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Sourcemap: Map Where Stuff Comes From

Andrew Price
By Andrew PriceJan 22, 2010
Andrew Price
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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:[vimeo]https://www.vimeo.com/5133927[/vimeo]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

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