Shopping

Supermarkets have always kept track of how people shop, but in the last few years the extent to which retailers collect data has rocketed.
 
Tesco owns a majority stake in Dunnhumby Ltd, which carries out data mining and analysis for large group of retailers including Coca-Cola, BT, Mars, Vodafone and other leading brands.
 
Dunnhumby operates the Tesco Clubcard scheme: using data collected from the scheme

Tesco can predict when people will shop

How they'll pay for their items and even how many calories they will consume.
 
Dunnhumby recently reported a 32 per cent rise in operating profits to £53.4 million, and has grown from 300 employees at the start of 2007 to nearly 1,250 this year.
 
The data collected by Dunnhumby has changed the way we shop.

In the last few years, advanced mapping tools have allowed businesses to use data to increase the efficiency of their deliveries.

Where companies used to plan deliveries on paper and in small teams, they now use advanced mapping software, routing data and live traffic information.

MapMechanics produces several of these tools, with its clients delivering everything from the Yellow Pages to milk.

Those clients now do their deliveries using complex and live-updated views into data that used to be limited to the shift manager's desk.
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The way people find shops could also be about to change, thanks to a new view into an existing set of data.

Since Google introduced Street View three years ago, rival services have since appeared from the likes of Microsoft and Mapquest.

Microsoft's Bing Streetside (their version of Street View) has been remixed by a group of researchers, turning it into Street Slide.

Street Slide takes the data from Streetside and turns it into a strip of businesses with clickable logos and building numbers.

It's a different and intuitive view into the average shopping street, and could change window browsing forever.

That will certainly happen as more of us use the Internet for browsing

Shopping is not just about buying it is also a social experience

A great way for boy to meet girl

To feel part of a buzzy environment

To have a coffee or a cup of tea and watch the world go by

No matter how techie our world becomes there will always be a place for nice places to see and be seen

To enjoy being part of a society

No amount of clever toys will replace this need which is embedded in all of us

We are humans and humans are social animals