In 2005, Microsoft announced that it would spend two and a half million dollars to scan a hundred thousand out-of-copyright books in the collection of the British Library.
Both YottaMark and FoodLogiq offer systems that let shoppers type a text code into a mobile phone or home computer, or scan a bar-code using a phone's built-in camera, to find out when the tomatoes on the shelf were picked and which field they came from.