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posted by martyb on Monday May 25 2015, @03:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the Aisle-B-Seeing-You dept.

French shoppers have become the first to experience a new LED lighting system that sends special offers and location data to their smartphones.

The technology was designed by Philips and has been installed at a Carrefour supermarket in Lille.

It transmits codes via light waves, which are undetectable to the eye but can be picked up by a phone camera.

The innovation offers an alternative to Bluetooth-based "beacons", which are being installed by many retailers.

[...]Carrefour is using the location data to trigger aisle-specific special offers. If users open a compatible app and let their smartphone camera look upwards, this can be used to determine their location - accurate to up to 1m - and the direction they are facing.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday May 25 2015, @05:43PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday May 25 2015, @05:43PM (#187665)

    If users open a compatible app and let their smartphone camera look upwards

    Cause, you know, I'm always doing that, especially while wandering around a food store. Every time I stop and place some apples in my cart, I can barely control myself from whipping out my phone and acting like the worlds biggest dork (or worse than usual anyway).

    That's right up there with "The biggest problem in my life right now is I don't get enough spam while I'm shopping for spam in the spam aisle at the spam store on spam day"

    Its like QR codes, which are basically unused by all humanity other than marketing departments.

    I do anticipate something completely unwanted as a result... the only hope they have of survival is paying cell phone companies to include the app as a runs-all-the-time spamware that can't be removed or disabled. So they will. And then since we're in here running all the time and sniffing the camera output and probably GPS and god knows what else, may as well upload 24x7 data including maybe raw camera snaps to some marketing firm. Just what I always wanted! Thanks guys!

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  • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Monday May 25 2015, @06:46PM

    by Snotnose (1623) on Monday May 25 2015, @06:46PM (#187689)

    Cause, you know, I'm always doing that, especially while wandering around a food store. Every time I stop and place some apples in my cart, I can barely control myself from whipping out my phone and acting like the worlds biggest dork (or worse than usual anyway).

    I do that all the time. I use Evernote for my shopping list. When I find 2-3 things I need to refresh my memory so I whip out my phone and look at the list again. I'm suspecting that even a camera pointing down-ish will still pick up the flickering lights.

    That said, I won't be running this app either. Let me get my food and leave me the fark alone.

    --
    Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday May 25 2015, @07:03PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday May 25 2015, @07:03PM (#187696)

      I'm suspecting that even a camera pointing down-ish will still pick up the flickering lights.

      Yeah maybe. That would sure be convenient so if it were even remotely possible for a marketdroid to claim it with a straight face, then they'd surely go with that rather than the weasel words in the article about having to wave at the ceiling. By observation I'd say about 20% of retail customers are playing with their phones at any instant. The dorky part would be waving it around at the ceiling for every purchase just in case there's a coupon.

      On the bright side, WRT waving cameras around wildly, I anticipate lots more "creep shot" type stuff on the internet. "Are you taking a picture of my butt in my ridiculously skimpy outfit? I only want the cute guys working here to see me wiggle not every dork on the internet." "uh, very nice, but no, just trying to download a free e-coupon for preparation H from the ceiling. Hey baby, wanna see my app?" meanwhile furiously swiping to hide the clover/baconreader/camera and bring up the StoreSpam app or whatever it'll be called. I'm sure it won't be awkward at all, LOL.