She said there was already a medium-sized Budgens' store and four mini supermarkets in the village.

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The App Store has also created a new mini-economy.

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Tracking technologies have also lead retailers to start using their stores as mini-warehouses so that merchandise can be shuttled quickly from one store to another in a city.

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JCPenney treated analysts to a tour of a remodeled store last week, showing how the chain means to reinvent its stores into a mini-mall of boutique shops with specialty and exclusive merchandise.

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Global's slightly larger version, about the size of a fist, called the iSwipe Mini, secures entranceways and can store 10, 000 iris identities, each compressed into a tiny 2-kilobyte file, and can scan 15 people per minute.

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