Microsoft Research will soon release information and software of the
Aura (AURA: Advanced User Resource Annotation)project, reported by
eweek. The project is an effort to creating universal software framework that enables a Windows Pocket PC to retrieve and maintain information about an object identified by a physical tag (eg, bar code). User may annotate on a blog and make it searchable for others.
The idea is again resource searching and sharing, but on a very large scale and extent. Think about almost everything we use has a code: VIN, computer service tag, ISBN of a book..... As long as the handheld device can physically read the code and link it to the web (WiFi or Cellular), it could be a portal peer like KaZaa, but the 'mp3' you shared here is not a song, but your annotation. You can also search. Looks like user will be able to make a purchasing decision right at in the shop, instead of going back to her home PC to search Amazon for reviews. I will call such a device with the software a 'SmartBuyer'.
