Private life made public

While shopping, customers can now use their smartphones to compare prices with prices offered by other shops. Shopkick, a recently established California enterprise uses the phones’ location-sensing abilities to send personalised marketing offers when shoppers are in a convenient position to buy. The cameras in smartphones can be used to scan barcodes on items, which shoppers can then send in exchange for different product information or other marketing offers. The company’s pilot application, CauseWorld boasts 500,000 users.