A little piece of history for you: You probably think that mobile apps appeared soon after iPhone’s launch back in 2007? Actually… Tesco created its first mobile app back in… 2002! Tesco Pocket Shopper was a complete guide to selecting and ordering your Tesco online groceries which you could use offline, then go online to upload your order. Here’s what it looked like: You remember the Compaq iPaq? – that was our target ‘pocket pc’ back in 2001 when development started. Articl

As you have no doubt gleaned from the media by now, Tesco is taking augmented reality seriously as a great way of bringing a great experience of our products and services to customers. Until now, a lot of augmented reality has been marketing led. The experience you get when you use your smartphone or iPad with the Blippar app and point the camera at our ‘Price Drop’ logo you’ll see what I mean. I include the logo below so you can try it on your smart phone with Blippar right

I join many of my colleagues in being saddened to hear the news of the death of Steve Jobs last night. Apple, through Jobs’ leadership, used disruptive innovation to smash through the complexity of using mobile devices by making the utterly simple to use. For the first time, anyone – young or old – techno-savvy or techno-phobic – could pick up an iPhone and iPad and immediately ‘get’ how to use it. The massive complexity of the underlying technology was hidden under the cover

We’ve been evaluating a mobile application we set up for those participating in the Tesco Charity Triathlon last month. The app was created by mobile specialists mBlox so that triathletes could enjoy personal updates as the triathlon deadline approached. In this article, Ben Martin (who took part in the triathlon itself and raised £370 in the process!) shares his experiences with how the app – and its underlying content delivery system – worked for our event. Ben writes

There’s something about 7am. It’s at that time when I am still in bed with the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 sounding in the background and the smell of freshly brewed coffee indicating its presence on the bed-side table. However the start of the 7am news usually causes me to sit up and reach for my smart phone, which has been charging-up nicely through the night. So what do I see first? A selection of a few unread email messages, Facebook updates and Twitter tweets that cam

Please welcome the newest member of our mobile app family, Tesco Groceries for Android. Yes, I know, you’ve wanted this app to launch for a long time. But the management team, designers and developers were patient, considered, and did things right so that we could launch an app to be proud of. So take my hand and let’s journey together through the delights of this android application. Would you like to be downloading while we walk? Sure, follow this link. We start with the op

Sorry for not getting any blog posts up recently. I decided to go on holiday but the rest of Tesco decided not to pause while I did so! Still, madly trying to catch up with projects is always ‘fun’ and being able to write blog posts (my lowest priority, alas) at least shows I am back on course now! The New Media Age Awards took place last week. As you may be aware, Tesco.com R&D had been nominated for what the organisers referred to as its “Outstanding contribution to new med

We now have a comprehensive ‘sat-nav’ system working INSIDE one of our Tesco stores! The new service is able to show you where all your wanted products are on a store map, show you where you are on that map, and guide you round the store to pick up your products using the shortest route. The prototype system is installed at the Tesco Extra, Romford (Gallows Corner) in north-east London, and we need to recruit a large control group of customers (including staff) who would like

Tesco has just taken a majority stake in local video-on-demand service BlinkBox with an 80% stake in that business. Blinkbox is the UK’s leading movie streaming service, offering thousands of titles streamed on the internet to 2m users each month. Their catalogue of more than 9,000 titles is available to rent or buy, alongside a host of free-to-view movies, TV shows and trailers, on PC, Mac, PS3 console, tablet devices and internet-enabled connected TVs. Tesco has bought an 8

A reminder that if you are a student at Cambridge University I am giving a lecture on Tesco’s customer-focussed mobile journey (those Hunters, Gatherers and Groundhogs!) at the seminar room of Wolfson College starting at 6pm tonight. The lecture forms part of Cambridge University Library’s Arcadia Programme – for more information follow this link. I look forward to seeing you there. The address is: Wolfson College, Barton Road, Cambridge CB3 9BB #arcadia #cambridge #tesco #un

If you’ve read the post showing the ‘heat map’ of our Tesco.com grocery delivery vans across the UK, you’ll come away with a great feeling that we know where all our vans are. Which is true. The trouble is, the truth can sometimes hurt – in this case there’s something we uncovered in getting the material for that blog post that we decided not to show you on Monday until we investigated more. You see, when we zoomed out the map to get a nice view of the UK to take the snapshot

Every morning at 6am, our army of thousands of personal shoppers across our biggest 300 Tesco stores and 3 “Dotcom-only stores” (‘sort of’ picking depots) set to work picking the first of tens of thousands of grocery orders on a typical day. The technology they use – we call it ‘teampad’ – is a tablet computer running Windows XP Embedded and an application we have written in Microsoft .Net and C# to help the personal shopper pick accurately and quickly. You can often see our

Thank you if you are one of a number of people who have written to me about the possibility of a career at Tesco.com. It’s great to see that we’re inspiring people to consider working with us, and you can have no doubt that our offices are a great place to work. Where appropriate I do pass on your details to the HR team and I leave it to them to get in touch if they think there is a suitable role. However there is an official route to apply that also overcome the possibility

After a fantastic year supporting the work of children’s cancer charity CLIC-Sargent, this blog joins Tesco as we move to support our new charity of the year, Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer Scotland. These fantastic two charities work to improve the quality of life for people with dementia as well as supporting their families and carers. Dementia is a cruel brain-wasting disease that can happen to anyone. There is currently no cure but with early diagnosis and the right su

You must go and have a look at our excellent new Tesco Price Check web application. We are introducing Price Check so customers will have no doubt that we offer the best value. Price Check gives customers the ability to check the price of individual products and the total price of their shopping and, in the unlikely event that we are not cheaper than Asda, we will refund ‘double the difference’. The system works by looking up your receipt details and checks that we are the ch

From this Friday we’ll be using QR Codes in store to link customers to the mobile version of Tesco Direct to ore-order the new Nintendo 3DS console. Mike Fethers, Assistant Buyer for Tesco Gaming (what a great role!) sent me a digital copy of the poster and QR code we’ll be showing in-store. Mike believes that this is the first time the mobile site and QR codes have been implemented at a store level. So if you’re in a large Tesco branch on Friday, wander over to the console g

I’ve just taken some time to read the Google/Blogger analytics for techfortesco and I’m both delighted and humbled to reveal that just over 12,000 readers a month (over 3,000 readers a week, where a “reader” is defined as a combination of pageviews and unique IP addresses) are enjoying the content – and that’s not including those of you reading via the RSS feed and who receive articles by email. Technorati, the blog directory, seems to have shone favourably – techfortesco has

I am very happy to have accepted a position on the UK’s Mobile Commerce Joint Industry Committee (MCJIC), the committee established to ensure that UK businesses are prepared for the changes, opportunities and challenges that accompany the explosive growth in mobile commerce. The MCJIC has been formed by the Association of Interactive Media and Entertainment (AIME), The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) – the latter of which Tes

If you’re an Emmerdale fan than you will no doubt have seen the excellent and amusing 40-second TV commercial from our marketing department. The commercial shows our “Tesco family” using the barcode scanning facility on their iPhone as they go about life. You’ll see the ad popping up all over the place on commercial TV channels in the UK over the next four weeks. If you haven’t spotted the commercial yet, don’t worry: I watched Emmerdale on your behalf and recorded the commer

Well done to the Tesco Freeview Experiment applicants listed below. I’ll be in contact with each of you shortly to get the set-top box delivered to you. FirstName Location Freeview Transmitter Mark Belfast Divis Doug Dundee Angus James Stockton-on-Tees Bilsdale Tim Ashford, Kent Bluebell Hill Alick Glenrothes, Fife CraigKelly Daniel Islington, London Crystal Palace David Carnoustie, Angus Durris Ian Leeds Emley Moor Brett Watford Hemel Hempstead Paul Chippenham Mendip Andrew