Photos: Shopping just got high-tech

A number of adventurous technologies were on display at the Retail Solutions Show, which this year relocated from Birmingham to the ExCel Centre in London. The show covers all aspects of retail technology, from IP VPNs, to plain old cash registers. Some of the technologies on show may not appear in the shops for some time but could potentially provide a competitive advantage in the future.

This photo shows the Magic Mirror at the RetailCam stand - a webcam is incorporated into the mirror in a shop with the aim of taking advantage of the social networking strengths of the internet.

The customer can take a picture of what they are wearing, send it to a social networking site and phone friends to get their opinions about the garment in question. They can also send the pic to their own email inbox for future reference. Finally, they can scan the garment's label barcode to get precise information about colour, size and price. This data can be attached to the photo and sent to someone as a gift suggestion.

Photo credit: Julian Goldsmith