Supermarket chain Sainsbury's are going to roll out high-tech labelling of products to a store in Shoreditch as part of a trial.

The labels, which sit on shelves, are programmed by a specially trained store staff member and can then be updated remotely. This is a massive long-term advantage for a supermarket as it means they don't need to waste in-store employee time re-labeling goods when there's an offer on, or if they need to raise or lower the price.The labels, once set up, are managed centrally and can be adjusted remotely. In the future, if these are in every store, that would give you power to change prices at a moment's notice.

A store manager also tweeted an image of a red one, which follows Sainsbury's colour coding for special offer items. The pilot is really just to see how feasable the project is over the long term, but it is about time we saw an update to old-fashioned paper tickets. Sansbury's points out it will save a huge amount of paper too, which has an environmental benefit.

It assures us that the system is secure too, so there will be no way for hackers to reduce prices to £0.01 on everything. Although we do hope someone has a go anyway.