How to shop more efficiently -part 2

Shopping Tomorrow
Virtual mirrors and dressing rooms
The biggest downside to online shopping has always been the inability to try on clothes, shoes and other wearable items before you buy, to see whether they will fit and how they will look once they're out of your computer and in your closet. After all, there are no dressing rooms and mirrors in cyberspace, right? Wrong. A new technology called augmented reality is on the brink of making virtual mirrors and virtual dressing rooms a virtual reality, which will enable online shoppers to check the fit and look of garments and accessories in advance. Ray-Ban already offers a virtual mirror to help online shoppers choose the sunglasses that are right for them, and other merchants are experimenting with applications that allow online shoppers to "try on" clothes or test different shades of makeup before making a purchase.
See before you buy
Augmented reality technology, combined with digital signage, is also on track to improve the in-store shopping experience. At the Disney Store in downtown Orlando, Fla., for example, a new LEGO kiosk allows shoppers to hold up a box to the screen and have the contents displayed as an interactive 3-D image that shows how the dozens of colorful plastic blocks inside will actually look after they are assembled. Shoppers can then move the image around and examine the assembled product from every angle.
Smarter smartphones
More than 70 million people in the United States will use mobile phones to access the Internet in 2009, according to eMarketer, but that's just a drop in the bucket compared to the flood of smartphone surfing and shopping the future will bring. Already,merchants as diverse as Ralph Lauren and Sears -- not to mention online retail leaders such as Amazon.com -- have launched programs to take advantage of the trend toward mobile commerce. As new retail capabilities are added to mobile phones, and once the devices are able to support secure credit card transactions, more and more consumers will let their fingers do the shopping. New smartphone features that are already in the works, and expected to improve and increase mobile shopping, include:
• Built-in bar code scanners or other technologies will enable you to scan a product with your smartphone, gain instant access to pricing and warranty information, and simultaneously transmit information to a specially designed search engine that will send back product reviews, comparative data and other information to help you make an informed decision.
• Green shopping smartphone applications will allow you to scan or send images of food products and receive information about their ingredients and packaging, the size of their carbon footprint and whether they are organic or non-organic, locally grown or fair-trade certified.
• Pay phone options that will enable you to swipe your phone like a credit or debit card to pay for purchases at the cash register.
• Video conferencing for smartphones will enable better and more direct customer service and support as well as a new generation of online personal shoppers and sales consultants. Concerned about the small screen on your smartphone? Try one of the soon-to-be-released projector phones that can display a large-format image on any nearby wall or flat surface.

Note:
Virtual: You can use virtual to indicate that something is so nearly true that for most purposes it can be regarded as true.
Augment: To augment something means to make it larger, stronger, or more effective by adding something to it. (FORMAL)
A drop in the bucket: you can use a drop in the bucket to indicate something that is not obvious
Ingredient: Ingredients are the things that are used to make something, especially all the different foods you use when you are cooking a particular dish.
Swipe: If you swipe at a person or thing, you try to hit them with a stick or other object, making a swinging movement with your arm.