Bokodes - the new Barcode outlined by US Researchers

This will give rise to a heap of conspiracy theories I'm sure!

BBC News

A replacement for the black and white stripes of the traditional barcode has been outlined by US researchers.

Bokodes, as they are known, can hold thousands of times more information than their striped cousins and can be read by a standard mobile phone camera.

The 3mm-diameter (0.1 inches), powered tags could be used to encode nutrition information on food packaging or create new devices for playing video games.

The work will be shown off at Siggraph, a conference in New Orleans next week.

"We think that our technology will create a new way of tagging," Dr Ankit Mohan, one of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers behind the work, told BBC News.

If this gets taken up we'll have to find ot how to incorporate the '666' theory into this new technology.

I don't like this though:

Dr Mohan said they could also be used to augment the information incorporated into Google Streetview, a service which allows users to browse a selection of pictures taken along city streets.

At the moment, the images for Streetview - accessible through Google Maps - are collected by trucks and cars fitted with several cameras.

"Shop and restaurant owners can put these Bokodes outside their stores and as the Google truck is driving down the street it will capture the information in that."

It's getting all too intergrated if you ask me. It's bad enough that Google can go around getting a snapshot of everybody's houses, but getting peope to put a Bokode on our property to divulge even more information sounds a bit too much.

I can see these Bokodes being encrypted with informaton for law enforcement, google trucks replaced with martial law trucks, going arond checking on businesses and the public, seeing if their 'Bokode paperwork' is up to date.

Ain't technology grand?

The "666" theory would be if they put it on your forehead or right hand and you could not make any purchases without it. Also they would kill you if you didn't take it.

It would be really really bad if they started putting stuff like this on peoples foreheads. I'm 100% sure I don't have to explain why.

Originally posted by kiwifoot
I don't like this though:

Dr Mohan said they could also be used to augment the information incorporated into Google Streetview, a service which allows users to browse a selection of pictures taken along city streets.

When I started watching that clip that's similar to the applicatioon I was thinking about... But where you don't like the idea much - I do... Well not just from a google street view angle.

You know the iPhone ad, one of the latest ones (I think it's iPhone ) any way the dude is basically looking at the world through the screen of his mobile device and getting all sorts of information - well I was wondering what simple bit of tech was gonna untimatly make that kind of thing happen.

I was thinking object and face recognition software - but that's too processor heavy, prone to mistakes just not a good idea for a portable device...

No with these little dooburies in things like shop signs - street signs, a little pin badge for people who want to have there info advertised for whatever reason?

All the portable device really needs is the camera and an always on internet connection. You could have a pair of glasses (like workmans safty glasses for instance) tiny pin hole camera / scanner thing and bluetooth linked to his phone in his pocket... Now as he's plodding around the building site various things are pointed out to him - instructions for installing this, amdentments to plans made in the few minutes since he left the office!

edit ex code

[edit on 27/7/2009 by Now_Then]