Barcodes
Imagine what you could do if we had establish standards on certain products regarding barcodes. Mobile devices are becoming ubiquitous, and they are not just phones any more, they have computing capabilities and internet connection. This opens a plethora of opportunities to make our lives easier.
Case 1: What if product barcodes were easily recognizable by our phones, then when we’re in a store, we would just scan the barcode, and our phone would search within 5 miles of distance using location based services and find us stores that offer the same product for a cheaper price.
Case 2: You buy a microwave product, you scan the barcode to the microwave, it sets-up the temperature and cooking time automatically.
Case 3: You scan your receipt at a restaurant, your phone recognizes the price you have to pay, and calculates the tip for you, or even makes an online transaction over the internet.
You can easily come up with more interesting cases, there are endless opportunities. The question is, why is it not the case when we have all the technology we need?
This would be great if we, the consumer, could check to see if there were any recalls on a product before using. How about making a grocery list of items.
There would need to be multiple things that could be linked to find out additional information. Such as, logos, trademarks, 2D type barcodes, and the 1D type on the product, keywords, slogans, etc.
well I have to confess the first and the second ideas are great. especially I found the first one is extremely marketable and not so hard to implement.
First idea is implemented now:
http://code.google.com/android/adc_gallery/app.html?id=8