Wednesday, August 30, 2006

2D barcodes in a sequence

There are a bunch of really cool applications out there based on the 2 dimensional barcode scanning with camera phones. More so in Japan (QR code) as the reader comes pre-installed on the devices.

I have been thinking about this for quiet some time now and so far I havent found anyone doing this. How about using barcodes for downloading content directly on the phone? No, not by opening the WAP browser and then using the mime type of the content to govern the actual download and installation. How about breaking up the content file and encoding it into a bunch of 2-d codes and then having the user download the content by scanning all the codes in succession. Could be done? YES!!! (technically speaking).

Example:
A user wants to download a string "1234" on his phone :-). So we create 4 codes with the values '1','2','3' and '4'.
1
234
These individual codes could then be combined into one single fixed delay sequence that can be captured by camera phones. Most of the barcode reading applications already support the Append mode and it shouldnt be a strecth to incorporate a streaming (using this word for the lack of other words) protocol in the barcode reading process.
Theoretically, the application could then assemble all the data by reading these individual QR codes to create the complete content file. Once the file has been created, the application will read the mime type and launch the registered content handler. Hmmm... sounds too easy. Well, there will be a bunch of issues that will have to be solved, specially those related to the frame delay in the sequence and the type of content that can be encoded. The benefit, download content without Data service :-).

No comments:

Post a Comment