From a groom’s perspective, registering, and wedding planning in general, is a huge drag. It’s all about the bride. That’s why I was so unenthusiastic about spending a day at a suburban Boston mall picking out china patterns, tablecloths and bedsheets with my fiancŽe and her mother. But I was pleasantly surprised.Our first stop was Bloomingdale’s. As soon as we showed up at the registry desk, the lady smiled and handed me a plastic gun. She explained that it’s a scanner gun; we simply go through the store zapping the bar code of anything we want, and it’s immediately entered into our registry. I started stalking through the aisles like Arnold Schwarzenegger, blasting away at everything in sight. I saw another guy making laser noises as he pointed his gun. I did the same thing until Brett, my fiancŽe, made me stop. But Bloomie’s knew what it was doing: an appliance that produces homemade Mickey Mouse-shaped waffles is solely the result of an itchy trigger finger.I had so much fun at Bloomingdale’s that I raced to our next stop, Ross-Simon, which started as a catalog company and seemed to be making a rocky transition to store and Web shopping. Its registry clerks used WordPerfect for DOS on monochrome screens, and they couldn’t bring up images of items. If the store was sold out of something or you wanted a catalog item, you couldn’t order it while actually in the store. Our last stop was Crate & Barrel. No guns; they made us walk around with a metal clipboard and a carbon-paper order log. Brett stuck me on clipboard duty, and as she picked things out, I painstakingly wrote in every item, its price, its SKU number and the quantity desired, entering everything in the right category. It was cumbersome, and left a lot of room for human error and not much fun. But its computers were up-to-date, and the store, catalog and Web selections were consistent. The checkout person said the company would be testing a gun at its Chicago stores this spring. Most important, its martini glasses are pretty cool. I’ll cut them some slack for that. Related content brandpost Sponsored by SAP What goes well with Viña Concha y Toro wines? Meat, fish, poultry, and SAP Viña Concha y Toro, a wine producer that distributes to more than 140 countries worldwide, paired its operation with the SAP Business Technology Platform to enhance its operation and product. By Tom Caldecott, SAP Contributor Dec 04, 2023 4 mins Digital Transformation brandpost Sponsored by Azul How to maximize ROI by choosing the right Java partner for your organization Choosing the right Java provider is a critical decision that can have a significant impact on your organization’s success. By asking the right questions and considering the total cost of ownership, you can ensure that you choose the best Java p By Scott Sellers Dec 04, 2023 5 mins Application Management brandpost Sponsored by DataStax Ask yourself: How can genAI put your content to work? Generative AI applications can readily be built against the documents, emails, meeting transcripts, and other content that knowledge workers produce as a matter of course. By Bryan Kirschner Dec 04, 2023 5 mins Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence feature The CIO’s new role: Orchestrator-in-chief CIOs have unique insight into everything that happens in a company. Some are using that insight to take on a more strategic role. By Minda Zetlin Dec 04, 2023 12 mins CIO C-Suite Business IT Alignment Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe