Thursday, July 12, 2007

Google Maps, Internet Of Things And Mobile Codes


How much longer before Google introduces a site or application, where users can create a 2D mobile code?

Or do they acquire a company with an application that can scan both 1d and 2d codes?

The ability to scan a 1d barcode, create and scan 2d barcodes, could instantly add billions, if not trillions of sites (content) to their database.

Wired Magazine has a story Google Maps Changing We Connect With World that discusses how Google is, and could, link the the physical world with the Internet (Internet of Things) using mobile codes.

The Internet of Things

What if you could walk down an unfamiliar street, use your camera phone to take a picture of a building, and instantly know everything about it, from the architect to the list of tenants. The technology to make common objects clickable, like hyperlinked words on a Web site, is available today in the form of 2-D barcodes.

These digital tags look like empty crossword puzzles. Users create them online, print them out, and paste them around the city. Then anyone with a phonecam can "click" on them. A program on the phone decodes the pattern and redirects the curious pedestrian to a Web page.

One project, called Smartpox, is using these barcodes to build online communities that center around, for example, scavenger hunts and restaurant reviews. Members slap a barcode on a given establishment, and in-the-know passersby can get the dirt on its crème anglaise.

SmartPox
At Semapedia.com, you can drop in any Wikipedia URL to instantly generate a 2-D barcode pointing to the corresponding entry.

Semapedia

1 comment:

Zec Online Journal said...

Scott,

Google bought Neven Vision in 2006.
Neven Vision developed iScout app for doing just that; scanning real world and connecting with virtual.

I had some expectation that were only wishful thinking regarding Appl iPhone.

Here's my speculative post from 19th June ( before iPhone release ).

If you search more and see what kind of patents iScout app posses, you can see that Google is in the great position to roll out such a service.

Google Maps , Local and Earth APIs could be powerful in the future on the mobile phone.

There is cleary need that image processing capabilities need to be inside camera phone.

This is amazing opportunity, I wonder how this will be executed.