Hand-held Shopping List Maker Takes Dictation and Prints

That's different.

From the website:

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SmartShopper Deluxe

This hand-held device uses state-of-the-art voice recognition technology to add items to your chosen list, then organizes items by category to make shopping a breeze.

• Comes preprogrammed to recognize the names of 2,500 items and errands

• Customizes with your favorite foods and recurring errands

• Easily adjust quantities or flag items that have coupons

• Prints on demand with  built-in ink-free thermal printer

• Magnetized for hanging; also mounts on wall

• Requires 4 AAA batteries (not included)

• Increases your shopping efficiency

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Goodness knows I could use an improvement in my shopping efficiency: even though I've shopped at the same Kroger since forever I still find myself wandering the aisles looking for Oreo Fun Stix and Giant Cheetos, et al.

About a million years ago it occurred to me that it would be so easy and relatively inexpensive and very customer-friendly to put dumb computer terminals at both ends of each aisle with the precise location — on a map of the store that featured a "you are here" indicator — of every available item, such that clicking on its name or putting it into a search box (or these days simply letting you say the name of whatever it was you were looking for) brought up its precise location on the store map.

I'm still looking for those terminals as well.

One other thing: If you want to get your money's worth from this device, best get one ASAP 'cause there'll be a free iPhone app that does the very same thing before you know it.

$99.50.

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That didn't take long: David Pogue, in his April 2, 2009 New York Times column, raved about Reqall, a free program for the iPhone and BlackBerry, writing, "Reqall transcribes your utterances into text and collates them at Reqall.com.... If your utterance contains the word 'buy,' then Reqall adds the transcript to a master shopping list.... At any time, you can call in to hear your shopping list read back to you, or request to have it text-messaged to your cellphone — a great feature when you're out on errands."

If Apple could only figure out a way to cram a printer into the iPhone....