Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Product Scrutinizer

Camera that reads product barcodes
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Wouldnt it be nice, if my useless cellphone camera could read barcodes? A barcode-scanner could, for example, help weight-watchers instantly scan what calories the food in the supermarkets contains. Environmentalists could scan, if a product was produced using genetically modified plants or pesticides.

It shouldn't be too difficult to do: 1) an inexpensive, plastic lens that I snap onto my cellphone (lens helps camera focus on barcode even when barcode is two inches from lens), the snap-on-lens including a "distance-holder" that keeps the scanned product-barcode straight and in focus, so that a clear image is scanned by the camera and delivered to... 2)...a java applet in my cellphone, that decodes the image into a barcode and sends it via SMS to... 3) ...a mobile service provider that returns useful information about the product I scanned

"....Hate to point it out, Edna, but you better leave your hands off that jar of peanut butter. The crazed scientists at ACME Corp are trying to introduce a new genetically altered mutant peanut from Mars... Greetings from Greenpeace.org"

Or some such thing.

t s rochester, Jun 30 2005

"Turn a camera-phone into a barcode scanner. Easy. Just load the code ..." http://www.newswire...dex.cfm/article/654
Underway. [waugsqueke, Jun 30 2005]

myFoodPhone http://www.myfoodphone.com/sprint.aspx
No barcode necessary [angel, Jan 27 2007]

[link]






       This can be done now using camera phones. No additional hardware needed. (link)
waugsqueke, Jun 30 2005
  

       I was wondering why my phone does this; now I know.
DenholmRicshaw, Jun 30 2005
  
      
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