Slashdot Mirror

Half-way there already. We know the conditions at Wal-Mart, so auto-fill those for every item on the shelf there. Then you just need information on the foreign suppliers, since you can assume the domestic ones are minimum wage, no health insurance. And many of those foreign stories are already out there. Since there is a manufacturer code in the UPC, you only need to fill information for a small subset of items, and carry over the info to the items with the same mfr code.

http://www.upcdatabase.com/

It's a lot easier than you think, but the last 10% of cleaning it up will be the hard work.

So it uses color. Big deal.

What more needs to be coded beyond a product code (hint: UPC)?

I'll bet you have to make the "pixels" larger than ordinary barcodes, due to the use of color and the unusual shape. If you assume that each "pixel" is worth one bit, then you only need two (4 values) or three (8 values) black pixels to hold the same number of values as one color "pixel". If the color pixels have to be twice as big in both dimensions, then they will require more space than ordinary black ones.

Then you have to worry about fading. Color dyes fade much faster than black ones, so don't leave your posters out in the sun for very long.

Just using the UPC number, you could tie it to a web site easily: something like http://upcdatabase.com/ which could then re-direct as needed.

I have to congratulate you on your persistance. But Strawberry Crush? You seriously drink that? Maybe they didn't send you the cheque because of your taste in soda.

This site seems to do the same thing without the nifty webcam-scanner and has been around a lot longer and is cue-cat compatible. It probably has much more in its database.

You could try this site: http://www.upcdatabase.com/ that has been previously mentioned.

It has a million household uses! Well, uh... You can take inventory of your food and spices, scan them in and out of the refrigerator and cupboards, and let the computer tell you when it is time to make more. Well, you'll have to program that yourself actually. But let's say you have something that is missing _most_ of the label but still has the barcode intact. You can use this database to find out what it is! See how handy this is?

I have to wonder if these fine folks have heard of an already existing free UPC database? :)
http://www.upcdatabase.com/

Or just calculate the check digit.

http://www.upcdatabase.com/docs/upc-a.html

Make up your own. They're just UPC-A barcodes on the back. I have a friend who has a card that everyone in their family uses. They get nifty discounts (like ten percent off store brands) because they spend so much with that card. Well, I lifted the number from a receipt (just get two or three of them, and find what numbers match, that's probably the club card number), and print out your own.

If you don't have a UPC-A font for your computer, you can use the UPC database (example: http://www.upcdatabase.com/item.pl?upc=72225210400 7 ). Just put the number in. The check digit should be included (it's the 12th digit), but you could always guess. Only takes a max of ten tries.

You can dupe pretty much any store club card this way.

"All you need is a barcode printer "

No barcode printer necessary. A regular run of the mill printer will print barcodes just fine. I did this a few years ago when I was archiving my media collection, some of the items didn't have a UPC printed on the case or media so I had to print my own. If I was able to print with an old canon bubbljet and read with a cheap (free actually) CueCat
then I'm sure they could do the same.

"some software which are publicly available for a few hundred dollars"

There are several barcode generators available online for free. There is even a database of UPC's available here, which is fairly extensive, I tried picking random things with barcodes up once, and it recognized almost all of them.

"The hard part is finding a checker who won't notice. I can't figure out that one."

If you've been to a walmart recently you've probably notice they now have self check out lines, you just scan your items, it calcualtes your charge and you can pay with cash or credit. I can see very easily how you could get away with it.

I found it interesting that I could actually read barcodes directly off my screen, though it often took a few swipes. But it goes to show that barcode readers aren't really that finicky about reading barcodes.

Like http://www.upcdatabase.com/?

that the American Flag barcode in the New York Times article is of a 12 oz jar of Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter?

If you don't have a CueCat hooked up, you can google the barcode and it provides you a link to the UPC Database. Never mind the practical implications of googling a barcode for a product you have right in front of you...

that the American Flag barcode in the New York Times article is of a 12 oz jar of Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter?

If you don't have a CueCat hooked up, you can google the barcode and it provides you a link to the UPC Database. Never mind the practical implications of googling a barcode for a product you have right in front of you...

Google also allows you to do a lookup on a UPC code.. (it actually uses the database from www.upcdatabase.com)

works great if you have one of those modified cue cats

someone will probably have to provide the information behind these magic new URLs like UPC:3466745689.

In that case, the manufacturer would be a good bet...

Bet again.

UPCs are provided to manufacturers by the UCC (United Code Council). If you pay enough money, you can have access to their entire up-to-date database. If you don't want to pay, you can try sites like the UPC database, but they lack many entries.

>Part of the barcode would have to identify the movie, and part probably the date.

Not really. The barcode would most likely be a unique primary key with a few random digits that corresponded to a database entry with the theater, time, showing, price, and film.

Just like UPC codes work, the information about the product you're buying isn't actually encoded in the barcode. The barcode is just a unique number. UPC readers query a database that you can even look up here.

The Book-Scanning Project

This guy wrote some Python scripts to convert UPC's to ISBN's - it can be done - and then feed them into Amazon's search engine. Very interesting, and he's already done it, so he has some experience.

However, you might be interested to note this update that he's added to the upcdatabase.com page:

The reason I can't distribute the database is that over half of the data is 'borrowed', more or less -- with permission, mind you -- and I do not have permission to redistribute the lot.

HOWEVER, I have recently made plans to remove that data from the database, so that the database can be redistributed. That would take the total number of entries down from almost a half million entries, to something like 200,000 entries. If you have any opinions on this plan, please let me know -- webmaster@upcdatabase.com.

However, you might be interested to note this update that he's added to the upcdatabase.com page:

The reason I can't distribute the database is that over half of the data is 'borrowed', more or less -- with permission, mind you -- and I do not have permission to redistribute the lot.

HOWEVER, I have recently made plans to remove that data from the database, so that the database can be redistributed. That would take the total number of entries down from almost a half million entries, to something like 200,000 entries. If you have any opinions on this plan, please let me know -- webmaster@upcdatabase.com.

First off, the C&D letter is regarding the ability his site has to accept a UPC code directly from a CueCat scan, not about the database itself. He has a text input you can click in, and then scan the UPC code, and it will send it to a CGI script that decodes the CueCat scan, and looks up the UPC code in his database.

Secondly, the reason his database isn't publicly available is because he got a lot of seed data for it from a third-party source with the agreement that the entire DB wouldn't be made publicly available. (No evil closed-source-ness conspiracies here, he's actually a strong supporter of open source, and has written several open source programs you can find on Freshmeat.)

now at UPC Database you can directly scan an object with the cuecat, and add it to the database if it's not into it. It's fun, i added a Staedler eraser, lighter, cigarettes, CD-R, "facial tissue" kleenex-clone, etc
--

Here is a cool link to an online UPC database that lets you scan an item's barcode with the CueCat and find out what it is (of course, you could read the item's label, but that wouldn't be any fun :)