This is tremendous. It’s an application for Android called BarTor that you use to automatically download movies using BitTorrent. You simply hold the G1’s camera to a movie’s barcode, presumably while at Best Buy or something, then the software sends the movie title to your computer, which you’ve already set up to run uTorrent or Vuze. And off it goes!
The piracy uses are obvious, but can you imagine if, say, the Hollywood studios developed an application like this? I’m not saying they should change their entire business model to support this basic concept—tagging real-world DVDs for download—but what a progressive idea it’d be. You’re standing in Best Buy or Wal-Mart or whatever, shopping for a new digital camera, when you see This Great Movie staring at you. Too bad they want $20 at retail! Why, you could scan the movie using your phone, and it’ll automatically set it to download from a Hollywood-approved Web site or service, for less than you’d pay at retail. Again, the underlying idea here is what’s most interesting, something to show that Hollywood is thinking “outside the box,” as it were, not the specifically detailed implementation; that can be worked out at a later date.
So yeah, the application can be found on the Android Market for $2.99. If I had a G1—I use a BlackBerry right now—I’d probably be all over this. You should be, too.