

StickyBits: Add a bar code based history to any physical object - replicatorblog
http://www.stickybits.com/

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wesley
The examples are a bit laughable..

"Attach your resume to your business card" - You could just add a web link
instead and everyone would understand instead of limiting yourself to a very
specific subset of users that know what to do with the barcode. (Same with
"attach photos of what you're selling to a flyer")

Plus, is there any type of control on these barcodes? Can I claim a barcode
and not allow anyone to add anything else? That would be quite important if
you're going to put it on a business card..

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billychasen
Yes, you can create websites and link to them, but it's cumbersome.

With stickybits, you can just upload and you're done. And people see your
resume immediately when scanned.

Also, the first person to scan a barcode is the "moderator" and can delete any
content that gets posted.

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chaosmachine
That's some nice web design. Lots of attention to detail. Cool product idea,
too. Reminds me of Barcode Battler:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode_Battler>

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replicatorblog
yeah, gorgeous design, really awesome name, and the product seems cool, though
not sure how useful at this point? The number of things you would want to put
big vinyl stickers on seems kind of small, but if this is the first step it is
very exciting. Being able to track the provenance of an object unobtrusively
(via RFID?) would be really neat.

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megamark16
Well, from a business perspective, if you're a company with equipment
(medical, electronics, tools, etc) you could have employee "check out"
equipment with their phones. If you're a company that works with documents
(engineering, legal, what have you) you could attach barcodes to physical
copies (shoot, you could overlay them on the digital ones to so they print off
with the doc itself) and use them to easily pull up a record of the document.
These are just a few uses that come to mind, but basically anywhere that you
need to identify something or someone, you could use this as a starting point
and build out from there.

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rodyancy
To target this use-case they would need to limit the number of wide-eyed, open
mouthed monkeys they use on their sales page.

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tophat02
No problem: take the same technology, rebrand it have a "business-oriented"
name, make a different landing page, then sell both versions.

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jrnkntl
First 'web 2.0' website I am seeing that is so well designed AND uses
extensively tables for HTML markup. The site is basically one large image
without any real text, so far for SEO.

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kordless
Yeah, the first thing I did was 'view source'. Sheesh, what a mess.

Check out this: <http://static.stickybits.com/web/images/fp_08.jpg>. Zero SEO
value by putting text in images.

For such a great design, it totally fails at implementation.

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billychasen
To ensure the same type of experience across browsers, we decided to make much
of the top images. Most people still use IE, and we didn't want gross rendered
text.

Also, I like tables :) They just work.

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cracki
i think the concept is kinda weak. i'd use a QR code with a link to a wiki
page, if that's what this is.

so they're proposing a wiki page for each unique bar code... that smells like
wikipedia, but i don't see "business value" in it.

that site looks like they're trying to market something, which means that
they're trying to make money with this. i can't imagine how that's supposed to
work.

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billychasen
QR codes are just an embedded block of text. They can also redirect you to a
URL, so in that case, it's just a shortcut to typing.

Stickybits allows you to actually write to barcodes (effectively using the
barcode as just a pointer to lots of media)

No easy way to do this with QR and be social. Unless you set up a website.

No marketing, just want to use codes and attach digital content to real world
objects.

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fragmede
Unless I'm misunderstanding things, Stickbits _is_ that website. You just
chose to use your own barcodes instead of QR codes for some reason.

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LiveTheDream
The app can use any bar code as the identifier. You can scan a stickybit-
generated bar code, a QR code, or a random UPC code from the back of a product
in a store.

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mscantland
The main use-case I see for this is physical objects which already have a
barcode. If you were going to go to the trouble of barcoding something
yourself (e.g., business card), you'd be better off using a URL, where you'd
be able to control what gets associated with the barcode, to say nothing of
avoiding the chicken-egg issues with something like this.

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tbgvi
Seems interesting, it reminds me of delicious but for products. That to me is
the best use case, like their example "Scan a cereal box barcode and attach
your best treats recipe".

The other ones, like putting a barcode on a birthday card, I'm not so sure
about.

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caryme
This reminds me of the CueCat (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat>).

From what I recall, the CueCat was born of the same idea, but was quite before
its time (for example, it connected via PS/2).

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jordanmessina
Agreed, CueCat was well before its time. Dave Mathews (not the singer) was one
of the creators of the CueCat and generally everything he does is well before
its time.

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norova
Just as a heads up, www.stickybits.com is blocked by default in the NETGEAR
UTM25. It is classified as a "pornograph/sexually explicit" web site.

If any Stickybits people read this, you may want to bug them (Netgear) about
clearing your name.

~~~
norova
An update to this. I was able to get Netgear to reclassify the site, it should
be accessible through all Netgear filters now. :)

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sunkencity
What a greap app! Fantastic design of the homepage as well.

Interesting that they got that through the appstore. Didn't think they allowed
barcode scanning apps, but maybe that was just amazon that didn't allow such
apps. I think it's a good idea to build this app around fun, and then add the
business aspects later.

I would not be surprised though if this app is pulled from the appstore
because of some bogus claim and that apple launches a similar feature with a
selected partner, but more shopping oriented.

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caryme
There are plenty of barcode scanning apps, the best probably being RedLaser
(<http://redlaser.com/>).

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adamtmca
They use Redlaser's SDK.

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jeffpowers
True. In fact we're working more closely with Stickybits to do more than just
license them the RedLaser SDK. Stay tuned for more on that.

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adamtmca
My cofounder and I are working on a product that, in part, replaces a piece of
enterprise hardware with a QR code sticker so shaky reading isn't an option.
We've been looking at the Red Laser sdk so hopefully we'll be in touch soon.

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jordanmessina
This is actually the first major application that has aspects of it powered by
SimpleGeo (as pointed out by Joe Stump here
<http://twitter.com/joestump/status/10224268993>). I think it's as big of an
accomplish for SimpleGeo as it is for StickyBits. Both companies are doing
some amazing things...

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forkqueue
Shame the Android app is Android 2.0+ only, which means I'm unable to try it
with my Hero, at least for the moment.

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vyrotek
Well that explains why I couldn't download it on my Hero either. Indeed, a
shame.

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Mc_Big_G
_Patent pending_

Seriously? A somewhat interesting use of bar codes, but not worthy of a
patent.

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aristus
The CueCat rides again, except now with spam potential. o_O

