walmart

The RFID vision gets scaled back

Remember a few years ago how Wal-Mart and other companies slapped mandates on their suppliers and told them that they'd have to begin to put standardized RFID (radio frequency identification) tags on stuff coming into the warehouse or else?

The idea was that the tags would let retailers and distributors track all of the products coming from various suppliers through a single, large database. Warehouse managers loved the idea because it simplified their jobs, but privacy advocates warned of Minority Report scenarios where corporations tracked your spending habits. Tagging would start with pallets, they noted, but move to individual … Read more

Anarchist Shopdropping for Christmas

Oooh, look what I got for Christmas, an anarchist doll complete with Molotov cocktail!

No, it's a fake gift, the latest in a funny and subversive series of "shopdropping" by a group of artists. Shopdropping (instead of shoplifting) means placing fake products into real stores to confuse the store management and raise questions about consumerist society. Watch the video as the befuddled Walgreens manager tries to price the anarchist doll, complete with its convincing packaging.

The anarchist doll specifically is the work of Oakland, CA based artist Packard Jennings, who has also produced a line of PEZ … Read more

DRM deathwatch: Sony, Wal-Mart

A rather sprawling article in Billboard today suggests that the MP3 format, which has been around since the 1990s, is finally reaching a tipping point among major labels, supplanting DRM-protected formats that the labels have favored.

The article focuses mostly on a planned Pepsi promotion that will offer MP3 downloads via the Amazon MP3 store. However, two other points stuck out to me as spelling imminent doom for DRM in music.

First, Sony is reportedly considering offering its catalog as MP3s, joining EMI and Universal Music Group. That would make Warner Music the last holdout among the Big Four. I'… Read more

Wal-Mart now giving away Blu-ray movies--with an 80GB PS3

If you thought you could escape this Blu-ray and HD DVD format back-and-forth nonsense, well, you were wrong. It's actually just beginning! This holiday season, both sides in the next-generation DVD battle are continuing to ratchet up the pressure on you lucky consumers.

Exhibit A: The folks over at Wal-Mart have followed up their boffo $98 Toshiba A2 HD DVD player with a pretty impressive overture for Blu-ray. Buying an 80GB Sony PlayStation 3 this Saturday will also get you 10 Blu-ray movies for free, as long as all the titles are below $30. (Go to the Wal-Mart holiday shopping site … Read more

Another great year for electronics, says Sony president

Despite intense competition, price cuts and a shaky economy, it's going to be another good year for the electronics industry, predicts Sony's Stan Glasgow.

Glasgow, president of Sony Electronics, said that orders from retailers are strong once again this year. Consumers are snapping up high-definition TVs, but also digital cameras and video cameras. Sony's gaining ground in notebooks too: shipments are up by double digits, he said. Sony lost seven days of production out of its San Diego area factory because of the fires in the region (some right near the factory); the company, however, has already … Read more

This week in laptops

The Asus Eee PC grabbed plenty of headlines this week, as media outlets (including CNET Reviews) got their hands on the mobile Internet device. Our conclusion: it's the near-perfect choice for a second laptop. Also, CNET News.com's Erica Ogg attended the Eee PC launch event in Palo Alto, Calif., Engadget shared pictures from an Eee PC dissection, and NotebookReview has some ideas on how to hack the little guy. Given the Eee PC's approachable price and Linux OS, we imagine that more tweaks are to come.

We also reviewed a possible competitor to the Asus Eee … Read more

HD DVD players hit $99 at Wal-Mart, Best Buy

Earlier this week it was big news that HD DVD broke the $200 price barrier. Well, in the same week it looks like HD DVD has broken the $100 price barrier as well. As previously reported, Wal-Mart is running a "Secret In-Store Specials" sale this Friday and one of the heavily discounted items is the Toshiba HD-A2 selling for $98.87. Of course, this isn't a true price drop, as the sale is only good as long quantities last and the Toshiba HD-A2 won't be available at all Wal-Mart locations. On the other hand, it is representative of HD DVD's significant advantage in hardware pricing -- the least expensive Blu-ray player is the $400 PlayStation 3, which also hits stores tomorrow.

The $99 price tag is sweet, but the deal is even better than that. Toshiba continues to give away five free movies to anyone that buys an HD DVD player--all you need to do is fill out this form (PDF link) and mail it in. If you're not thrilled about Toshiba's selection of free movies (we're not either), Wal-Mart is also running on a sale on HD DVD movies tomorrow, priced at $14.96 each. That's a pretty significant discount, as most of the HD DVDs we saw at Amazon were priced from $20 to $30. … Read more

At Wal-Mart, Black Friday comes early

It's happening again.

If you thought one minute past midnight the day after Thanksgiving was too early to choke out your fellow shoppers in the name of a great deal, you were wrong.

Following last year's decision to offer a $398 laptop several weeks ahead of the traditional Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), Wal-Mart is planning on slashing prices on five items--in its stores, not online--beginning at 8 a.m. this Friday. One of them will be a $348 Acer laptop with 1GB of RAM. The other four items and their prices will be kept secret until … Read more

How Wal-Mart is saving millions with clean tech

The Cleantech Forum that took place in Toronto this week had an interesting guest--Rand Waddoups, senior director of corporate strategy and sustainability at Wal-Mart, who regaled the audience with a pretty interesting array of facts and figures on the retailer's green push, according to Cleantech's news site.

Wal-Mart started to revamp its practices and become more green two years ago. The campaign revolves around good public relations, but also cutting costs. When you managed millions of square feet of retail space, small changes add up.

Some of the results:

The company is saving $1 million a year on … Read more

Consultants urge Wal-Mart to regress

Wal-Mart has stumbled a bit of late, losing its technology-driven lead over competitors and causing some, like Nick Carr, to suggest that Wal-Mart is a prime example of why IT really doesn't matter. Suddenly, consultants are being heard who suggest that Wal-Mart reverse its technology direction to buy off-the-shelf proprietary systems:

...[A]nalysts say that Wal-Mart's reliance on homegrown IT systems - and its conviction of their superiority - needs to change. Ford and his team, they say, must bring in best-of-breed commercial applications, such as BI and price-optimization tools, that can help it compete with rising retail superstars such as Target, JCPenney and Tesco. "We cannot overestimate how much packaged software can help them right now," says Paula Rosenblum, an analyst and managing partner with Retail Systems Research.

In fact, they can. The only thing that proprietary software gives Wal-Mart is bloat for these overpaid consultants to trim away for them. There is no off-the-shelf software that Wal-Mart can buy and use without extreme customization. Absolutely none.… Read more