Since we re-upped our 2-year sentence, er term of service with Verizon in December of 2007, we're out of this fray for a few more months. But, I've been following with some interest all the dust flying and dirt flung in the redesign and technology laid bare in the mobile phone industry doings of late. This new upstart (and I use the term rightly) sounds like it might have a leg up on competitors.
I know everyone isn't at all interested in using their phones for more than phone calls to family and friends (of course the old saw of "well, I only have it for emergency use on the road" has been laid to waste for all those having seen less than about 70-80 summers on this planet), so I offer this link and chance to comment open only for those who DO use their phones for more than the wire-line equivalent.
What really brought this to my attention was an off-the-cuff comment by a person that the killer app for this phone might be to use the camera to read bar codes put in front of the lens, then process the bar code, then look on-line for other local (or remote) retailers' prices to allow comparison shopping wherever bar codes are in the clear.
What say? The comment line is open.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
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Don't hold your breath...
ReplyDeleteCueCat was pushed by Radio Shack, Wired, the Dallas Morning News, and others.
Since CueCat failed, others have been suggesting for 5 years using mobile phone cameras for similar marketing and other uses. The Mobile Codes Consortium published a mission statement pushing 2D barcodes which can be more easily read via mobile phone cameras. This was 21 months ago. ScanLife has been in the mobile barcode scanning business for quite a while.
The 2D Barcode Manifesto states as the #1 point: The potential of 2D barcodes is limited only by your imagination --- I have little confidence in those who start from this premise. :)
Push vs Pull barcode apps
Now (after I did all of this research) I found this: The Scannable World
Now that CTIA has just published a white paper on Camera-Phone Based Barcode Scanning, maybe some more attention will be directed at this by the big players.
The new Google phone might be a bit better at 1D barcodes, but I don't think this is proven yet. And I don't know if I want Google's servers to know about everything I am considering purchasing!
Tell us how you REALLY feel, Meester Beel. Whew. That really was a set of links, for sure. It will take me a while to absorb and review them all. I did already look at the three-part "Scannable World" article.
ReplyDeleteThanks.