RFID in Japan

Mediaseek's CamReader is feature-rich image processing software. It's based on the barcode decoder engine adopted by major mobile telcos in Japan (i.e., KDDI, NTT DoCoMo, and Vodafone). When we talk about camera phones and barcodes in Japan, it's usually about QR codes, but CamReader supports varieties of barcode formats including: JAN8/13, EAN, UPC-A/E, CODE39, QR Code(model2), Micro QR Code, Data Matrix, PDF417, OCR.

The abilities to read regular UPC barcodes and to optically recognize printed characters (OCR) are quite interesting. Many products already have UPC barcodes -- and it'd be also cool if you can scan and capture any text. However, killer apps using these features are yet to be invented. The software also does motion detection through image processing, which could be used to allow people to play mobile games by just moving and rotating their camera phones. Some of the PDF files here include interesting stats showing what end-users might want to do using the "mobile phone + barcode" platform.

a few mpeg movies here.

thanks, Ooshima-san

Hoop Reader, developed by Japan Scientific Management Inc., is a free software tool that decodes QR codes captured through a Webcam connected to a PC. If a URL is encoded in a QR code, the Hoop Reader automatically connects to a corresponding web page.

I could start up Hoop Reader on my English WinXP machine but menus etc. are mostly unreadable unfortunately...

via QR Code blog

So, it's Tanabata today.

According to Wikipedia:

Tanabata (¼·Í¼) is the Japanese name for the originally Chinese star festival (see Qi Xi). Held on July 7 the festival celebrates the meeting of Orihime (Vega) and Hikoboshi (Altair). The Milky Way, a river made from stars that crosses the sky, separated these two lovers, and they were allowed to meet only once a year. This special day is the 7th of July.

People in Japan celebrate this day by wearing yukata and decorating the bamboo leaves. They write their wishes on the tanzaku and hang them on the leaves. It is said that the Orihime and Hikoboshi would make their dreams come true. Having been decorated, around midnight or on the next day, the bamboo tree is thrown into a river or burned to make them come true.

So QR Code Blog did it again -- A tanzaku strip with QR-encoded wishes can be fond here. If you are shy and don't want others to read your secret wishes, could this be a solution? Maybe not. If yours is the only QR-encoded tanzaku, people would be very interested in taking a look at it. You might want to additionally encode your wishes using PGP. What's God's public key again?