Shoppers whip out smart phones to streamline purchases

Standing before a display of heart-rate monitors at Sports Authority, Robert Dries of Brookfield, Wis., was ready to buy the one he'd heard about at his health club. But before making the purchase, he decided to pull out his Apple iPhone and check some reviews online.

"They were not that favorable at all,"Dries said."I ended up buying another model."

All over the country, shoppers armed with smart phones are doing some version of this, and the trend is expected to be bigger than ever this holiday season.

"It's a hot topic,"said Anne Brouwer, senior partner at McMillan/Doolittle, a Chicago retail consulting firm.

One-quarter of Americans who own smart phones - cell phones that run software, play media and connect to the Internet - plan to use them this year to look for gift ideas, compare prices and find items in nearby stores, according to a survey by BIGresearch for the National Retail Federation. Among young adults ages 18-24, the percentage using phones for shopping is 45 percent.

This is the first year that the retail trade group asked the question. But while it's still a relatively new phenomenon, experts expect shopping applications to exert a growing influence on retailers, as consumers continue to use their mobile devices to take more control of the buying process.

"I do very little store shopping now,"said Kristine Hinrichs of Milwaukee."Last year I did a bunch of Christmas shopping while under a quilt in bed."

Hinrichs wasn't ill. She just enjoys the convenience of curling up with her phone - and now with her iPad.

Consumers who ownsmart phoneshave an ever-growing number of shopping apps to choose from, in addition to the ability to simply surf the Web on traditional sites. There are apps that help find stores, locate products locally, review products, provide coupons and compare prices.

Fast Mall, an app that launched this fall, has a voice recorder to help you remember where you parked, as long as you remember to use it. Once inside, the app will give you bathroom locations in the mall and can guide you to a particular store if you type in your location. On a test run at Mayfair mall in Wauwasota, Wis., Fast Mall guided me past several stores by name, and then told me to take the escalator upstairs to find GapKids.

Point Inside, a geo-positioning app, can pinpoint your location inside malls and airports, and provides maps of the premises. The Coupon Sherpa app lists national chains alphabetically and provides store coupons and special offers.

Price comparison apps with bar code scanners could have the biggest impact on retailers because they can bring up a list of other merchants offering the same item, allowing an instant price comparison. The PriceGrabber app does that, but the bar code scanner worked only one out of six times when I tested it in Wal-Mart and Macy's stores.

Even without the scanner, PriceGrabber.com and similar price comparison websites can be accessed from a smart phone, and a shopper standing in a store could make a purchase on the phone from a competitor.

"We recommend that retailers get over the fact that consumers can compare prices,"said Candace Corlett, president of WSL Strategic Retail in New York."That horse has left the barn. So go with it and turn it into an advantage."

For example, Corlett recommends that retailers have a store app that will pop up when a shopper enters their stores.

Retailers are adapting to the new smart phone technology, but are still early in the process, according to a report this summer from Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. About 60 percent of retailers surveyed early this year either had no mobile strategy or were in the early stage of development.

About 35 percent of retailers had a special site that works with mobile browsers, and a third had aniPhoneapp. Android and BlackBerry apps were available for 8 percent of retailers.

Kohl's Corp. has its weekly ad circular available on its app, along with store information. Macy's app lists special events by store and sale information. Both Kohl's and Macy's apps allow users to make a purchase from their phones. JC Penney's app has product-related YouTube videos, offers weekly deals for mobile and sends coupons to your phone.

Amazon.com's app, meanwhile, has a bar code scanner and an experimental feature that offers to save photos and try to find similar products. Theappwasn't tested for this report.

Retailers surveyed by Forrester report investing, on average, $170,000 on their mobile sites in 2009, but large chains said they expected to spend $500,000.

Despite the fanfare this year, mobile shopping is still just a tiny part of sales. Retailers told Forrester that mobile browsers generated just 2.8 percent of their website traffic last year and 2 percent of Internet revenue.

A survey by WSL Strategic Retail found that one of the biggest uses for mobile phones while shopping in stores was taking photos of products. People send them to friends, post them online or keep them as a reference.

"Last year I was looking for a camera,"Hinrichs said."I couldn't remember which model was at which place."She solved her problem by taking pictures of the cameras she liked, and also showed the photos to her friend to get advice.

Corlett said her company's surveys show very different uses of mobile by gender and age.

"Men are using it more than women,"Corlett said. They are more likely to be gadget-lovers and to use their phones to compare prices.

Dries admits to making a purchase while showing off his phone to friends in a restaurant.

"We were goofing around with the phones,"Dries recalled. By the end of the evening, he'd bought a Timex Ironman watch from Zappos.com, without leaving the table.

All of the apps in this report are free.

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Taking movies beyond Avatar -- for under $150 (w/ Video)

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A new development in virtual cameras at the University of Abertay Dundee, UK, is developing the pioneering work of James Cameron's blockbuster Avatar using a Nintendo Wii-like motion controller– all for less than $150.

Avatar, the highest-grossing film of all time, used several completely new filming techniques to bring to life its ultra-realistic 3D action. Now computer games researchers have found a way of taking those techniques further using home computers and motion controllers.

James Cameron invented a new way of filming called Simul-cam, where the image recorded is processed in real-time before it reaches the director’s monitor screen. This allows actors in motion-capture suits to be instantly seen as the blue Na’vi characters, without days spent creating computer-generated images.

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A new development in virtual cameras at the University of Abertay Dundee is developing the pioneering work of James Cameron's blockbuster Avatar using a Nintendo Wii-like motion controller - all for less than $150.

The Abertay researchers, led by computer games technology lecturer Matt Bett, have linked the power of a virtual camera– where a computer dramatically enhances what a film camera could achieve– using a motion-sensor. This allows completely intuitive, immediately responsive camera actions within any computer-generated world.

Matt said:“Avatar is a fantastic film in terms of its technical achievements. To push the boundaries of filmmaking required the creation of brand new techniques, which is staggering. What the Simul-cam technology allows is a kind of augmented reality, where the computer-generated world can be seen immediately.

“What I wanted to do was turn this on its head, and bring this power to home computers. Using a new Sixense electromagneticmotion controller, we can now manipulate a virtual camera in any virtual environment– be it a film, an animation, acomputer game, or a simulation tool for teaching.”

The applications of the project, dubbed Motus, are substantial. Complex films and animations could be produced at a very low cost, giving new creative tools to small studios or artists at home. Computer environments can be manipulated in the same way as a camera, opening new opportunities for games, and for education.

Project associate Erin Michno, an undergraduate Computer Games Technology student at Abertay University, added:“This tool could completely change the way people interact with computer games, and the way computer-aided learning is delivered to students around the world.

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“Within games, watching and sharing replays of the action is hugely popular. What our development allows is replays to be edited exactly as if they were a film, zooming in, panning the camera, quickly and easily creating a whole movie based on your gaming. For online games enthusiasts, that would dramatically change what’s possible.

“In the classroom and lecture theatre, having this level of control for such a small price would allow some things which just aren’t possible– performing virtual operations live on screen, flying through the inside of an engine– in any school and any university.”

Motion controllers first became popular with theNintendo Wiigames console, and more recently with the launch of PlayStation Move. The Abertay researchers built their new system using the Sixense Truemotion Devkit, a more advanced version of these technologies which will be manufactured by Razer.

This tool uses electromagnetic sensors to capture the controller’s position to a precise single millimetre accuracy, and unlike other controllers still works even when an object is in the way. It will work on any home PC, and is expected to retail for under£100 from early 2011.

A patent application for the invention and unique applications of the technology has been recently filed in the UK.

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Eyes, ears of US military take shape in high-tech labs

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A Global Hawk robotic plane, hovering more than 11 miles above Afghanistan, can snap images of Taliban hide-outs so crystal clear that U.S. intelligence officials can make out the pickup trucks parked nearby - and how long they've been there.

Halfway around the globe in an underground laboratory in El Segundo, Calif., Raytheon Co. engineers who helped develop the cameras and sensors for the pilotless spy plane are now working on even more powerful devices that are revolutionizing the way the military gathers intelligence.

The new sensors enable flying drones to"listen in"on cell phone conversations and pinpoint the location of the caller on the ground. Some can even"smell"the air and sniff out chemical plumes emanating from a potential underground nuclear laboratory.

Reconnaissance is"now the centerpiece of our global war on terrorism,"said David L. Rockwell, an electronics analyst with aerospace research firm the Teal Group Corp."The military wants to have an unblinking eye over the war zone."

And that has meant a growing and potentially huge business for the defense industry at a time when the Pentagon is looking at cutting back on big-ticket purchases such as fighter jets and Navy ships.

The drone electronics industry now generates about $3 billion in revenue, but that's expected to double to $6 billion in the next eight years, Teal Group estimates.

The industry's projected growth has fueled a surge in mergers and acquisitions of companies that develop and make the parts for the sensor systems.

"There has been an explosion in the reconnaissance market,"said Jon B. Kutler, founder of Admiralty Partners, a Century City, Calif., private investment firm that buys and sells small defense firms.

"It's one of the few remaining growth areas."

Kutler's company recently acquired Torrance, Calif.-based Trident Space&Defense, which manufactures hard drives that enable drones to store high-resolution images.

Trident, which has about 70 employees, has seen its sales more than double to about $40 million over the last five years.

The demand for sensors is growing as the Pentagon steps up use of drones for intelligence gathering.

More than 7,000 drones - ranging from the small, hand-launched Raven to the massive Global Hawk - are currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Though some have been outfitted with laser-guided bombs or missiles - grabbing most of the news headlines - all are equipped with sensors for reconnaissance and surveillance work.

The most advanced cameras and sensors are on theGlobal Hawk, a long-endurance, high-altitude drone that can fly for 30 hours at a time at more than 60,000 feet, out of range of most antiaircraft missiles and undetectable to the human eye.

Peter W. Singer, author of"Wired for War,"a book about robotic warfare, compares the technology to the popular"Where's Waldo"children's books, in which readers are challenged to find one person hidden in a mass of people.

The latest detectors not only can pick out Waldo from a crowd, but know when Waldo may have fired a rifle. Such sensors can detect the heat from the barrel of a gun and estimate when it was fired.

Many of the sensors have been developed by Raytheon engineers in El Segundo, where the company has had a long history of developing spy equipment, including those found on the famed U-2 spy plane.

Some of the more advanced cameras can cost more than $15 million and take 18 months to make. Raytheon develops the cameras in a humidity-controlled, dust-free laboratory to ensure that they are free of blemishes.

Each basketball-sized camera"must be perfect,"said Oscar Fragoso, a Raytheon optical engineer."If it isn't, we know we're putting lives at risk."

Raytheon has begun to face stiff competition as other aerospace contractors vie for its business.

Sparks, Nev.-based Sierra Nevada Corp., which is known for its work on developing parts for spy satellites, has developed a sensor system, named the Gorgon Stare, that widens the area that drones can monitor from 1 mile to nearly 3 miles.

Named for the creature in Greek mythology whose gaze turns victims to stone, the sensor system features 12 small cameras - instead of one large one. It is to be affixed to Reaper drones before the end of the year.

With the multiple cameras, the operator can follow numerous vehicles instead of just one, said Brig. Gen. Robert P. Otto, the U.S. Air Force's director of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance."By the end of the year, we're going to be fielding capabilities that are unlike anything we've used before."

But with an increase in the number of drone patrols and new sensor technology, the Air Force will be"drowning in data,"Otto said."That means we're going to need a lot more people looking at computer screens."

The Pentagon has said that drones last year took so much video footage that it would take someone 24 years to watch it all.

By this time next year, the Air Force expects to have almost 5,000 people trawling through the images for intelligence information. That's up from little more than 1,200 nine years ago.

"The reconnaissance work that's being done now takes seconds, where it used to take days,"Otto said."We're pushing the edge of technology."

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