There is a great little application that I use to keep track of my books called Delicious Library. If you have not seen it, I strongly suggest you check it out. What I have been thinking about around this app is how it's usefulness could be extended. One of the nice features is that you can use a digital video camera to scan in books via their barcode. So, you aim the camera (the built in one will do nicely) it scans the book and downloads all the information from Amazon. What I thought about first was that this would be great for is wine (I had just come from the wine store). I would love to come home from the wine store, scan in all the wine I just bought, have the information on the wines downloaded from Wine Spectator or some such site. I could rate the wines and comment on them. Have it sync up to my iPhone so I can carry my database of great wine with me, and I would be a happy guy.
It also reminded me that there is a tremendous amount of data that is embedded in our environment that we don't even attend to. Everything we own these days has (or had) a barcode, and increasingly things have RFID. Data, data everywhere - crazy. That then got me thinking about what else might have a barcode that I could scan in and download data on to build my own little local database? I am sure there are more things out there, any suggestions?
It also reminded me that there is a tremendous amount of data that is embedded in our environment that we don't even attend to. Everything we own these days has (or had) a barcode, and increasingly things have RFID. Data, data everywhere - crazy. That then got me thinking about what else might have a barcode that I could scan in and download data on to build my own little local database? I am sure there are more things out there, any suggestions?
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