Some people will do just about anything to get their hands on another piece of hardware if only to play around with it. My latest adventure is the Nielsen Homescan scanner. Nielsen (of the well-known Nielsen Ratings for broadcast statistics) has enlisted a panel of thousands of American families to help them develop marketing patterns and trends. To monitor people's watching and listening habits, Nielson had to attach recording devices to radios and TVs and the people who were involved were pretty much only passively involved.
To measure consumer products purchasing the user (that would be me in this case) is equipped with a hand-held scanner to scan the products purchased. This information as well as where the products were purchased is uploaded through their handy little base/modem. From time to time we're also asked to participate in surveys although it looks like they will be strictly voluntary. What as I saying? The whole thing is voluntary. I can choose at any time to stop participating although they do want to their equipment back in that casee.
I was a little surprised to see that they're still relying on land based telephone connections to upload the information. I really expected them to connect through a USB port on a computer. I guess they'd lose a large segment of their target audience if they do that. Actually, there was a note to people who only have cell phones so maybe that is the group they'll be having use the USB connection.
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