Realeyes3D / Qipit cracks 1-D barcode

Barcode reading is an intriguing mobile app, which the potential to link billions of products in the physical world to the online realm, but so far technical hurdles have resulted in a poor user experience and low takeup.  This is however be about to change: breakthrough technology from RE3D now makes 1D barcodes readable from any mobile phone (PR here).

Read Alan Reiter, a recognised authority in the field of mobile imaging.  As he highlights:

Improvements in camera phones — higher resolution, close-up lenses and automatic focus — can result in better quality images.  But it remains difficult for the majority of handsets to take a sufficiently clear photo for barcode reader software to interpret.

What Realeyes3D has done is dramatically expand the number of phones that become useful barcode capture devices.  We are crunching through the data but it looks like the progress is fairly dramatic, with now 60 or 70% of phones enabled.

The Pondering Primate puts it better than me:

Billions of products can now be linked to the Internet simply by scanning the 1d bar code on the packaging !

Throw any barcode picture at the RE3D processors to associate it with the appropriate product.  Now of course there is not yet a global product / barcode repository but a number of the key players including Google are working hard on this, and there are a number of large, if disparate, product barcode repositories across the world.

Some great coverage at MobileCrunch too.

Barcode decoding has been done for a while notably in Japan using embedded software.  Fine in an iMode world that has standardized around a 2D barcode format (called QR Code) but hardly mass market.  In the absence of accepted 2D barcodes standards, Realeyes3D just made this a whole lot more accessible.

Now that the techology has landed, it is time to implement the great consumer and business applications that will make this a major success.

A soup to nuts approach from the digital to the physical and back

(This superb joke brought to you by the Qipit blog)

Comments

[Leafar]

voila une bonne nouvelle pour le rentrage d'objets dans la bibliothèque ;-D

[Liam Lowe]

Well, if does what it says on the tin, then I hope the RE3D team are on the MoMo London email list, as every second email these days seems to be folk looking for mobile barcodes.
Nice to see a product meet market demand... well done.

[Phillip Hofmeyr]

Now that this technology has come of age I am convinced we will see it applied in some really innovative and creative ways. Co-incidentally my business partner blogged on QR codes last week (http://snagsta.wordpress.com). It was all about personal QR codes you could stick on t-shirts to help add Facebook friends quickly!