Camera Phones Bridge World to Web

The End of Shopping is here. The barcode scanning technology, mentioned in that Times article Guy touched on, actually exists and If you have a camera phone and either T-Mobile or Cingular, you can
download the software for free and start scanning for the lowest price
around. This is how scan-commerce works, after you download the software from ScanZoom, you take a picture of the barcode on the product you want to bargain hunt. Your phone will then automatically send you price comparisons/reviews from either Pricegrabber or Amazon.com.

SCANBUY, the creators of this new technology, also plan to include price comparisons of other brick and mortar shops in your locale and they will even beam you driving directions. Shopping 2.0: Shop until your camera phone drops.

There is also,  Semacode, who are bridging the real world and the web world in their own way. They’ve created a free system that also allows camera phones to convert bar codes into URLs.

Northwest Airlines is putting this technology to good use. They currently have billboard ads that are embedded with coded URLs plastered throughout Japan. Consumers can take a picture of the code with their camera phone and it directs them
to a mini site which features a game where you can win, you guessed it, flight coupons. These UPC-URLs are also becoming increasingly common in Japanesse magazines and business cards. Barcode scanning has become a basic feature on our camera phones, we just don’t know it yet!