wikifoodia.org with barcode scanner apps — Tools to help you to avoid dangerous food products already in the store

Why?

• Over 175 dangerous chemicals found in food packaging: Substances are linked to cancer, fertility and birth defects
• One third of the greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture and food production
• ...(you could probably expand this list better than me)

The idea

Basically the idea consists of two parts:

• A wiki site where products are stored under their barcode number. This will hopefully describe the product in a less biased way than the manufacturers own description of it.
• A barcode scanner app (shopper app) which means that shoppers can scan the products, and can already in the store read this information.

The wiki-site

Using Mediawiki (which is used for wikipedia etc) for the wiki software.

The scanner app ...

The idea is that the scanner app scans the code, say 123456789, the app adds it to a url like so: http://wikifoodia.org/123456789 and opens it in a browser.

When finished reading the shopper hits the back button and can immediately scan the next item.

... on android

Actually there are already apps that work pretty much like described above. Ex: Barcode scanner from from ZXing (Zebra Crossing). The drawback is that the app is not as streamlined as it could be. The shopper has to enter the url in the settings, and it offers so much other functionality and buttons that I see a small risk of confusion for inexperienced users.

However for a custom (streamlined) app (with fewer options and buttons), there seem to be several well tested "programming libraries" available.

... on iPhone

There are several stock barcode scanner apps available. I haven't tested them all but some of them might already work.

For a custom app, I searched for "iphone barcode scanner library" and one can find programming libraries that seem well embraced.

... as web app

After a little bit or research: barcode_scanner_web_app, I've unfortunately found that the technology isn't mature yet (On most devices the camera would only work with fixed focus (not auto focus which is needed at close range))

Other notes

As for myself (Magnus Andersson) developing streamlined apps:

I have no experience with iPhone apps and only very little experience of Android apps so I don't intend to commit myself there.

Someone might say that lobbyists might take over the wiki-site, but then anyone can set up a new wiki-site and copy the content, and the shoppers can switch site to whichever they trust the most.