"Pull" Barcode Scanning Could Be Android's Killer App 296
Seor Jojoba writes "The release of T-Mobile's G1 Smartphone is shifting focus away from push-based barcode scanning, where embedded URLs send you to locations of a vendor's choosing. There is now more interest in pull-scanning, where product information is retrieved from user-specified sources. It may be that QR-Codes and other 2D barcodes will have their thunder stolen by 1970s-era linear barcodes. On the iPhone, scanning a 1D barcode is slow and unreliable. But the G1's improved optics and Android's improved access to image scans has made 1D scanning quick and useful, opening the gateway for killer apps that help people make spending decisions."
Simple number recgonition would work too (Score:3, Interesting)
I have bar code scanning on my latest phone. It doesn't work. The camera just keeps going in and out of focus. Having never had much to do with barcodes in my IT work, I decided to look at open source bar code readers and scanned in the bar codes on a few things (like my son's birth certificate). I looked and the standards and my own scans quickly found that often the number was often printed right beneath the barcode. Barcodes were made when computers were slow and had trouble doing OCR. They're a lot better now. Bar code scanning is still useful to some degree but to call it a killer app is a bit much.
Already in Japan and seems to be working (Score:2, Interesting)
Scan bar code? (Score:3, Interesting)
I just did an experiment and indeed the phone does not seem to be able to take a reliable picture of a bar code. I don't think it has to do with resolution as much as the crappy lens inherent in cell phone cameras along with the the fact that cell phone cameras were not made for macro photography, a tricky proposition even with a real cameras. To take back the resolution thing, a higher resolution may let the software extract the bar from a normal, non macro, photo.
So here are my two questions. First, is the lens on the G1 that much better? Second, Isn't this fundamentally a software problem. A bar code is a defined form with a known and rigid structure. Even with a blurry/fuzzy photograph, it should be possible to clean up the bars. For that matter, why are we even dealing with bars. The numbers are there under the bars. Why not use those?
In any case, how many people use this application? This is the first I heard of it. I certainly don't go around taking pictures of bar codes. The only time I thought about doing it was for my library, but a scanner seems like a faster solution.
Re:smells like a polecat (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, what a great idea that was. Let's give away scanners, and then people can scan a barcode and be taken to a website, so its ad supported. Problem was, to get that barcode, you pretty much had to own the item, at which time, you were like, um, what is the point of researching the item AFTER you buy it. Kind of a gimick.
Sadly, the CueCat did have a very practical application that I used it for, but I had to hack it first. There is a program out there called CatNip that will let you use the CueCat as a standard light pen. When combined with a a databasing program for media such as those from CollectorZ, which refrences your material to stuff it pulls off the internet, you suddenly have a very cool product. I can now scan a UPC symbol on a movie, it pulls the description off of IMDB and cover art from Amazon or DVDEmpire or one of the dozens of other DVD sites out there, and makes a nice list. I can then specify where the movie is located, and even check movies out to my friends, and know where they all are through this cool app. I can then publish the whole list to html and upload it to a site, so now all my friends can see what movies I have.
So, yes, the CueCat was very cool and useful and I still use mine. Problem is, I found absolutely ZERO value in what they were actually trying to use it for.
Interesting. (Score:5, Interesting)
You can reinvent something 10 years later that people have done for years, and now it is a "killer app". If Google does it, apparently, idiots pay attention and it is suddenly, somehow, feasible and marketable.
How Stores and Manufacturers will respond (Score:2, Interesting)
If this concept of "i'll just scan this bar code and find out that there's a cheaper one across the street" becomes common practice, stores will just shift to having all unique bar codes. You can already see this with certain products. There will be a store-specific UPC/model number at Walmart vs Target vs Best Buy.
Babylon 5 and the ringtone model. (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's hope they don't. But really, that's the nice thing about an open platform. unless they absolutely decide to kill it, it'll fly because the consumers want it to. And that's different from any other platform -- American cell phone systems have tried desperately (and largely succeeded) in absolutely killing anything the customer might want, because they see everything as a revenue stream ala ring-tones.
It's bizarre. If the customer wants it, the telcos gleefully KILL IT and give them a crippled, pay-as-you-go version. This when the cell phone manufacturers are begging them to take phone with features, so the manufacturers can get some market cred/traction. But no, the cell phone carriers demand that features in phones be killed.
Sigh. It's been embarrassing. You go to just about any other country and they've got better phones than use. Why? Because the telcos have the American consumer by the balls, thanks to a hefty lobbyist (read as "bribery") budget.
But unless I'm missing something, here, if a telco supports an Android based phone, the consumer gets control and whistles and bells. Period.
Hence, either telcos accept android based phones, or ...
They SAY they will and phone manufacturers make 18 models of android phone, and then the telcos say, "GREAT! We love it! Just disable this and this and this." The phone manufacturers say "Sure!" and the phones go out, and we fix them. This happens for one year, and the telcos start telling the manufacturers to drop Android, or they won't buy their cheaper, crappier phones in bulk. And the manufacturers will get very, very afraid, and mysteriously stop supporting Android.
We'll see. I hope this represents a real change.
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It's not the acting. When just one actor stinks, that's acting. When they all stink, that's writing and directing. Mostly directing. And it's not that you get inured to it, Straczynski and his helpers got better at it.
Re:Freedom is the killer app (Score:2, Interesting)
Stores already fuck it up by putting their own stickers over the barcode (see Borders), or using display cases without barcodes on 'em at all (e.g. console games.)
In those cases, you need to fall back to standard type and search. CDs often have the barcode number printed on the spine too - and sometimes it's the same as the catalogue number. Books have ISBNs and/or you can search by banging in the book and author name.
Want to use barcodes for price-comparison now? Try summat like http://ewelike.com/ and add the barcode to the URL (e.g. http://ewelike.com/5030930059064 for Mercenaries 2 on Xbox 360 (UK))
Stores can probably stop you barcode scanning already using their "no photography allowed" rules. But using your mobile phones web-browser...? They can't stop that - can they?
barcode scanning crap (Score:3, Interesting)
And then Google will release a standard search engine plugin which the majority of non-technical users will then simply use by default. Plus the Google one could even be pre-installed by default. Google then gets the information they origonally designed this feature for. The ability to know what products the majority of users are interested in. This is just like Google's way of profiling searches on their web site, to then workout from an advertisers point of view, what products people are interested in. Now Google will be able to extend that goal onto knowing what physical products we scan in. Its another step towards their goal of total information awareness on people.
It would be interesting to combine this barcode scanning data with GPS data, as that would then give a lot more infomation.
Google wants to becoming Big Brother. Because with total information comes huge power (even political power) and with huge power they have the potential to earn huge amounts of money profiling everyone, to then sell that data to advertisers. But then even political campaign's need to be advertised and marketed, so Google is aiming to become litrally Big Brother.
Well, lemme give you an example (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I don't know about him, but I _have_ been stuck in a line while someone is arguing with the cashier what the price should be.
E.g., I wanted to buy some computer component at some point, so I go to a local small computer store. What do you know? Both guys behind the counter are stuck respectively with:
1. Someone who couldn't decide if she wants her new computer without a power supply or without the CD-ROM drive, because she apparently didn't have the money for the complete sum. So she's standing there debating the merits of getting a computer that won't start, vs a computer she can't install stuff on.
2. A couple which wanted to buy some TV decoder card. But they had a price list from another shop, for another product, and were prepared to argue all evening why the product in this shop should cost the same. The talk went roughly like this:
Buyer: "But your competitors sell the same thing for less!"
Clerk: "Well, it's not the same thing in the first place. That model is from another manufacturer and does less."
Buyer: "But they sell it cheaper! Why can't you match their price?"
Clerk: "Because it's a different product and has a different price. See, this one also has <insert list of features>, and the manufacturer sells it for more."
Buyer: "But I don't care much about those features, so for me they're the same. And those other guys sell it cheaper."
Clerk: "So buy it that model from them, then."
Buyer: "But I want this one..."
Clerk: "Well, ok, that'll be X euros then."
Buyer: "Why do I have to pay that, when your competitors sell the same thing for less?"
Clerk: "Because it's not the same thing."
That conversation ran around in circles like a broken record for half a fucking hour. Well, probably more, because it was already going when I arrived, and it was still going when I just left the shop half an hour later. There's a huge line of people inside the shop, people getting fed up and leaving all the time, but the idiot just won't give up. He wants product X at the price of product Y, 'cause they're in the same category.
I can just see this kind of thing happening with a camera phone just as well. Only now the idiots don't even have to get the price list of the other shop first. They can now do it on the fly.
Re:Babylon 5 and the ringtone model. (Score:3, Interesting)
You know, I've witnessed this trend, and I wasn't sure what to make of it, but it is happening. I had a Motorola SLVR -- kind of an underpowered phone, but an attractive candybar style phone nevertheless. One feature it had which I liked was the ability to use voice dialing with a bluetooth headset.
When I upgraded to a Samsung A737, I got a phone which was much more capable in some ways (faster processor and more memory, thus faster at running Java apps and so forth), but I noticed that voice dialing was not built into the phone. If you want to do voice dialing, AT&T will be happy to charge you for the service -- the provider has moved that feature out of the phone and into their network, where they can monetize it.
So now I no longer do voice dialing, in part because I refuse to reward telco greed.