February 15, 2006
Toshiba's Mobile-Phone Technology
According to the AP, Toshiba a Japanese electronics company that makes DVD players, laptops and nuclear power plants, has developed mobile-phone technology that searches for product reviews on up to 100 Web journals, or blogs, in 10 seconds.
"Just use the phone's digital camera to snap a photo of the bar code of a product you're thinking about buying.
The bar-code information is sent wirelessly to a Toshiba server, which gathers data on blogs from the Internet and analyzes them, and then sends a reply back to the cell phone.
Some of the more frequently visited blogs will also show up on the screen.
Blog searches and bar codes that link to Web pages are already available on personal computers and portable devices, but Toshiba officials say their technology is convenient for shopping because it's for cell phones and carries out real-time blog searches from bar-codes.
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