put your PalmPilot to a good use... ------------- Begin Forwarded Message ------------- Now Where Did I Put That Can Of Soup? By Jeffrey R. Harrow, TechWeb contributor It's finally beginning! The day may actually come when I really know what I have lurking in the dimmest recesses of my pantry and refrigerator. Let me explain: For several years now, I've written a bit about my vision of how the growing use of computers and networking in the home might combine to keep track of what food items -- and perhaps other things -- are inhabiting the dark corners of my kitchen cabinets and refrigerator. A bar-code scanner, functionally similar to that at the grocery store, would be built into each black hole's door frame. It would keep track of each product that went in and out -- even which shelf it was on -- and, if we get really fancy, how much is left in each box or jar through weight-sensing shelves. Once we have that real-time data, there are lots of things we could do with it, such as integrating it with our computerized recipe files. If you think about it, this isn't rocket science -- many of the concepts are already in use for commercial and industrial applications. The grocery store, for example, automatically orders and figures wastage based on its cash registers' bar-code-derived data. And home networking to tie all these sensors and computers together is on the rise. With 21 million multi-PC households expected this year, a Feb. 2 report from the Cahners In-Stat Group says the research company expects U.S. home networking will be a $1.4 billion mainstream market by 2003. So putting these emerging home networks to good, innovative uses, such as tracking our groceries, "just" requires getting small and inexpensive bar-code sensors for the home, plus a small matter of programming. I suspect the benefits of such a system (assuming it is inexpensive and works transparently in the background) would be so compelling, lots of people would write good software to massage the data. And, thanks to RCFoC reader Peter Quodling, we find a first generation of home bar-code sensors, whose successors might one day be built into our cabinets, has just been introduced by Tesco. This laser bar-code scanner from Symbol attaches to a PalmPilot. You point it toward the bar code of an item you've emptied and want to replace, and it works with Tesco's grocery software to automatically add it to your online shopping list (you can also pick from 20,000 other items you might want, as well). Your groceries then appear at your front door. (Of course, there are a number of other applications, in many other fields, for such a smart handheld bar-code scanning system.) OK, this isn't quite the realization of my vision -- yet. But it is a beginning. And if you think the idea of cheap holographic bar-code scanners built into door frames is science fiction, well, wouldn't you have said the same just a few years ago if someone told you you could purchase 16 million transistors for less than five bucks? Well, that's what you get in a 16-megabit memory chip. ------------- End Forwarded Message ------------- Cindy Sergent [EMAIL PROTECTED] 614-860-2700 http://www-nds.cb.lucent.com/~ccs/ 614-860-7897 (FAX) ____________________________________________________________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------- Join The NEW Web Consultants Association FORUMS and CHAT: Register Today at: http://just4u.com/forums/ Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants Give the Gift of Life This Year... Just4U Stop Smoking Support forum - helping smokers for over three years-tell a friend: http://just4u.com/forums/ To get 500 Banner Ads for FREE go to http://www.linkbuddies.com/start.go?id=111261 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
