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11 September 2006

Free Web 2.0 Ideas First in a series.[More:]
Ingredients:

1) A keychain sized device that can read barcodes or RFIDs, can receive wireless signals, and can use wireless/bluetooth/infrared to communicate with a mobile or PDA
2) Printable tags or RFIDs easily applicable to goods and places where services are sold, purchasable by individuals or merchants and non-conflicting with their own internal systems
3) A set of websites where people are commenting about products and services and rating them
4) A group of merchants who are physically their products/services with tags/RFIDs readable to the device
5) A piece of software that translates web comments/ratings of products and services to something interpretable by the keychain-sized device, perhaps using RSS feeds or something similar

Recipe:

1) Sell the keychains and tags to people who want to mark up their cities with them in their hipsterish 2.0 way
2) Promote the tagging to small merchants, banks, nightclubs, subway stops, etc. who can actually benefit by offering more transparency to their customers
3) Promote subscription to the keychain service to websites
4) Develop an SMS based system where people can upload comments whilst in the wild, away from their computers, to the review websites
5) Profit!

(it's not a good idea, it's a FREE idea.) :)
Great idea, but RFIDs are evil.
posted by orthogonality 11 September | 11:28
Glad you like it, ortho!

Well it doesn't have to be RFIDs. Prolly better if it's not as most stores use RFIDs for security purposes anyway.
posted by By the Grace of God 11 September | 12:31
I vaguely recall that some company tried this during the bubble. But they used the existing standard barcode and a normal barcode reader. The premise was that you could be in a store, wave your PDA over the barcode label, and it would look up prices for that item at online shops, find messageboards/feedback/reviews of that product, etc. I'm pretty sure it tanked like most everything of the bubble era.

I don't see why you'd need specialized labels, as the standard barcode exists on most everything and is guaranteed unique for a given product.
posted by Rhomboid 11 September | 12:38
Rhomboid: Cue-Cat, though the idea was to read barcodes in newspaper and magazine ads.
posted by orthogonality 11 September | 13:03
No, I remember cue-cat and this was a different company, one that existed long after cue-cat was shamed when people figured out you could hack the barcode readers they were giving out to read standard barcodes instead of the proprietary ones they made for magazine ads. This service that I was thinking of was supposed to be used everywhere, e.g. in grocery stores or walmart with standard barcodes, not in ad copy.
posted by Rhomboid 11 September | 13:12
What is the music in this commercial? || OMG! Emasculated puppy!

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