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Real-World Hyperlinks
RunAmuk writes "Wired is reporting about being able to "Point and click your mobile phone at a poster in London movie theaters this July and you'll be able to directly access the movie's Web page." While there are many practical uses for this technology, like in museums as the article suggests." I'd like to use it at video rental places and CD stores to get product reviews.
It'd be kind of interesting (particularly at conventions like H2Kx or Defcon) to pull up a person's chosen public information or web site.
"I can't remember that info right now. Click on me to see my blog." You could also figure out who in the room has an interesting role or get public encryption keys, etc.
You could have all kinds of fun with this.
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Put one of these on a shipping container, a box, or a pallet and then tie the returned webpage to a back-end database and you could have a killer app for transportation manifests and shipping invoices.
True, but consider that most civilian GPS receivers only have an accuracy of about 100 feet ( marine GPS transceiver accuracy); which means that standing on any given street corner you'd catch a lot of potential businesses. This one upside of this technology is that it great reduces the ranges and increases the specificity of the source of the info.
Informed opinions?
Yeah I'm sure the publishers are going to link their products to objective reviews - even if they are bad.
So why not use your www enabled phone to google your own reviews? Well, that type of thing has been out for months now - we need something hot and new!
It'll just be all the same hype on the back of the box - for pinheads who want to read it on something electronic for a couple bucks a pop. Or perhaps are too lazy to turn the box over.
This isn't an article or news of course. Just an advertisement for a service that shows you advertisements. Paying for commercials. Sheesh.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
There is an interesting system just launched in the UK where you dial a number on your phone, then hold your phone up to the source of the music for thirty seconds. It hangs up, and then messages you back with the name of the song, if it can work it out. This return message then costs you 25p for the trouble.
:-)
It's automated, but gawd knows how it does it. That has to be some seriously clever software doing music detection. Either way, I figured it's yet another 'real world' hyperlink example.
Unfortunately the name of the service escapes me, although it's advertised regularly on London's KISS FM. Does anyone else here know about this? I believe you can access the service by 'using the numbers down the middle of your phone..' 2580, perhaps? Just goes to show how good radio advertising really is! Ha!
It would be a lot better if the product simply advertised what it is (instead of sending you somewhere). Then you could customize your cellphone/PDA with how to handle the incoming information. So assume they have a protocol where it reports what type of product it is (album, movie, whatever) along w/ info to specifically identify it, then you could set up your PDA to automatically visit your preferred movie review site(s), handing in the movie ID as a parameter.
But that might put way too much power in the hands of the consumer, and we want to avoid that if at all possible.
Using the internet AT the CD/rental place is the problem though... sure you could have your wireless LAN and PocketPC and whatever but just pointing your cellphone is so much easier.
For a bunch geeks, a bunch of people hear such do seem to be hating a potentially cool new technology.
Sure, maybe these things would hijack your cell-phone, and then the world would end. Somehow I doubt it.
I think the power would be more in the hands of the consumers. The article talks about infrared communication, not radio frequencies. This means that you would have to establish a direct line of sight link. If I have to point the IR port on my phone at something, I have a great amount of control over that.
I think a potential area of trouble is who gets to control what links get displayed. But I could see myself walking into a Barnes&Noble and browsing some books. One looks interesting; so I scan the "WebCode" or whatever with my phone. A couple links pop up on my screen, one to the reviews section of B&N.com for the book and one to the publisher.
Maybe I'm being too trusting, but this idea sounds pretty cool to me.
How about pointing your cell phone at a gallon of milk in a grocery store and having it check against the items in your refrigerator to see whether you need more? Better yet, instead of cell phones, what about a device integrated into your clothing? It's very sci-fi, I realize, but isn't that where we're going?
I guess what I'm saying is that even though this seems silly to us now that doesn't mean it won't become very practical with the advent of more technologies. Sci-fi isn't all impractical, it's a view of a future that may be achievable. Don't knock it.
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I'll get to how this ties into the thread shortly... but: We vote on elections that have very little choice. But every day, we vote with our dollars, transferring our economic power to the company that makes/sells the product/service. Boycotts are a way to vote with your $, but here's a much more effective way to do it subtley and daily: Every store (grocery, clothes, car), can have a bar-code (or RFID, or infrared) tag on each item, (or MUCH better for our privacy, can have this tag on the SHELF that contains the item so we don't take it home). And it'd be great if we can point a cell/pda/hand-held device at the shelf, and pull up info on the product. We could each put this product ID into the lookup field on whatever info-providers' websites/db's that are in-line with our values. I.e...Some may choose to find out what the Sierra Club thinks about the product, others may care if the product uses child labor, gives money for or against political causes, etc... This is kind of like a hugely expanded product label explaining contents, etc, but is not limited to what the company wants you to know, but what other data is really out there that you care about. You wouldn't read the label every time you purchase something, but as you are constantly tweaking your purchasing habits, you switch to spending money on feeding businesses in line with your values just like you would tweak your habits to shift towards low-fat or other choices. It's been years that I've been thinking this would be a good idea, and since I don't have the money to patent it and lock out others, I'm putting this idea "open source" on slashdot so any greedy co-opter doesn't lock people out from doing this right. your thoughts?
I don't want to read webpages or anything on my celphone. I don't even CARRY a cell phone. I do carry a PDA though. If I could point my PDA at one of these little tags, and have it capture the URL to a Mozilla bookmarked-tabs list that I could then pull up in mozilla when I get home, I'd be plenty chuffed. If something caught my eye through the day, I could just bookmark it and check it out later when its more convenient.
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