6-10-2008 Post-its and Electronic Receipts
I read an advertisement extolling the brilliance of the Post-it Note
One of the many Swiss mountain resort receipts I have garnered: not.
Posts-its: big deal. I remember how in a more paper centric office I had used them to add notes to an underlying document, or whatever. But with the advent of email, I hardly ever use Post-its. There is only one thing I use Post-its for anymore is putting labels on stacks of binder clipped paper business receipts.
Which brings up a the question of why I am accumulating all these paper receipts in this digital age.
I looked around for some e-receipt standards which may exist. Here's what I found:
- Back in 1999, a Digital Receipt Consortium was formed. http://xml.coverpages.org/dri.html It's receipt.org website is now being used for random marketing. So, either they merged or failed. In 2002, a Digital Receipt XML Schema was speced out by the Association for Retail Technology
Standards (ARTS) and IXRetail. I don't think that got anywhere, AFAICT.
- And in 2002, somebody patented a mechanism: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6487540.html
- Then this blogger came up with the idea for a short-term receipt card which would hold a receipt for a month or so, then it would delete, so the card wouldn't need much storage. I sort of like the idea, but I'd rather the receipts were stored on a server without me carrying another stupid card around. I also need to keep the receipts for longer, for tax and reimbursement purposes.
- And in May 2008, a company called AllEtronic is working with some big box stores to be a unified storage place for your receipts. I'm not big on this because it's a standards-less single-implementer solution which, because of that fact will not achieve pervasive adoption.
Which brings us full-circle to the need for the first bullet point's standards development solution. Don't you just love technology? Anyone interested in resurrecting the Digital Receipt Consortium?
