For one of my previuous employers we hooked up a mobile phone to an RFID reader back in 1997 to do things like this. We also built barcode readers that you connect to mobile phones and provided for example price comparsions of books in stores with online books from Amazon (sic). That was in 1999. We did the same thing with the first camera enabled Nokia phones running on Symbian.
Our company were at one point aquired by AirClic, who still sells those readers.
There are lots of granted patents that goes back quite many years that cover the entire ground, so I have a hard time believing that Amazon will get this application accepted.
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For one of my previuous employers we hooked up a mobile phone to an RFID reader back in 1997 to do things like this. We also built barcode readers that you connect to mobile phones and provided for example price comparsions of books in stores with online books from Amazon (sic). That was in 1999. We did the same thing with the first camera enabled Nokia phones running on Symbian. Our company were at one point aquired by AirClic, who still sells those readers. There are lots of granted patents that goes back quite many years that cover the entire ground, so I have a hard time believing that Amazon will get this application accepted.