If you had to put money on which software developer would have been among the first to take advantage of Windows 7’s new touch technology, few would have placed a tenner on Tesco.

Yet, the supermaket goliath joined Microsoft on the stage here at PDC in LA this week, to unveil a prototype shopping application that the company hopes will be launched by the second half of next year.

Although not a solely Windows 7 touch application – it works with a mouse/keyboard and XP/Vista too – the software gives a glimpse into how touchscreen PCs could be used in places like the kitchen, where there’s not always space for a mouse and keyboard.

The software acts as a message board, a calendar, a picture pinboard – and of course a place to do your online shopping without even thinking about it. Recipe and meal suggestions constantly pop-up, with the option to add ingredients to your shopping basket, simply by dragging and dropping them from one side of the screen to the other.

It’s hard to get a feel from these screenshots, but the software contains lots of nice 3D touches, such as the option to spin around birthday cakes with the flick a finger to take a look at the decoration on the back, and even the lift the cake out of the box. The feature that got the PDC crowd most animated was the integrated barcode scanner, which means you can wave your empty milk carton in front of your webcam and it will automatically be added to your shopping basket.

Tesco’s head of R&D, Nick Lansley, told me that the company is working with university students to port the application to the iPhone. He’s also not ruling out the possibility of building it into dedicated hardware. “We’re prepared to look at a special Tesco appliance,” he said, although pre-installing it on the PCs that Tesco already sells is a more likely option.

Lansley insists the supermarket won’t use it to track users’ shopping habits (at least, not any more than it does so already with its Clubcard scheme). But Tesco is opening up the APIs, so that partners can build thier own promotional widgets into the software. It makes cutting coupons out of the newspaper look so last century…