05.25
I just read about Violet’s Mir:ror product on Read Write Web (rww). The Mir:ror is simply a RFID reader that, together with some software, can do a variety of different tasks when presented with various RFID tags. You could program it to record when you feed the dog presumably by tagging and then swiping the dog’s bowl whenever you feed the dog. Some intelligent software would then monitor this data and could then inform you when it is time to buy some more dog food. Or, you could keep track of objects in a storeroom, or even perform other actions, like twittering whenever you swipe some tagged object. Swipe your umbrella over the Mir:ror and you could be automatically whining on twitter about the weather again.
Of course, the RWW article mentions quite a few shortcomings that all boil down to humans being lazy. If the Mir:ror reader isn’t where you need it then forget it. You also have to set up all the tags individually for each object and you have to create the action that will be performed when the object gets swiped over the reader! Never, I’m far too lazy for that to last any meaningful amount of time.
I was thinking though that the ability to track certain objects and their usage is quite a nifty one. Why can’t we get rid of the RFID tags and replace them with barcodes? You can print barcodes out on any standard printer so they can be extremely cheap to produce and many objects have barcodes already. Don’t have a barcode reader? Well, what about your mobile phone… doesn’t it have a camera? In fact, my phone is a smart phone and I’ll bet I can make some software that can read the barcode, interface to a web service and retrieve the details of the product and based on what the product is guide me through the default types of actions I might want to perform with the object. It could even upload the generated data to a cloud service for storage, analysis, events, and reports.
It would be useful even at the basic level of just being able to scan a barcode and the software telling me how many times and when that barcode was scanned. You see, if I am scanning dog food then I know I am scanning dog food and I can make my own rules as I see fit. In this case I would be able to see how many times I have fed my dog and that I have not skipped a meal. Rules and actions can be added later – in fact everything else could be done through a web interface to work with the stored data.
I can’t tell, is this a good idea?