Nick Lansley's Innovation Lab – Welcome to Nick Lansley's Innovation Lab blog and podcast at lansley.com incorporating the TechForTesco archive

This article is long in order to provide a step-by-step guide to how I wrote my Alexa Skill. Never too old to learn, I wanted to understand how to code and publish an Alexa skill. It’s an interesting mix of web technologies that work together to bring Alexa skills to […]

I’ve had published a new Alexa Skill (How-to walkthrough)

Economist TV, part of the Economist Intelligence Unit, invited me on-screen to interview me about the “innovation mindset” and how thinking that way can help businesses prosper: Full page link: https://www.eiuperspectives.economist.com/technology-innovation/innovating-scale/video/innovation-mindset

Watch: Talking about The Innovation Mindset on Economist TV

Podcast Episode 8: Making Technology Accessible

Why the future of e-commerce should be built using micro-services. Listen to the podcast episode here: The story is often the same: I’ll be approached by a startup that has created a great feature for customers that a retailer can bolt onto their service. On this occasion, the product or service […]

Time to smash your e-commerce platform. Literally!

Some three years ago, I was invited by Tesco’s London Format team to explore how we could use innovation techniques to enhance the customer experience in their small Express and Metro stores. When we started our meeting, I presented a list of ideas that I had seen from start-up companies […]

Amazon Go will bring the great shoplifter experience to customers

Every so often, on a stormy night when the sea is at high tide at Peacehaven, our clifftop home is on the receiving end of a shockwave! The waves hit the bottom of the cliffs when there is a lot of energy in the water at high tide, usually from […]

Sea Shockwave at Peacehaven!

The Internet Of Things In this episode, I talk about the Internet of Things (IoT) or ‘smart devices’, and have they have finally found their voice through Alexa, the Amazon Echo and Google Home. This changes everything because ‘ease of use’ is now solved. At least until I hack the […]

Podcast Episode 6: The Internet Of Things

Lee Munson, a researcher for security and privacy advice and comparison website, Comparitech.com, is warning Amazon UK customers to be particularly vigilant about the post-holiday deals they find on Amazon as it has caught out one seller in particular attempting to scam users out of money. The merchant, called Sc-Elegance, […]

Registered Amazon seller caught scamming customers

It’s always been easy (read: lazy) for me to organise a family or friends’ night out in nearby Brighton because we just take the cab to the centre and wander around exploring the many pub and restaurant delights. However, some local evening attractions around where we live in Peacehaven have […]

Local Businesses: Make sure you can be found as my ...

The Internet of Things has crept up on consumers quietly. For all the talk of a “smart home” and “connected devices”, several IoT forces have been coming together to create services that have finally started to engage people. However, many retailers have not thought of a way of being part […]

It’s time for retailers to use the “wake” word and ...

Over the years I have come to respect so-called FinTech (Financial Technology) startups that are re-shaping finance from borrowers & lenders markets through to mobile payments. It’s a fascinating area so I am happy to show this press release from alternative/crowdfunding finance brokerChoice Loans who have compiled an infographic on the subject. […]

Visual Guide to the Rise and Rise of Financial Technology

Yesterday I had problems accessing Twitter. I know, I’ll get over it, but in the meantime realising what caused the access issue served to highlight a vulnerability built into part of the internet’s technical design. The problem is.. well… us humans! We can’t remember numbers that well, and yet every computer […]

Internet-of-Things devices new threat to internet security

Supermarket chain Asda is working with business energy monitoring company Utilitywise to convert its stores into ‘smart buildings’ – a smart move in itself! Supermarket stores are highly complex systems – most equipment in such locations involves a degree of mechanical operation (think refrigerator motors, checkout moving belts, automatic doors, […]

Asda turning stores into smart buildings

(…or any other state, national or international lottery for that matter!) I know: the Europe-wide Euromillions Lottery pays tens of millions of the finest in European currencies to lucky jackpot winners every few weeks. Next time could it be you? More importantly, could it be me? So I set out to […]

Python code that suggests you are unlikely to win the ...

Happy birthday to Google! The now powerful search engine turned 18 years old today. So this means that all teenagers who are the same age as Google or younger have only known fast, efficient searching for anything they want in the world. Indeed the Google Generation! The thing is, the youngsters who […]

Google and the Google Generation! 18 years old today

sorry, Brython can't make the demo work on your browser ; check if Javascript is turned on If you’re reading this in a modern web browser window you should see a clock at the top of this post. Nice clock! Programmed in Python3 by a team called Brython (Browser-Python), it’s […]

JavaScript? My web browser runs Python! And BASIC! and…

I rarely recommend websites but will make an exception here as it’s taught me something! trainsplit.com is a UK rail ticket purchasing service which checks to see if your journey could be cheaper if you were to ‘stop’ at a station along the route to your destination. For example, I […]

Nice innovation: Buying Train Split-Tickets to Save Money

I couple of posts ago I showed you how poor shortwave radio propagation was as a storm passed over the UK – so I thought I’d show you ‘what good looks like’! Here is what an FM hamfax image looks like, transmitted from my home in south-east England tonight, and received across at […]

When shortwave conditions are good…!

I’ve had a couple of emails about the FAX transmission test I performed a couple of days ago, where I was highlighting the challenging band conditions while a low pressure weather system passed over the UK, suspending summer for a few days. I’m glad to say that we are back […]

Amateur Radio – fun with FAX tests

Saturday geek lunch and proof that radio conditions are as bad as the weather! This is a fax image I broadcast on 7 MHz shortwave just now – original for transmission (middle), received on nearby radio (bottom) and received just 400 miles away at the University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands […]

Poor conditions on shortwave as low pressure passes over the ...

Our increasing reliance on the Internet and the ease of access to the vast resource available online is affecting our thought processes for problem solving, recall and learning according to a new study in Memory. In the new article, researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz and University of Illinois, […]

How the Internet is increasingly taking over human memory

A great AM Stereo signal is on the air! However, before I use GnuRadio to construct an AM Stereo receiver. I wonder how this signal sounds on a standard AM radio? Pretty good! The video’s soundtrack reveals some audio distortion coming from the AM radio when I speak my callsign […]

Transmitting an efficient AM Stereo radio signal – Part 4

Let’s have a look at the radio signal I transmitted in part 2 – you’ll recall I used the QT GUI Frequency Sink and QT GUI Waterfall Sink to visualise the signal: In these two visualisations you can see, at the top, a waterfall of the signal. A waterfall is […]

Transmitting an efficient AM Stereo radio signal – Part 3

Before we conquer the AM broadcasting world with our newly efficient AM stereo signal, perhaps it might be good to start at the beginning and build a transmitter in GNURadio that will transmit a nice conventional AM mono broadcast signal. Hopefully, you have GNU Radio installed and you’ve started the […]

Transmitting an efficient AM Stereo radio signal – Part 2

One of several projects I earmarked for my summer break was to dive deep into my amateur radio hobby. As a radio ham I am able to transmit radio signals containing content from morse code to speech, images, video and digital data across the world. Specifically I wanted to scratch […]

Transmitting an efficient AM Stereo radio signal – Part 1

Test if your web browser is ‘truly random’

If your Ubuntu / Debian / Raspberry Pi operating system suddenly has difficulty trying to reach Google and other popular web sites, and your attempts to use apt-get seem to be very slow, it’s because your network ISP has switched you over to IPv6 from IPv4. Read on for a solution! My new […]

IPv6 and Ubuntu / Debian / Raspberry Pi slow updates

I wanted to explore the challenges retailers face with their data security, so I turned to expert David Share. David is Director and co-owner of Amazing Support. David agreed to explore the challenges in an article for this blog; his bio is below. Thanks David! The idea of targeting and scamming retailers […]

Big Threats to Big Box – How retailers must be ...

I’m delighted to relay to you that the brand new Tesco Labs API is now live. This next-generation API use the latest cloud tech to give you access to grocery product information at Tesco. Tesco Labs software engineer Pablo Coberly has posted an article on the Tesco Labs website introducing […]

Tesco Lab’s NextGen API now live!

Secure SSL Site image — This morning I’ve switched this blog to run as a secure service, using SSL. I’ve done this because I agree with the sentiment that what you read on the web is between you and the websites you visit, and not the business of anyone (or any machine) in between. Up […]

Secure! My words are safe with you…

View from my Moscow hotel window — I’ve just returned from an interesting trip to Moscow, where I was invited to speak at the Plus Alliance’s “3rd International Online and Offline Retail Forum 2016. Plus Alliance is an organisation much like the UK’s British Retail Consortium (BRC) promoting the needs of Russian retail through its forums, conferences […]

Online Retail in Russia

The Internet of Retail In the first episode of 2016 (5th overall!), I am interviewed by Telecom TV’s Martyn Warwick who was interested to learn of my past and thoughts on the state of innovation in Retail. This is where I talk about my angst against ‘omni-channel’ – rather […]

Podcast Episode 5: The Internet of Retail

Happy New Year! Oh, this is going to be an interesting time ahead… I’ll be getting into some interesting projects and conference speeches around the Internet Of Things – that’s smart devices for customers and the rise of the server-side MEAN stack (MongoDB, Express, AngularJS and Node.js) to support those […]

2016: The Year Of The Internet Of Things and MEAN ...

Close-up of the search 'notepad' feature — 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 […]

Tesco Pocket Shopper

Have a read of this article about the project I’m working on with David Smith, Head of Digital GS1 UK. It’s all about making a step change in the improvement of product description information on the web, using JSON format which is easily machine-readable. This post first appeared in […]

GS1 SmartSearch: Delivering more sales with structured product data

The Future of Robotics In this episode I explore the future of robots with robotics specialist Luke Hickton who is studying a Doctor of Philosophy on the interactions between robots and humans. Images: Above is a Scamperbot robot built using a 3D printer with onboard servos and arduino processor. Below […]

Podcast Episode 4: The Future of Robotics

UPDATE: All working now! Well done Adrian and the Tesco Labs engineering team. https://secure.techfortesco.com/tescoapiweb/login.aspx — Hello if you’ve reached this blog when you thought you were going to techfortesco.com’s API server. It’s OK, my lovely ex-colleagues at Tesco Labs are sorting out a new server to host the API and […]

Techfortesco server back online soon

This is a focused radio article for my fellow radio amateur enthusiasts 🙂 In this video I show you how to switch the on-screen menus from Chinese to English on a Kirisun DM680 digital mobile radio. I also give you a demonstration of a digital audio conversation, and show the […]

Kirisun DM680 – switching from Chinese to English plus digital ...

Innovations in Hackathons Hackathons are an excellent way of helping colleagues think up great ideas to solve problems (or ‘make things better’) and this episode takes you behind the scenes at the 2015 Retail Week House of Fraser Hackathon in association with Infosys. I designed the methodology behind this hackathon, […]

Podcast Episode 3: Innovation in Hackathons

I wanted to make an archive backup of my Parallels Windows 10 virtual machine file. The file itself is 54.51 GB, and I used Keka, a compressor application for OSX available from the Mac’s App Store to compress using the ‘more compression’ setting on each of five different compression standards: […]

A file compression experiment

Innovation in Data We live in the ‘Information Age’ where the creation and use of data is prolific. Data drives business operations, social media and more. Data is important, but my passion is for open data. That’s data that is freely available in data files that you can download and […]

Podcast Episode 2: Innovation in Data

I’ve just read in The Grocer that more than 7,000 Tesco head office staff are to be sent to work in-store between September and December this year. It’s weird to think that, after all these years, I won’t be stacking the shelves or picking online orders alongside my Tesco colleagues […]

Tesco “Feet On The Floor” returns… without me!

I’m delighted to be chairing the judging panel once again for the second hackathon event from Retail Week. Last year’s fantastic entries set a high bar and I’m looking forward to witnessing the creativity that will undoubtedly abound in this year’s group of teams! You can read up more about […]

Judging the 24-hour Retail Week House of Fraser Hackathon

Welcome to this first full episode of Innovation Lab! If a company describes itself as ‘innovative’, what are its employees actually doing differently? How does a company with a known culture of innovation actually work? To tackle these questions, Nick’s inaugural guest is Audun Clark, the former Head of innovation […]

Podcast Episode 1: The Culture of Innovation

If you have a Windows 7 or 8 PC and you really can’t wait until Microsoft gets round to sending you the upgrade application, you can get upgrading pretty much immediately. It just so happens that I run my Windows PC as a virtual machine (using Parallels) on my Mac […]

How to ‘force’ your Windows PC to upgrade to Windows ...

Welcome to the very first show from Innovation Lab, entitled ” “Innovation Lab – Episode 0: Introduction”. The purpose of this first episode is for me to work out how to record, produce and distribute a podcast, and for you to work out how to listen to it, make sure […]

Innovation Lab – Episode 0: Introduction

I’m delighted to announce that the Innovation Lab show is now airing as a podcast. It will appear on iTunes shortly (fingers crossed) but you can this feed manually to your podcast ‘receiver’ application to get listening immediately. Show notes and a direct link the audio file will also appear […]

Innovation Lab Podcast now airing!

Raspberry Pi 2 computer in a transparent case shown next to a UK 5p coin for size. — The new Raspberry PI 2 model B has arrived, and has just taken over from the the B+ Pi that has been running the weewx weather system for the last few months. Packing a faster ARMv7 CPU processor with 4 cores, and double the memory at 1024MB, there is much […]

New ‘Weather-Pi’ upgraded to Raspberry Pi 2

This weekend I wanted to ensure that lansley.com works well on all screens from standard web browsers to mobile and TV. After all I can hardly espouse about the internet of things if my own web site can’t work on them where applicable! I used the Google PageSpeed web site […]

The Joy of Async JavaScript

An example code block in AppInventor — The digital economy brings with it great opportunities for individuals with great ideas to bring them to life with no more than a computer, an internet connection, and some programming know-how. Ah yes, programming know-how. Back in the 1980s, personal computers encouraged a generation to try their hand at coding […]

Can’t Code? Don’t Code!

Here on the south coast at Peacehaven near Brighton, today’s (20 March 2015) solar eclipse reached 85% of the sun being blocked by the moon. So did the weather station on the roof of our house detect any variance in weather measurements? The answer is Yes …but only slightly. Let’s […]

Did the solar eclipse affect the local weather?

Dear friends, I just wanted to let you know that Tesco have amicably accepted my request for voluntary redundancy. After 27 amazing years of a career in computing and innovation, I will be leaving the Welwyn Garden City campus for the final time as a colleague on 13th April. When […]

Leaving Tesco after 27 amazing years

The unit in this picture is the Davis Vantage Vue weather seneor, which measures wind speed and direction, rainfall, atmospheric pressure, temperature and humidity. It’s mounted on a pole above the roof of our house, and updates a weather console with this data ervery few seconds. Inside the weather console […]

Access live weather metrics from our new home!

It’s new year and time to get stuck into my big project for 2015 which is to experiment with technology that together form the ‘connected home’. In simple terms, connected home tech consists of sensors that detect and measure various pieces of information in the home environment and devices that […]

The Connected Home Project

Building on my previous post of listening to radio by re-streaming it as a compressed stream, here is a simpler way of encoding the audio straight to your computer’s speakers” You’ll need to install ‘RTL-SDR’ (as before) and also ‘sox’. From Ubuntu and similar linux distros, the command is: sudo […]

Simply listen to an FM broadcast station using RTL-SDR

* UPDATED to reflect reader experiences * I’ve been playing with a great command-line software-defined radio command called RTL_FM (part of RTL-SDR) and used it with FFMPEG to create a 128Kbps MP3 stream of the radio signal I am receiving. On my Mac (OSX) I use MacPorts to install rtl-sdr […]

Using RTL_FM and FFMPEG to stream radio audio over network

Earlier in this blog I’ve shown you an FM signal, so now it’s time to show you the newer digital equivalent! Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) is becoming popular in the UK, and most modern radio sets sold have DAB reception capability. DAB offers a greater choice of radio stations than […]

Radio signals are beautiful: DAB Radio

PMR446 analogue and digital signals — In the UK and other European Union countries, a set of radio channels have been allocated for use by the general public licence-free. Known as PMR446 (Public Mobile Radio on 446 MHz), a set of 8 analogue narrowband FM channels and 16 digital narrowband FDMA (Frequency Division Multiple Access) channels […]

Comparison of Analogue (NFM) and Digital (FDMA) Signals in PMR446 ...

As a radio ham I have recently become interested in a new branch of the hobby called Software Defined Radio (SDR). SDR is a radio system where the classic components of a radio receiver or transmitter has been replaced by a computer program, It’s only in recent times that domestic […]

Radio Signals Are Beautiful: SDR and FM

Good grief 2012 already..er Happy New Year! Sorry for the radio silence on this blog recently; it has been non-stop for everyone here getting all their projects in before the IT change-freeze. The change-freeze is that magical day when all us programmers take our hands off our keyboards and let […]

New Year? Wow that was quick!

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 […]

Tesco demonstrates augmented reality with Kishino

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 – […]

Thank you, Steve Jobs, for inspiring me so much.

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 […]

Tesco Triathlon app review

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 […]

Speak or Scan – Tesco Groceries for Android launches

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) […]

Why losing to a womens network made me stand up ...

Romford going well, off on holiday now!

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 […]

In-store ‘Sat-nav’ up and working now in a Tesco branch ...

Sometimes it’s worth taking the team and escaping from the office for some fresh air and fresh thinking, specially when some of the extended team are joining us for the week having escaped from Tesco’s offices in Bangalore, India. The thinking doesn’t get any fresher than when it takes place […]

Tesco.com R&D Day Out

Forgive me for my occasional digression from tech, but occasionally such interesting events happen that I sometimes decide to cover them here. Regular readers will know that I am a member of Tesco Diversity Council which ensures that ‘Everyone is welcome at Tesco‘. I am also a committee member for our lesbian, […]

Philip Clarke blogs about ‘Out at Tesco’ gay staff network

Reading this article, on the surface you’ll think of us as boys playing with toys. The actual thing is, Microsoft’s new Kinect XBox games controller offers so much opportunity in the retail and business space that we’ve already thought of uses we could put it to inside Tesco. Why? Well […]

Microsoft Kinect opens the ‘Recognition’ door

Another day in the office for the R&D and Mobile teams! (click for bigger picture). A photographer from The Grocer magazine was in our office during last week taking pics as part of a profile interview of Tesco.com R&D, and I insisted that the key players who had helped shape […]

The Cable Guys (and Girls)

My Windows Phone 7 phone arrived this week in the form of the HTC 7 Trophy. After the joy of iPhone 4 and the unexpected sluggishness of my HTC Desire HD, how would the new phone stack up – and how easy is it to develop for? In this image Nick holds […]

Windows Phone 7 – This Week’s Unexpected Joy

You know, just when you think that work couldn’t get any more, well frankly exciting – along comes something that blows me away completely, New Media Age have just nominated me, along with five other worthy individuals, for their “Greatest Individual Contribution to New Media” category at this year’s NMA […]

Wow! Nominated for Greatest Contribution to New Media!

If you love what we, at Tesco.com, have created with our mobile apps (and think we could ‘do better’ of course!), it’s time you came and joined the team at Tesco.com HQ in Welwyn Garden City. Yes we have an amazing vacancy for a ‘Mobile Product Owner’ who will help […]

VACANCY! Come and join the mobile team at Tesco.com

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 […]

Buy the right to watch the movie and NOT worry ...

Image: Sign pointing the way to the Games Maker Selction Event Click on any image in this article for a much bigger version and, where applicable, read some of the detailed text on the boards shown in the photo. You can re-use any of these pictures without permission as long as you […]

My London 2012 Olympic Games Maker Tech interview

Today is “Email: Say It In The Subject!” Day! This is where the emails you write to your friends and colleagues have all the vital information contained in the subject of the message rather than in the body. The aim of today’s experiment is to see if, when you receive […]

Today is “Email: Say It In The Subject!” Day

This blog is committed to doing its bit to help the Tesco Charity of the Year 2011 – Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer’s Scotland – and I need your help! On Friday 27th and Saturday 28th May is the first nationwide Tesco charity event taking place with help from the local […]

Take part in our “BIG Collection” for Alzheimer’s Society

“Let him who has been blessed, give blessing.” I would just like to thank Professor John Naughton and his team for giving me the opportunity to speak last night as part of the Arcadia lecture series at Wolfsen College, Cambridge University. I enjoyed the most interesting of conversations with some […]

Benedictus benedicat!

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 […]

Tonight’s Lecture at Cambridge (Arcadia Programme)

Those of you who read the blog via its web page will have noticed the graphical makeover and the appearance of a can of Tesco Baked Beans & Pork Sausages being nudged by a robotic hand: The “can and hand” logo is one that stretches back to the dawn of […]

Evolved: The Tesco.com “Can and Hand” logo

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 […]

Two of our delivery vans are missing…

Mike Brearley is Lead IT Developer at Tesco.com’s Central Delivery Service team. Authoring this article, Mike reveals how tracking our delivery vans is adding value to the service we provide customers. Currently we have thousands of Tesco delivery vans delivering to our customers across the UK and Ireland. Each van is fitted […]

Where’s My Shopping?

Congratulations to my colleagues in the branch team for the new Tesco Express opening today on the International Space Station. It took some doing but the team tell me they wanted to provide great food to the astronauts – somewhat better than the gooey tube food they have had to […]

Tesco Express opens on International Space Station

I’d like you to take a look at a section of my email inbox showing incoming email subjects: Taking a look at the subject list above – what are these emails about? Which ones allow me to get a good understanding of the content without spending time opening them – especially when […]

Email: Say It In The Subject – and take part ...

After 16 months of loyal service to customers, our R&D project application Tesco Wine Finder for iPhone has now been finally removed from sale. The application has reached a natural end-of-life as an R&D project. It has been downloadable from the iTunes App Store since December 2009 using our Tesco.com […]

Tesco Wine Finder application reaches R&D end-of-Life

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’ […]

Next-Generation Picking Computers

At the Retail Week conference, Ocado CFO Andrew Bracey admitted that they scrape the Tesco grocery site in order to get Tesco prices with which they price match with 8,000 of their own products. Sitting in the audience, I was intrigued by Ocado’s admission that they scrape our site (that […]

Ocado admits to scraping Tesco web site to get price-matches

The mobile team who created the sumptuous Tesco Recipes for iPad application have just informed me that the new version has gone live on Apple’s iTunes App Store. If you have already downloaded this free iPad app before then you’ll be prompted to update the application when you enter the […]

New version of Tesco Recipes for iPad now live on ...

I’m just about to leave home to take the tube to the Retail Week Conference (at the Hilton London Metropole on Edgware Road). If you are also attending the conference, I’m on stage for “Stream C – Technology” from 11:20am so do grab a seat in that conference theatre so I can […]

See you at the Retail Week Conference 2011

If you work at Tesco HQ and/or have a Tesco computer account then you can read my new blog, Techfortesco Extra (T4T+), where I can often write in more detail about subjects than I can in the public domain. As long as your computer is logged in to the Tesco internal network for UK and Ireland, […]

Techfortesco Extra blog available on internal Tesco intranet

Hats off to Dawinderpal Sahota, a journalist with Computing, who has written a great article about my application to be a volunteer Olympic Games Maker at London 2012. Dawinderpal echoes my sentiment: Come on, get involved and join me and the thousands of other Games Makers as we use our skills and […]

Nice Computing article about me becoming an Olympic Games Maker

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 […]

Careers at Tesco.com

I’ve just received an email from the London 2012 organising committee accepting my application to become one of thousands of Olympic Gamesmakers that will help keep the two weeks of the Olympic games running smoothly between 27 July to 12 August 2012. The committee detected that I have a technology background […]

My London 2012 Olympic Gamesmaker Technology Interview

If you’re a regular reader to this blog you’ll remember the article I wrote back in October about web browser trends on our web site (http://techfortesco.blogspot.com/2010/10/web-browser-trends-on-tescocom-site.html). In that article I showed a graph (reproduced below) displaying the gradual decline – but significant usage – of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) […]

Watch the demise of IE6 LIVE on a Microsoft web ...

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 […]

This blog supports the Tesco Charity of the Year, Alzheimer’s ...

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 […]

Tesco receipt-based Price Check – live!

If you are old enough to remember the excellent BBC show “Challenge Anneka” you’ll recall the format where Anneka Rice is given some seemingly impossible task to deliver on a specific date. For (contrived!) example, she reads out a card which says: “On May 1st the Mayor of AcmeTown will […]

Writing and publishing an Alexa Skill

Nick on Economist TV

Smash Your E-commerce Platform!

Making Technology Accessible