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"Pull" Barcode Scanning Could Be Android's Killer App
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."
Let's just hope Google (and her telco partners) don't fuck it up.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Or a CueCat. We know how big of a killer app.
If this takes off, it'll result with me waiting in the supermarket checkout line for 5 minutes behind some idiot arguing with the cashier because his phone says a different price to the register. As if phones in supermarkets haven't caused me enough grief...
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
This is spot-on. Yes, many years ago there was an attempt to invest heavily in barcode readers - the Cuecat, in particular, was a well-funded attempt to bring barcodes to the masses. But due to a major error in their business model - a grave error - the 'cat lived an extremely short life.
Jump ahead to 2008. People are buying fancy telephones, and there are barcodes everywhere. Google is in a unique position to read and process these barcodes on the fly - using a well-connected application living on a mobile phone. Next thing you know, you'll be able to go to the store, pick up a six pack of Bud, and scan in that barcode. THEN you can find a cheaper vendor - maybe down the street. YOU WIN due to CHEAPER BEER.
And we know that the world, with its flailing economy, will certainly needs cheaper beer. The cuecat was just ahead of its time.
Are we seriously considering a bar code scanner a "kiler app"? To me, a killer app is one which makes you absolutely want it, even if it means making a different hardware decision. You know, like how Halo is a killer app for XBox. A barcode scanner might be neat or even nifty and, to some rare individuals, it might be an absolutely killer app, but for the majority of people I see it being nothing more than a novelty app - something that's cool to have and you use from time to time but, most of the time, you forget you even have it.
Then again, maybe the poster is using "killer app" in a different way than I would...
Ok... TFA pushes the idea for what would essentially be a product database.
You scan the bar-code, it gets sent to the server, which returns useful data to you.
OK... I can see how that should be useful to consumers as well as a hypothetical company that makes its living out of contextual commercials.
BUT... The TFA goes on and on about how it MUST be 1D barcodes and NOT 2D barcodes - despite the fact that 2D barcodes are easier to read for mobile phones because of redundancy and greater bandwidth.
And since The New PhoneTM has the optics that can FINALLY read 1D barcodes - let us make a database that handles ONLY 1D barcodes.
Cause... there is like a lot of them out there.
Hmm... how about this GROUND BREAKING idea I just had.
Make the "killer app" capable of reading both 1D AAAND... wait for it... 2D barcodes.
HA?! Isn't THAT fuckin' brilliant or what?
At the cost of... umm... nothing... you get a "killer app" that works on The New PhoneTM AND all those phones out there already.
Which it would be pretty stupid to just disregard.
Cause... there is like a lot of them out there.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The submitter is quite right. I have an iPhone, and the biggest challenge with doing as the camera suggests (a coworker of mine had the same idea) is that it uses a fixed-focus lens, set to 'infinity', which means that it cannot focus on near objects - so the barcode has to be far enough that it's within the focal range, but big enough that it can be seen from there.
I got my start doing stuff like this on the PalmOS Symbol handheld scanners back in 1999. I've done this same stuff for years on various handhelds running mobile OS's. As long as you can scan a freaking barcode, you can store that info and hit that website when you sync...whether it's through a wired connection, a wireless connection, it doesn't matter.
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.
Oh baby, don't be so negative.
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I was at the T-Mobile/Google launch event last week in NYC, and had a chance to try this. I also have an iPhone.
First, this is not a Google-made app, it's called ShopSavvy and it's from a third party. It will come preloaded on the T-Mobile G1, though.
It's neat. It's very easy to use and returns simple links to product reviews and prices from multiple online sources.
vs. the iPhone:
Barcodes on the iPhone are NOT slow. They ARE unreliable, because the iPhone has a fixed lens that simply cannot focus on something up close.
The G1's "improved optics" is an auto-focus lens that can focus on things up close. That's why this works. It's very slow, though.
"Improved access to image scans" is bullshit. It's the same in Android as the iPhone or any smartphone, at least for something like barcodes.
MANY smartphones have a high-res camera with auto-focus lens and can run third-party software like this (which has existed for a while). It's nothing new. It's only in the news now because Google chose to feature it during their press conference and demo session at the event in NYC last week.
Also, the whole 1D vs 2D thing is beside the point. 1D is the type that's printed on all products at any SHOP, so of course it's the type that a SHOPPING application is designed to scan.
Come on, as a programmer/designer this pisses me off. Only a complete and UTTER idiot would include price info in the barcode.
What if you had a price change? You would have to change the barcode on all your products.
As the article explains and anyone on slashdot could expected to know, a barcode (the 1D kind we are talking about here) ONLY has enough information for 10 digits. It is a 'unique' indentifier. The cash register scans this unique code and then looks it up in the stores database to get the price and whatever other information you could require.
To think that you would put the price of a product in the barcode is silly. ONE of the reasons why the switch to barcodes has seen the removal of price-stickers on products is that with barcodes you can easily change the price.
The OP simply meant to point out that he got the PRICE from the INTERNET with the unique code and is arguing that the price retrieved by the cashregister from the stores database is in-accurate.
And this discussion already happens daily in stores whenever there is an mistake made with special offers or a new product incorrectly entered.
My own recent story is of a frozen fries, used to be 1kg packages but suddenly they had 2.5kg packages but no record of it in the database. In the end, I got it for the price of 1kg while they went and sorted it out :) Got to love lousy math skills, a fair price would have been 2x the price of 1kg, but I suppose that was to complex.
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