Toshiba have developed mobile phone technology that lets you see what other people think of a product just by scanning its barcode. Simply take a picture of a product's barcode (a DVD, say, or a book) with your mobile phone's camera, and the Toshiba software will read the barcode and send its information wirelessly to a server that constantly watches blogs and web-sites that discuss and review your chosen product. The server software infers whether the blog buzz is positive or negative, rates the product, and returns the rating back to the user, complete with a few links of the more popular blogs discussing the product. Genius!

Read more on Toshiba's new mobile product review technology after the jump.

[Source: WirelessNewsFactor]

Toshiba's mobile product review technology

Toshiba's new mobile product review serice sounds like a stroke of genius. How often have you picked up two closely priced yet similarly featured products, and agonized over which one to get? A classic example is mobile phones (naturally!) or digital cameras. The choice is huge, but the decision is made more complex because they're not cheap, yet each seems to offer the same set of features (more or less) as the other. Which do you go for?

Now imagine the same scenario, but rather than seeing which one looks good in a shop, then going home and researching the reviews on the web ebfore committing your hard earned cash, you simply take a picture of each barcode and see what rating is returned. If you want a bit more info, read the returned blogs.

From a blogger's perspective, this is also great news, as it provides another channel for content to be viewed. All a blogger wants is to be read (it's true, I tells yer!), and the more channels through which the content can be published, the better.

I really hope this service becomes reality, and better still, actually works. Toshiba aim to test the service in Japan next month, before making it widely available as a service on mobile phones in 2007. If Toshiba don't release it world-wide, I'm sure some other enterprising software company will.