Spime Watch: Amazon Flow

*This isn't "augmented reality," it's just image-recognition and barcode-recognition, but it is a low-blow from Amazon aimed at busting-up the brick-and-mortar logistics chain. And just in time for a lean and mean Xmas 2011.

*There have been plenty of these barcode-scanners in the past, but they haven't had Amazon's click-and-buy processing muscle behind them. If you squint a little here and ignore the competitive blood on the floor, you can glimpse augmented reality as the visual graphic front-end of a ubiquituous-computing world.

http://a9.com/-/company/flow.jsp

http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/02/amazons-flow-iphone-app-brings-augmented-reality-to-barcode-scanning/

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“This is our first step towards integrating product search technology with augmented reality,” said Bill Stasior, president of A9.com. “The integration of a live camera display, graphical overlays, and visual recognition technology creates a seamless experience for a customer looking to discover information about objects in their physical surroundings.”...