Leading the field is Lavasphere, from Gavitec AG - mobile digit, this year's winner in the enterprise category of the Ericsson Mobile Application Awards. Gavitec's technology enables barcode scanning with camera-equipped mobile phones. Codes can be printed in newspapers and magazines, on posters or on the product itself.

The Lavasphere platform-independent code needs no additional scanner hardware to turn camera-enabled devices into universal code readers. It is easy to integrate into current and future camera-enabled mobile phones ? regardless of the operating system used. The system allows camera phones to read Data Matrix and a variety of other two-dimensional printed codes, as well as traditional one-dimensional barcodes.

It is not just a one-way system. In addition to scanning barcodes, the camera phone can display codes to be read by a scanner. The company also develops and distributes hardware units that make it possible to read codes presented on the display of a mobile phone. Possible uses include e-ticking applications and electronic vouchers.

Texus a Dublin mobile software firm, has introduced SMS barcodes that can be used in point-of-sale transactions. The M-Scan device communicates with the Textus server via GPRS, and then issues a physical ticket from an internal thermal printer and the mobile phone user presents it as a ticket, or as a promotional offer.

The technology is currently being piloted by Miller Beer in Ireland and is being used actively by another brewer, Stella Artois, in Northern Ireland. Workers in the field are the target market for the Mobile Employee project, an initiative of Digital North Denmark.

The project was to develop a solution that could substantially relieve the building companies and entrepreneurs of administrative workload. With a mobile phone and an attached scanner, a plumber, carpenter or electrician could record the time for a task and the spare parts used ? and he could check whether a specific item was in stock back in the company.

The employee carries a booklet full of barcodes associated with the job. The start and finish times for each job are recorded using the scanner. Items pulled from stock are also recorded using the scanner. This information is stored on a central server where the information can be used to create invoices and keep track of inventory.

Semacode is a free mobile barcode-scanning system created by Simon Woodside, a programmer from Canada. The system encodes standard URLs as two-dimensional Data Matrix codes. An application on the user's phone converts the Data Matrix code back into a URL and passes the information to the phone's browser.

The Semacode system is used as part of ConQwest, an urban treasure hunt. Five teams from local high schools compete to earn money for their schools by racing through the city finding the hidden treasure codes (semacodes). Players shoot photos of these semacodes with their camera phones. Photos are sent from the phone to ConQwest HQ where the semacodes are decoded and points are awarded.

Read the Lavasphere article, Scan your way to the mobile internet

By John Maxwell Hobbs