Camera-phone barcode reader

Cory posts about Camera-phone barcode reader: point the camera at a 2-d barcode and the phone will decode it into its component URL and open the URL in it browser, from SemaCode.

For the clueless that whine about useless camera phones, this is one of those things that you couldn't do with a un-connected camera.

Think about what else you could do (thinking about this for 5 seconds) : once I know the product, look up product reviews, do price comparisons (national and local). Anything else (I'll spend another 5 seconds - more than the clueless do)

update : Reiter's Camera Phone Report has more details :

Discussing his view of barcodes, Simon writes, "For a long time computer scientists have been looking for a cheap, inexpensive way to create a gate between the real world and virtual world of the internet.

Simon has also created a Java applet to code a url into a 2-d bar code.
Here's a semacode to my favorite blog ;)

Now I just need to print it out and post it around...

Question : Is it possible to add the semacode 2-d barcode as a watermark to a image? bardcodes are ugly. This would allow enabling an image with the smarts of semacode encoded url. cane the image, extract the watermark and de-encode the url. Or "just" watermark a url into a image, such that it can be scaned and decoded by a camera phone? insanity or in sanely great? (Thanks for the question Chuck!)

Heres a peice from TheFeature Barcodes for the World of Ends with some interesting factorids

Categorized under: Cameraphone/QRCode/Tech