That seems rather silly, doesn’t it? Why not allow the customer to call up the machine from their cell phone, enter a password and get the price of the product added to his/her cellphone bill?
That seems rather silly, doesn’t it? Why not allow the customer to call up the machine from their cell phone, enter a password and get the price of the product added to his/her cellphone bill?
or, why not set the machine up to take flattened metal alloy bits with pictures stamped on them that one inserts into a specialized slot in the machine, then as the desired button is actuated, reach down, pick-up beverage, open container, walk away and enjoy!
Actually, OL, they have had this out in Australia for the past 7 years! When I was down there, I could take my then Nokia 5100 series phone, point it at the IR port on the machine, buy the bottle, and it would be charged to my account. This technology has been out for a long time.
What I found rather amusing, was that at COMDEX 2000, Palm had demoed the same thing, except with using the PalmPilots and PalmOS at a Coke machine specially built for them, and marketed it as ‘new’ technology. After I asked the person there why this had been out overseas for 3 years prior, and why it hadn’t made it here yet, I was given no answer. I just chalked it up to ‘the USA wasn’t as ahead of the world technologically as it was made out to be’, and walked away towards the Linux booths…
BL.