A UK company has figured out a way to keep online supermarkets as competitive as possible with mySupermarket, a website that lets you pick out items and then compare the prices for that shopping cart full of food between the four major online supermarket chains in the UK. A running total shows you the price of the goods as you choose them, directly comparing the four supermarket prices. Once you've finished shopping, pick the lowest-priced store, and with a single click mySupermarket will send your order to that supermarket's website for online checkout.

What a great idea! Now, if we could just get even one online supermarket that doesn't take a one-way trip down the road to financial ruin here in the US, someday we could get started on something like this. Maybe online supermarkets are unsuccessful in the US because of the distances involved. Or maybe it's their super-slim profit margins. – Charlie White

Product Page [mySupermarket Limited] (Thanks, Justin!)

Sure beats shopping carts: This Chinese supermarket has rollercoasters running through its aisles. If you miss your cornflakes, you'll have to go for another ride. Clean up in aisle 5! –Brian Lam

Filed under: Displays, Misc. Gadgets

While e-books might still be a bit out of the price range for most consumers, that quick trip to the store for a jar of mayonnaise might give the lowly proletariat its first glimpse at the wonders of e-ink, thanks to some new price tags from Sharp. The tags will include price info, along with extra data like place of origin and a sell-by date. Supermarkets will be able to update tags wirelessly from a central computer, and thanks to the battery sipping technology of e-ink, the batteries should last up to five years on each tag, leaving stocking jockeys with quite a bit less to worry about. Sharp plans to start selling the tags on the 25th, and will charge 2,000 yen ($16.61 US) for a 2-inch version, while the 3-inch display goes for 2,300 yen ($19.11 US) -- both prices we're guessing are wholesale, and there's no word how much the back-end will cost. Sharp hopes to sell about 10 billion yen ($83 million US) of these things in 2007, but we've no idea when they'll start shipping 'em over to our beautimus supermarket meccas in the States.

[Via Plastic Bamboo]

 

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If there's one thing about this country that really saddens me it's ready meals. That you can buy this rubbish proffered as the national dish in the county's centre is, to my mind, a disgrace. People have no sense of taste in Britain anymore.

from riina