Sunday, April 11, 2010

Barcode happiness - II

Yet another group has come up with a different use for barcodes and smartphones related to food. In Australia, Deakin University and Nestlé are working to allow access to allergy information via the product barcodes. Read the barcode with your smartphone and get warned about seafood, peanut, etc. allergens (there's the "traffic light" system again, this time red or green).

All well and good... However, end users are not going to want to use multiple, different, barcode-reading applications on their smartphones to look up all the different pieces of information on the same item. When in the grocery it would be too onerous to check for allergens via the Deaking University application, then for nutritional value and pricing via the barcoo application, etc., etc. As new ideas spring forth and are developed by different parties this problem will increase... At some point there will need to be a massive amount of "convergence" and consolidation.

Barcode application tracks allergies
Beat allergies with mobile barcode

Previous barcode-related blog entries:
Barcode happiness - I - Apr 11th, 2010
Misc update - Jan 30th, 2010
Barcode update - Dec 29th, 2009
No luck - Dec 15th, 2009
QR codes to hit the U.S.? - Dec 13th, 2009
Misc. update (BB/2D barcodes) - Aug 22nd, 2009
QR update - May 19th, 2009
BB & 2D barcodes - Apr 21st, 2009

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