Last night we stumbled on the Internet UPC Database, a hack that offers a public database of products and their Universal Product Codes. Anyone can submit new codes or search the database of codes. For example, here’s Diet Cherry Coke. Even more interesting is that a Google search for Diet Cherry Coke’s UPC number points you to the upcdatabase.com item. Which is even more astounding when you realize that the guy launched the service just seven months ago, and already has some extraordinary statistics:
Known Manufacturer Entries: 1058
UPC Entries: 805229
Distributable UPC Entries: 486416 (60.4%)
Unique Mfr ID’s Represented: 44333
Average Items per Mfr ID: 18.2
Total size of database (approx.): 53.5 MB
Update Requests Pending: 139
Too bad there’s no web service interface so we could start doing some interesting hacks…