Michael Turner wrote:
> From: "Jani PATOKALLIO" <jpatokal@iki.fi>
> > So you're proposing integrating the CueCat into a mobile?
> >
> > http://www.cuecat.com/
>
> No. Ick. Why is it that whenever I propose an idea, someone
> says it must be *just like* some other idea that it only vaguely
> resembles?
So what is the crucial difference between using a CueCat attached
to a laptop and using a scanner integrated into a mobile phone?
Sure, the mobile phone is smaller and more convinient, but it
would only seem to be a matter of degree.
> > You're essentially attempting to retrofit hyperlinks into
> > the physical world. It's a cute idea, but I think it's heading in
> > exactly the wrong direction: in the future, I want to be able to
> > read magazines on my mobile....
>
> You've got to be kidding - magazines on a tiny screen? Would you
> read that Salon article you pointed us to if it were on your mobile
> phone? All of it?
Eeyup. You see, I'm working with wearable computers, with a particular
interest in eyeglass-integrated displays and mobile networking.
Take a peek at http://www.microopticalcorp.com/ (no, I don't work
there, they just happen to have the spiffiest displays on the
market).
> Maybe, but I happen to have an O'Reilly book open in front of me,
> flipped to the back pages , where they list other titles of possible
> interest, and it would be kind of nice to browse (in the old paper
> sense) this minicatalog, then just swipe to record, and push a
> button to buy.
Sure, but you'll have to get O'Reilly to add in lots of barcodes
first, which means an instant chicken-and-egg problem:
they won't add barcodes unless there's a market, which there
won't be until there are barcodes...
And again, the wearable approach would be to add a camera
with OCR, transforming anything with "http://" into a clickable
link. And yes, you could implement this for barcodes as well;
in fact, Sony already has a cute toy called "CyberCode"
(included with the VAIO C1 PictureBook series of laptops),
which lets the laptop's camera recognize objects that have
barcode-like CyberCode tags slapped onto them. Alas, this too
is pretty much useless in practice: I already know that my
mobile is a mobile without waving it in front of the camera,
and while the CS geek in me gets a kick from this nifty
application of OCR, I have yet to figure out what the laptop
could do with this information, other than print a dialog
box that says "Object is Jani's mobile" (which is what it
does now).
> Among the (non)problems mentioned in the Salon article on CueCat:
> Barcode readers on keitais would be built in - no installation.
Except that somebody has to enter all the barcodes into a database,
which is half the installation problem.
> "....why would we want a device to chain us to our computers while
> we flip pages?"
>
> A mobile phone is not a desktop PC. If anything, *it* is chained to *you*.
This, I will grant you, is definitely an innovation.
> Many barcodes are UPCs - universal *product* codes. A barcode
> scanner could take you to more than the vendor's web page - it could
> go to a specific product page. Assuming that's the barcode service
> you wanted. Yet other services could take you to price-compariso
> pages.
And how will independent services make money? Is the feature attractive
enough that people will pay subscription fees, or will they have
to rely on the good old banner advertising model again?
Cheers,
--
Jani PATOKALLIO / jpatokal@iki.fi / +81 90 7722 3557
Sanpo Laboratory, Mechano-Informatics Dept., University of Tokyo
ヤニ・パトカリオ / jani@sanpo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp / 090 7722 3557
東京大学、工学系研究科、機械情報工学科、算法設計研究室
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Received on Wed Nov 22 06:12:28 2000