I'm not a fan of Microsoft, but I've got a Master's degree in Sociology, so I like it that Microsoft has a resident sociologist, Marc Smith. At the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference this week, Marc presented about his research project called AURA (Advanced User Resource Annotation).
Once you are carrying wireless around with you in a cell phone or PDA, you are likely to soon be able to *listen* to the products on store shelves and hook into all sorts of useful info from the Net.
Posting on the presentation, Phil Windley says:
The project maps barcodes to names. Once that's done, all kinds of things are possible.
- Google the result for news, images, and other information.
- Annotate the product packaging
- Offer alternatives
- Show how and where it was manufactured
- Give alternative views of the nutritional data