have to reside on every POS?  Is it large as it has images to compare on it?  How does it get updated after implementation.  Nobody has a complete database of produce, and if they did, it is bound to be large.  No store actually would have all produce meaning the full database would be larger than necessary.  To include only what is on hand in a store would require database management.  Even if the database was comprehensive, new products are always coming on the scene.  As items like the newly released Sumo come on the market, they will have to be carefully added to the database.  How does that happen?  One can’t just type in Sumo – 49 cents per pound with a PLU.  It would need to be a carefully orchestrated update.

- I hate to pick on their ergonomics, as this is obviously a demonstration, but those poor cashiers would eventually hurt themselves bending to pick up produce from a basket to scan and place in another basket.  It makes more sense to slide, or at least have a table at the right height to lift from.  There is also no scale, so pricing would only be per unit and not by the pound.  If this were to be implemented it would need to be part of a scanner -scale solution.

I think it’s a great idea and I would love to see it work, but there are a lot of kinks to be worked out before this thing hits the public – in North America in any case.

Pay with Square – Square recently rebranded their Card Case solution as Pay with Square.  The payment system allows for payment without removing a wallet or phone from the users pocket.  It’s based on geolocation.  Users are identified by the pictures on the point of sale device.  Beyond the rebranding, the app has been redesigned with a more functional interface, and to allow full functionality on both the Android and iPhone versions.  Still waiting for Canada, but expect EMV makes that unlikely.

Edible Packaging

Monosol has designed tasteless water soluble packets of hot chocolate, fruit drink and oatmeal. They look exactly like the familiar plastic packets we know today. Drop one of these packets of product in water, wait for it to dissolve and consume. With this technology one could avoid the waste and recycle cycle completely.

Another angle on the same idea, Wiki Cells edible membrane uses food particles connected “by electrostatic charges to each other and to a small amount of natural polymer” to put a casing around food. As an example, they have yogurt inside an edible membrane in the manner of a parmesan or goat cheese kind of skin. To consume, one cuts through the skin to access the interior and then one can eat the ‘rind’ or ‘peel’ as well.  If you happen to be in Paris, you could try it out at the Lab Store Paris.

This may take some time to catch on with consumers and get past their health concerns, but could result in real waste savings on many fronts.

Dining e-Tickets – As restaurants work on slim margins rendering no-shows as a big hit to the bottom line, some restaurants are moving away from reservations to e-ticketing schemes. Under this setup, potential diners buy tickets for a time slot at a restaurant – just like a theatre performance. If they don’t show, the restaurant is not out profit for the night as the tickets are non-refundable. Like theatre or sports events, perhaps we can expect potential scalping, online trading systems.  There are also  potentially new revenue streams for operators  like OpenTable.

OLED lighting – Advances in OLED lighting provide some potentially incredible impacts on design of stores and technology in future. Check out the article and incredible video of an Audi concept vehicle to get the full effect.

direct video link

The Lytro camera uses a completely different sort of sensor from those used in current digital cameras to capture images. This sensor captures light from various angles and means that there is no need to focus a camera lens at time of image capture. Images are captured and the focus and other settings are adjusted by downloading images and tweaking them with software. Check out an example below. Click to focus on an area, double click to zoom.

See more examples.

This makes possible or simplifies an incredible range of ideas applicable to retail.

Consider a few quick examples:

• Interactive experience – Online interactive websites or in store screens with photos of a store interior that can zoom and focus when you point to certain areas of the image. This could provide a unique and detailed online shopping experience more akin to a bricks and mortar experience where that is desirable.
• Unique Offers / Experiences / Marketing – Given the ability to refocus images on the fly, there are vast opportunities for creative uses to engage customers in contests, offers, new product unveilings and the like.
• Security – Security cameras that are always in focus around store sites. This could ease the job of security staff and make real the hilarious ‘let’s enhance’ scenes of fame in movies and TV.
• Scanning – Using light field cameras could make scanning with cameras at point of sale faster than current bar code scanning technologies by recognizing multiple items at once. It could even mean the end of barcodes. With faster recognition, we could finally leave 1d and even 2d barcode symbologies behind with more sophisticated recognition algorithms as long as an easily updated database and identification protocol is in place. Based on current software and processing power, this could be some way off.

While the technology is still in its rudimentary form, with first gen cameras that are glorified squared off lens telescopes, and images that take a minute to fully process on high end processors, the idea has still ignited a great deal of interest in tech circles. This sort of technology shift could take ‘point and shoot’ photography to a new level of simplicity. It could rank up there with Kodak bringing photography to the masses, or Polaroid instant photography, but with the expanded reach of photography today, its applications are potentially even more widespread.