Point of purchase downloads: the idea is clever because it merges old technologies in new ways: mobile phones, digital cameras, computers, wireless and wireline links, and Internet protocols

Telecom Asia, Dec, 2004 by Stewart Fist

Back in the '70s when "PC" referred to the Apple II, we generally wrote applications in BASIC. The computer magazines of the day were filled with code, which we laboriously hand-keyed to make the PC do anything useful, and mass storage of such programs involved an audio-cassette recorder plugged into the back of the machine.

So when Cauzin developed the Softstrip system it was truly revolutionary because it saved hours of typing. Softstrip applications were published in computer magazines as sequential lines of barcodes, and these were read by what was essentially the roller-reader mechanism of a facsimile machine plugged into the PC's audio jack.

Softstrip died when floppy disks became cheap and popular, and I'd generally forgotten about it until I heard a radio discussion on the new mobile picture-phone technology called SpotCode. This purported to do much the same thing, using a mobile camera-phone as the scanner.

According to the speaker, you could point your SpotCode-equipped phone-camera at an advertisement, electronic information display or street poster, and it would automatically download a videogame, a new ringtone or a bus timetable.

The speaker was infectiously enthusiastic, and to him this technology introduced a new era in telecommunications. With Softstrip in the back of my mind he had me believing for a while that this was a direct transfer - a new way of translating real-world, printed code to virtual electronic data.

But SpotCode seemed too good to be true given the limitations of screen and camera resolution, page-size, alignment problems, etc. And so it was.

The SpotCode itself is little more than a barcode arranged in a circle--like the spokes in a wheel--and capable of coding about 42 bits in all. So it can only generate simple identification codes.

But that doesn't diminish its usefulness because modern communications technologies have other ways of linking to bulk data sources--namely Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or the Internet.

SpotCode is also developing a Java (Web-cam) version, but essentially it provides a control system that deciphers the mobile camera's code and calls up the full data file via Bluetooth, usually from a local server.

Merging old and new

So SpotCode scanning provides a vandal-proof, low-cost alternative to the touch-screen of a street kiosk, together with some future home or office applications if their circular barcodes become widely used in press advertising.

The idea is clever because it merges old technologies in new ways: mobile phones, digital cameras, computers, wireless and wireline links, and Internet protocols. Naturally Nokia, Sony and Ericsson are all interested.

But it also raises the question: What does the public gain from another barcode standard? Why not use the conventional linear form?

This approach is already being promoted by a US company under the name of Scanbuy Inc, and Sony and Ericsson also have taken an interest in this system.

Some PDAs are already equipped with barcode readers, and standard product-code readers also allow applications to link to online databases for comparative-price shopping.

The idea is that you'll sneakily scan the product-code while you are in the store, and automatically link to a commercial Internet database of alternative suppliers to check prices on offer elsewhere.

It's an attractive theory, but one that probably won't survive long if stores begin losing substantial sales. A quick slash with a black pen could ensure that barcodes are unreadable by anything other than a highly focused, self-illuminated laser-scanner. And cameras also have reading problems arising from tow background contrast, angular image distortion, barcode rotation, and variable image size and focus.

Scanbuy also hopes to persuade product and service companies to add barcodes to their newspaper ads. These will be resolved by a DNS-type service into URLs, and automatically link to Web sites to order travel, accommodation or entertainment services.

You can see the potential here for practical and useful communications services, but you can also see that they will encounter a range of competitive and ownership problems. To make money, they will probably need to lock users into proprietary standards or services, and SpotCode's circular barcode appears to be one such attempt.

But equally, you can see the enormous benefit of universality--of open standards--that makes it difficult for any private corporation to lever such an advantage or differentiate its products.

Stewart Fist (fist@ozemail.com.au) is an Australia-based, award-winning journalist and columnist, and author of The Informatics Handbook