Comments on: Wacky Business Idea #14: Barcode.com

By: 37th Carnival of Money Hacks: Wonders of the World

37th Carnival of Money Hacks: Wonders of the World — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:14:40 +0000

[...] Pillars talks about a new business idea in Wacky Business Idea #14: Barcode.com posted at Quest For Four Pillars. He suggests barcoding items and allowing people to researching [...]

By: Sara

Sara — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 05:34:53 +0000

This reminds me of something I had several years ago (back during the dot-com boom): the CueCat. You could scan a barcode from a product and it would take you to the manufacturer's web site.

By: Shawna

Shawna — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:25:37 +0000

Great idea! I have seen a “thing” advertised in the past that allowed a person to scan an item, which then added it to a grocery list that they could print from their computer (I think you could also use it to order items online). This might be a good addition to this site.

By: Weekly Roundup: A Halloween Visitor Edition at Clever Dude Personal Finance & Money

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:08:06 +0000

[...] Pillars has an excellent business plan for using barcodes. If it’s not in use already, I think he should patent it. Also, he has a new blog: ABCs of [...]

By: Mr. Cheap

Mr. Cheap — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:13:13 +0000

Shevy: Yeah, I realize that looking for the hechsher is quite a bit easier (that’s why I put in the lazy comment). I think it MAY have value if someone had recent adopted a kosher diet, and they wanted to find alternatives to what they’d been eating. They could say “this thing I like to eat doesn’t have a kosher symbol, what is the closest kosher alternative?” and look it up in the system (which people who care about it would have entered).

I’ve never gone kosher, so maybe looking for the symbol at the supermarket is just the easier approach…

By: Shevy

Shevy — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 09:23:01 +0000

As a kosher consumer I have to say that looking for a hechsher (identifying mark of the supervising agency) is a lot faster and easier than looking up barcodes and most of us do it pretty unconciously.

But it is an interesting idea and I think anything that demystifies the barcode is valuable. I received an email the other day (that I haven’t really checked out yet) claiming that the first few numbers of the bar code identify the coutry of origin. I’m not at all sure that this is true, but I’d love to know more about the barcode and how it works (not the scanning part, the data).

By: Millionaireby45

Millionaireby45 — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:23:14 +0000

Most ideas about new businesses or products are either best for a very small business or are bound for failure. This idea actually sounds very promising. It would not surprise me to see this come to fruition at some point. Great post.

By: Mr. Cheap

Mr. Cheap — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:17:35 +0000

Brendan: Those are two more good use cases (allergy tracking and price comparisons / tracking). I think it would become a rich platform for all sort of additional usages (that was one of Microsoft’s strokes of genius: rather than being all things to all people, they created a platform that many different things could be built on, each new thing that was built on it made the underlieing platform more valuable).

By: Brendan

Brendan — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:53:04 +0000

In addition to kosher and vegetarian food, this could be a great resource for those with allergies (like me). It could also potentially do geographic price comparison (think about this plugged into an iPhone using Google Maps and GPS). The targeted advertising potential also seems quite impressive.

By: Vasile

Vasile — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:24:41 +0000

@Nobleea: AFAIK, the product barcodes are unique and assigned by UCC to the manufacturers, who in turn assign them to their own products. See http://www.answers.com/topic/universal-product-code . Not sure if the same manufacturer can “recycle” codes from very old products to new ones…. There is a class of codes reserved for store use (e.g. when you buy store-packed goods, like meat, fruits, etc) and that’s the only way you can get the same code on two different products.

Regards,
Vasile