[uf-discuss] Product Data Microformat

[Mike Dierken]

> I think this is something we would be interested in getting involved in
> too.  Would people see this encompassing the concept of a "universal
> object identifier"?  I can see that this might not be core to a product
> microformat but would definitely be good to get some discussion going.
I think you mean 'universal product identifier' like a UPC or EAN for
/everything/. This is a tough problem. There are many products without
built-in identifiers (UPC, manufacturer+partnumber, etc), many people
don't know that data even if it did exist and people make mistakes.
The closest thing to a 'universal product identifier' is the Amazon
ASIN and I know a bit about how that works - it's great but obviously
not perfect. There are other systems that do something similar for
some areas - like the OCLC database.