i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

NYC pioneered a project where fast food chains were required to post the calorie count of individual food items right next to their listing on the menu. However, a group of researchers found that while 9 out of 10 people have said that it has influenced them to make healthier choices about what they purchase, they "found that people had, in fact, ordered slightly more calories than the typical customer had before the labeling law went into effect, in July 2008.

This Economist article describes the use of bar codes in conjunction with mobile phone cameras to provide users with real-time, context-sensitive information. An example of this is the traveller photographing a barcode at a railway station with his mobile phone to obtain train timetables. Despite of varying bar code standards, the author suggests their free, open standard nature will encourage wider adoption. However, for this technology to become pervasive, collaboration between barcode software developer

Earlier this year, Craigslist, facing bad publicity and legal pressure, changed its "erotic services" category to "adult services". The site now charges $10 for each ad, and manually reviews each ad to ensure guideline compliance. When I originally read this article - and never having used that part of Craigslist (I tend to stick to the PG part) - I wondered if a name change would change anything at all?