Andrew Price
Former Web Editor, GOOD.is
- January 21, 2010 • 6:00 am PST
- + responses
Sourcemap is a new tool from the clever folks at the MIT Media Lab that's meant to help you track the origins of all the components of basically anything. Here's their intro video:
So you might be a little disappointed to find out that you can't just enter the name of a product and get a ready-made map. As an open-source project it's going to be users who build out a library of good maps (or don't). Only a handful-like this one for an IKEA bed-exist at this point.
But imagine that this does get built out with a few thousand common consumer products and then gets combined with a more sophisticated version of Google Goggles. You'd be able to source things with your phone from the store.
If there's a way to incentivize companies to create accurate sourcemaps for their own products, that could really get this thing going.
Via PSFK
So you might be a little disappointed to find out that you can't just enter the name of a product and get a ready-made map. As an open-source project it's going to be users who build out a library of good maps (or don't). Only a handful-like this one for an IKEA bed-exist at this point.
But imagine that this does get built out with a few thousand common consumer products and then gets combined with a more sophisticated version of Google Goggles. You'd be able to source things with your phone from the store.
If there's a way to incentivize companies to create accurate sourcemaps for their own products, that could really get this thing going.
Via PSFK
