Kulutuskapula / Consumer Gadget won the award for the best new innovation at IST 2006 in Helsinki. The service, designed for mobile browsers, allows consumers to check the ethical background of any consumer product by fetching the info from the product’s EAN barcode.

I tested the service with the barcodes found on a couple random products on my desk, Post-It notes and a can of energy drink. The service is currently in its beta testing version, and therefore it doesn’t include info for very many products yet. I got nothing for the Post-It notes. But for the energy drink the service tells me that the brewing company that produced it is one of the biggest in the world, and that “Consumer Gadget is worried about the growing power of major multinational corporations in the world.”

I think the idea itself is great, and once they’ve got info on more products, and keep it objective and fact-based, it can be something that I’ll really use with my cell phone when shopping. I understand that their idea is that users themselves can also e-mail info on different products to the service administrator.

The service also works as an SMS service, doesn’t take ads and is free to use (well, of course you have to pay whatever your operator charges for the SMS / bandwidth). They say there’s also a version, which can read the barcode with a cameraphone’s camera, but it can’t be offered yet because of legal issues.

Karri Ojanen