Keep Your Fridge Stocked with Ikan
Nick Gonzalez
29 comments »
If you’ve even been on a late night Mountain Dew binge only to wake up and forget how many of the “Extreme” beverages you need to restock for your next LAN party, Ikan might have the fix for you.
Ikan is a special bar code scanner you can use to keep your grocery shopping list up to date. As you use items, simply scan them before you trash them to keep a running tally of what you’ve used. It also has a voice recorder you can use to add non-coded items like apples and oranges.
Your list is saved to the internet, where you can review and print out your list or ship it off to an online grocery store to complete your order. Because the list is on the net, you can even review it on the go from a mobile browser.
See more at CrunchGear or their profile.
There are a lot of other startups that are doing intelligent things with bar code scanning, such as MyTago or Delicious Monster. MyTago and services like it use special bar codes for mobile phones called QR codes.
What about items that have the barcode on the package? For example paper towels. :/
Cue:Cat 2.0!!!
cue cat in the hizouse! I wonder if it will “work” this time - it’s amazing how quickly people hated the cue cat - I still have mine.
This would work great with RecipeMatcher!
I find it hard to believe that scanning each item before you dispose of it will ever catch on. Now, if RFID becomes prevalent in packaging, a service like iKan would be viable. For now, I can only picture a small number of enthusiasts ever buying into something like this.
hmmm first time I’ve heard about the CueCat
About this ikan product, I think it is a great idea for those who want this technology in existing fridges, but for the product/idea to stay alive, it will need to be brought out by a major fridge manufacturer company as companies like LG already have this idea built into their fridges.
It would be really cool to also get a home delivery grocery company to support this idea and take orders automatically, so that your groceries are delivered automatically.
hello: Paper towels are one of those items that you always want around in the house, so as you open one -> order one
Nick: something that ikan can take into account as a future product
Looks like they don’t want any testers in Washington, DC… The stat drop down on the beta test sign up doesn’t have any mention of the district…
#2, lol - i remember the cuecat…that product was a big bomb
@lawrence:
Heh… the only way this will take off is if “The Steve” integrated this functionality into the iPhone or iPod. LOL.
Nick was probably not born when cuecat was the hip thing
Will the ikan track cheeseburgers?
On a more serious note, I think it’s an interesting inventory management system which would work for things you get on a regular basis. If you can track how many of the item you initially have, and how many you use, you can judge usage against your pantry. If you can’t track the initial amount, all you know if that you consumed, say, 14 cans of corn in the last five weeks. But how many are left?
It also introduces extra steps into the general kitchen/cooking process, in that you need to modify your behavior (scanning a product sometime between taking it out of the fridge and tossing the container) in order to successfully leverage the product. This is a bit of a disadvantage over a product which might integrate with existing workflows a bit easier (something like RFID, which has been mentioned by previous commenters).
We’ll see if it catches on.
Absolutely horrible idea for home use. This wold work great in restaurants, but guess what, restaurants already have this!
hmm, Ikan is a nice word. In my languange, the word “ikan” means “fish”. Yes, that’s true. This is what we call “fish” in Indonesian language.
iKan can track the Jelly Belly packages that my music studio clients use! Sweet!
Deep shades of cuecat. This is a great idea, but I’ll wait for RFID. That will make this product work by making it not-so-much work (that is, easy to do instead of the current).
Right now it sounds like a tremendous pain, and I’d hate to have to explain to my roommates what I was doing in my refrigerator with a barcode scanner.
Austin - whenever I am at parties and the ladies ain’t feelin’ me, I pull out my cue cat.
I can scan them and they love it. I can tell you that since I have used the cue cat at a party, I haven’t gone home alone since.
obviously it’s time for bed
Dumb.
ironically, “ikan” means “fish” in the Malay language
And I have to pay to get one of this…?
It’s horrible, this idea. I don’t see it being useful enough to catch on, especially since it requires retraining yourself and adding extra effort to something you do without even thinking.
At least the cuecat is retro-cool.
what happened to just opening the fridge and, say i don’t know, look at what’s in there.
it’s like those mirror interfaces that help people see what’s in their closet and pick outfits for them. open the closet man!
we need more services that encourage people to be more active, not passive and automated.
Funny name. I’m from Malaysia. Ikan means fish in Malay.
yeah wont … work out -
- NoOne wants to scan crap / - That is why there aren’t 40 year olds doing it at the market / there are 15-17 year olds doing it for $6 an hour.
This is a terrible use of time, resources, and technology. Aside from the obvious problems in this solution, is it REALLY such a pain the rump to go to the grocery store and buy the food you need?
The correct url should be http://www.ikan.net Ikan.com links to a relocation company.
Here’s a much simpler implementation of this idea that I made. It works with any computer and barcode scanner.
The Devil is in the details. How much will the device cost? How large will the object be? How will the thing connect to the internet? How difficult will it be to navigate their site? How difficult will the thing be to scan any item?
The best way to determine the market viability of a product like this is in my humble opinion to preform a cost/benefit analysis.
The financial, emotional, and time invested cost to the consumer must be less than the benefit for the IKan.
100 bucks, with it I can buy a brand new coffee machine, expresso machine, pasta machine, bread machine, smoothie machine, rice machine, juicer, blender, or one heck of a George Foreman. These products all have immediate tangible benefits. They’re all easy to understand, to explain to friends, and non require an Internet access. If the IKan costs more than 100 dollars, I’m going to need some serious benefit to convince me to buy it.
The emotional cost is the cost of getting the device situated in it’s new home. Will the IKan be plug-n-play or will I have to read the instructions? Contast a no-name computer company against Dell then once more against Apple. Steve in recent years has a remarkable track record of reducing emotional cost to the consumer. Apple in part has publicized consumers paying a premium for reduced emotional cost. How seamless is the buying process? How peaceful or disruptive of an experience was setting the IKan up? Cell phones for instance charge some of the highest emotional costs on consumers. On the otherhand buying a blender is a low emotional cost experience.
“Flow” was the perfect word to describe the third variable for this product’s cost. Will the IKan fit into the consumers’ kitchen flow? How will indexing pantry stocks be dealt with? How will data move from the device onto the internet? How will people create their lists? How will lists be moved? Printed? Texted to cell phones? How reliably will the IKan scan any item? How dorky will it look? How heavy will it be to move out of sight? Kitchens are often public places and people are afraid to put an unsightly kitchen item in the open. How will the “paper towel” syndrome, barcodes that are tossed before the product is consumed? How intuitive will the IKan’s website be to navigate?
The benefit though is just as unclear with the IKan. How rewarding will it be to have an algorithm generate lists for you? How will those lists be passed on to the user?
Assuming the financial, emotional, and flow cost is kept to a minimum, there is reason to be bullish about the IKan. The company could collaborate with a famous diet book author. Disclosure: I’m cheering for the Volumetrics Eating Plan. The company could collaborate with a web van start up automating a dialogue between the consumer and the web van delivery service. What I’m most excited about though is IKan selling their data to companies that could profit off of it. Would Walmart love to know what people are eating? You don’t have to work at the company to know they certainly do? Walmart would love data about who is eating what when. Of course selling your data could be op-in only and IKan could serve only as the broker of your eating habits data. I can see the company collaborating with other web 2.0 health sites. I’ve seen a few sites that have caloric intake aproximators listing options such as “Big Mac Value Meal” or “medium sized tossed salad.” IKan data could be valuable in calorie counting and Traineo comes first to mind.
RFID has been overrated on these comments, but certainly will be a hardware upgrade down the road a few years when products are more ubiquitous.
Verdict: IKan is just a piece in a larger overhaul to how we eat. Without the vision of where the web will take us, this product is going to stay seriously grounded.