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.

Comments

Music recognition service in the UK

[Peter Cooper]

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! :-)

we need to stepback for a second

[Alric]

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.

smartly transferring your economic power

[watchthewatchers]

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?

Potential Use: Bookmark Reality

[ruhk]

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.