While the digital signage folks continue touting big-screen eye candy and for captive audiences - a group of entrepreneurs are using low-tech albeit next gen bar codes and the CCD (charged coupling device) chip inside camera phones to turn that camera feature (never used past the first week) into a high tech scanner.

Steve Sechrist
Senior Analyst and Editor
of Projection Monthly

By using new "QR" (short for quick response) two dimensional bar codes that are capable of handling many times more data than conventional striped codes - a simple 2D poster suddenly becomes a portal into an interactive, point-of-purchase domain with the handset as your primary information display device. With the simple "click" of a camera, data is passed on to the processor and translated into text on your cell phone screen-including a web address. Not too distant from clicking a mouse button in a browser web page with somewhat similar results.

How much data you may ask? These small-alien looking black and white squares can hold up to 4.3K of data per bar code square using two dimensional (both x and y axis) coding developed by Denso Wave of Japan.

Savvy business owners can use this feature to "pop" on-screen coupons from-say menus or other signage posted on the storefront. Like the digital signage phenomena, these low-tech barcodes can bring a whole new experience (and information) to shopping, but at a fraction of the cost because consumers carry their own displays. Another added benefit, the bar coding / scanning solution gets around the data input problem most users encounter while trying to access the net using the tiny cell phone keypad.

Cost savings aside, the most compelling part of the proposition is the interactivity that bridges a real world "feet-on-the-street" experience with the power of the Internet. For instance, in Japan, shoppers are using cell phone cameras to scan book prices then check for better deals on Amazon.com.

But there’s more. In London, a company called Shazam Entertainment is using the speaker from your cell phone to empower a music recognition program that identifies a target song and pushes a text message, complete with offer to buy, back to the cell phone.

Our take: This is yet another example of the unintended consequences of carrying around web-empowered cell phones and other smart devices with more technology than the astronauts took to the Moon. Similar to an avatar in a computer game, information portals can be placed all around us, opening up new possibilities and adventures, fueled by marketing dollars, and limited only by the imagination. Pair this with GPS and Wi-Fi hot spot technology and the sky is the limit…

We are seeing the power of the (not so) simple tools we carry usher in a whole new era of "Proximity marketing that makes our life better through enriched and relevant content-in this case, with the simple click of a camera, giving a whole new meaning to the word click. Better yet, unlike the somewhat intrusive large displays of the digital signage wave, we can simply choose not to click-but it may be hard to resist, at least for the first week or two. –SS