Been researching this type of system for about two years now. The feedback from business owners has not been very positive. Some do not want their inventory to be readily available to anyone (for whatever reason). Others do not see the value of anything outside of Facebook (the social network has become their own little internet). A couple talked about how expensive software is (they are right). One or two were open to the idea. But were not ready to be used as guinea pigs for research.

One common trait has been the lack of understanding of what online sales are, and what they might mean to them. There is a lot of space to innovate here, but it has to be done in a way that is less take a risk with me, and more this is totally safe and normal to do.

Maybe, and all due respect, you're not selling it right

I was not selling it. Just researching the idea. Had I tried to sell it people would have not given me much data to crunch. I'm still convinced the idea is good. Though it will require a great amount of effort to gain momentum. Businesses are very conservative due to the fear of losing precious resources on a wrong decision. They need to know about others being successful with a product/service before they decide to try it.

I thought about this once... one of the added benefits would be that stores and restaurants could automatically be multilingual

you'd probably have to RFID the stock in a retail setting. I feel that restaurants are a better place to start (on account of less fluidity in their offerings)

That's a nice side-effect, yes!

Restaurants are an easier place to start, and in fact there are some services which already have databases of restaurants' menus.

As for RFID - I think a lot of people go there at first when discussing a solution to this problem. It might work just fine for smaller shops but in order to get it all over you need it built into the supply chain from the moment something steps out from being manufactured.

This would be huge. I feel like google should be moving towards this, since it would fit in nicely with maps.

It sure would.

The solution I originally came up with would be to run a POS system which is free for shops to use, but to take a SaaS approach to the software tools shops are given, and give them an opt-out feature which is to make their stock room publicly available via an API.

For the SaaSy-ness, you'd want to offer different things that the POS system can enable with the data it has - insights into sales, and as a CRM tool, essentially. All-in-one - give them the hardware for free (but on a lease) and charge for the software, make the API publicly available and charge companies to use the API. Maps-type-applications, SatNav companies, and so on, could pay for this.

Yes, that sounds great! I've had some similar ideas but your proposal is better than I've been able to make it so far. This sounds very useful and I think something like this will exist soon - unless online stores start seriously taking over physical stores.

I hope so. I think online stores will start encroaching into the space and it could force traditional retail to innovate a little, which could be good for this Thing.

Milo.com does this.

Interesting, but it doesn't seem to be working for me. I'm sure there are grocery shops in London.