Interesting People mailing list archives
more on Interesting New Service
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2006 19:37:08 -0500
Begin forwarded message: From: Brock Meeks <Brock.Meeks () msnbc com> Date: January 8, 2006 6:30:04 PM EST To: dave () farber net Subject: RE: [IP] Interesting New Service Now wait just a minute... "two thumbs up" for this service, as Ken says? Let's back off the hype-needle just a tad and drill down for a second or two. Here we have a very innovative service -- score one for the tech guys. But then we read that this service is pulling data from public blogs. Is Toshiba going be charging for this service? Because if so, I'm not so sure I'd be excited about my intellectual property being "swept up" into some money making service without my permission. I have always tended toward giving away my services on the Internet (re: CyberWire Dispatch) because I believed that the Net gave so much to me. But I always stopped short of allowing any web site of commercial nature to reprint CWD because I wasn't making a dime from it. However, if they wanted to pay me, that was all well and good. But someone else making a buck from my intellectual property without offering to pay me as well, nope, doesn't fly. -----Original Message----- From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net] Sent: Sunday, January 08, 2006 5:17 PM To: ip () v2 listbox com Subject: [IP] Interesting New Service Begin forwarded message: From: Ken Deifik <kenneth.d () adelphia net> Date: January 8, 2006 5:16:13 PM EST To: dave () farber net Subject: Interesting New Service Toshiba to Push Blog Reviews to Mobile Shoppers Posted by Michael Arrington http://www.techcrunch.com/ There is a report that Toshiba is developing software that will allow allow people to take a picture of the bar code label of many products, send it to a related service and quickly receive back information related to the product. The data the service returns? From blogs. Yep, Toshiba will send back summary information on how many blogs gave the product positive and negative reviews. Related product information will also be displayed. There is no information now about how Toshiba will go about gathering and analyzing blog data, and whether the data will need to be in a structured format or not. It is also unclear as to whether this will initially launch only in Japan or worldwide. I think one of the bigger challenges of the service is pairing the blog data with the bar code. As the service launches, sometime in 2006, I'll be all over this if I can get access to it. Products covered are primiarily consumer electronics products, food, books, CDs, DVDs and cosmetics. Bar codes on about 400,000 products can be scanned. When the cellphone camera shoots the bar code, the information is automatically sent to a server, which then searches through blogs, or diary-like Web sites, for reviews. About 10 seconds later, a summary will be displayed on the cellphone screen reporting how many blogs were positive and how many were negative. The actual comments on the blogs can also be viewed as well as information on related products. Toshiba categorized about 500,000 Japanese words into fields such as travel and culture, and classified words related to evaluation as good or bad. The fact that Toshiba is looking to edge, consumer driven content instead of a proprietary database to gather product information is stunning. Two thumbs up. I hope it works. ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as brock.meeks () msnbc com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
Current thread:
- more on Interesting New Service David Farber (Jan 08)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- more on Interesting New Service David Farber (Jan 08)