But nothing seems to be working for the chief executive of Information Resources, which pioneered collecting data from checkout scanners to measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns.

FORBES: Durrett Syndrome

Eventually, Mr Sharma expects to see Xerox scanners and copiers with data-hiding functions built into them.

ECONOMIST: MONITOR

The discount chain discovered it could predict buying patterns down to every last store shelf, thanks to data gleaned daily from its checkout scanners.

FORBES: In Praise Of Animal Spirits

The bottom line: no more crinkled, unorganized receipts, no more expensive scanners, no more data entry or lost documents, and best of all, no more stressful tax seasons!

FORBES: Fantastic Tools For The Entrepreneur's Toolkit

Forbes and other magazines give readers scanners for bar codes on ads, deriving data on who reads what.

FORBES: The Killer Ad Machine

This data set, created by shoppers themselves using in-store scanners, records the type of goods bought by various income groups between 1994 and 2005, as well as the prices paid for them.

ECONOMIST: Economics focus

With mobeam's technology, the Galaxy S4 can "beam" traditional 1D barcode data to any laser scanner with no new equipment, such as optical scanners or backend systems, required by the retailer.

ENGADGET: Samsung partners with Mobeam to offer scannable bar codes on the Galaxy S 4

This will be made possible through the use of fingerprint scanners which will identify individual visitors and enable them to call up and modify their own data at any terminal.

ECONOMIST: The future on display