So you're in the grocery store, and can't find the salsa or the soap, or you can't remember one ingredient on that recipe you left at home.

A Plano company may have solved your shopping dilemma with what they call a super-smart "shopping assistant" on four wheels.

Call it a smart shopping cart on steroids.

"Cereal hot, ready to eat, or cereal bars, which do you want?"

A rolling encyclopedia of food products, recipes, nutrition and price comparisons that changes from aisle to aisle.

Or a map that shows where to go for hard-to-find items.

"Cereal, ready-to-eat, that's what I want. Now it shows me the map OK. Follow the arrows," said Medicart CEO, Steve Carpenter.

All of it displayed in full-motion video on a high-resolution screen.

It's called Media-Cart and is offered by a 7-year-old Plano company ready for a nationwide roll-out in a matter of weeks.

Retailers are operating on a razor-thin margin, they're trying to find ways to attract and retain customers. And consumers today are becoming much more technology savvy.

Not everything's high-tech about the media-cart. The shopping experience starts with an old-fashioned brown grocery bag. But it goes in first, so the shopper bags products himself, and the cart keeps track.

At check-out time, the cart tells the register what's inside, confirms the total, and the shopper can be out in seconds.

The technology's RFID, or radio frequency identification.

The store installs tiny tags on each shelf that emit a radio signal, telling the cart where it is.

The cart holds a computer with all the digital ads and product data, which is called up automatically, based on location in the store, or what the shopper wants to know.

"That information gets downloaded to the cart through our store server, the cart then knows when it's in front of the cards, or the appropriate position, to play the ad, based on the RFID tag," said software developer Ed Gross.

It can even download a food vendor's suggested recipe and e-mail it home, or receive a shopping list sent to the cart by someone else.

But Steve, doesn't that give my wife a little too much control?

No comment.