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Camera Phones Read Hidden Messages in Print
pikine writes "As reported by BBC News, Fujitsu has developed a technology that encodes 12-bytes of information in a printed picture by skewing yellow hue, which is difficult to discern by human eye but fairly easy for camera phones to decode using software written in Java." The first target uses are promotional contests and competitions, not entirely unlike those game pieces that need to be viewed through a colored filter.
The unique identification of many (soon to me most or all) inkjets and color lasers was not
done for you or me. It was done quietly for law enforcement to be able
to *find* the owner of any printed document.
The enormity of that type of underhanded removal of privacy is
just gobsmacking. And most vendors quietly went along with it.
This technology will no doubt be used in a similar vein - any
picture uploaded onto the internet can be traced back to *you*.
Freedom takes another blow.
This is software and will work with any digital camera - though you would want to use a web-enabled device like your cellphone so that you can go to the link. So there is no need for dedicated hardware.
You often see this barcode on advertisements next to the url - you can scan the barcode and save typing in the url. I've done it several times - even my non-techy wife uses the feature.
This new announcement seems like a way that you can embed the information without having to have an obvious barcode spoiling the picture - but you will still need some tag to let you know that there was something there worth scanning.
The artical talks about the 'advantage' that you can link a picture to a digital domain.... so why not just use semacode or Q-codes. Then the reader knows your pushing a website/etc and will actually point their phone at it!
Semacodes can store a lot more information and can be scalled to include more or less. They are FEC'ed and are quite relisiant to damage.
http://www.semacode.com/
You don't even need to use the offical Semacode decoder, there are Free projects around.
Simon
The CueCat was a device to read barcodes out of printed materials into your machine - which then linked you up to the referenced website.
Fortunately it was a commercial failure - as the "free" devices cost a huge amount of cash. I'm sure this will fare better, of course, because it utilizes customers existing equipment. But who knows what wonderful websites it'll forward you too, hmm?
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
You've basically reinvented Gray Component Replacement (GCR) and Under Color Removal (UCR), and they have nothing to do with hiding information. Replacing colors on the press in what is a theoretically neutral way is already done for many reasons.
You're also depending on a perfect press, which doesn't exist (there are no bits or pixels on paper) -- you can't really swap ink mixtures in and out transparently. There is always a bit of difference due solely to the density of ink, humidity, paper, etc, so there are aesthetic reasons for replacing inks on the press in one way or the other.
99% of the full-color printers on Earth are set up for 4 colors -- Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. The Yellow plate is the one we're least visually sensitive to, which is why they're using it to put information on. Your desktop printer is 4-color, not RGB (although it does all the processing in RGB). Adding extra plates or colors to printers is a hugely expensive and complicated undertaking, nobody is going to do it just to add something that isn't even visible.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
In Japan almost every phone sold is a cameraphone (only a couple of mid-range phones are sold with a cameraless version, mainly on their CDMA carrier, KDDI) and a barcode system called QR code has been in place for a long time that does what this is supposed to do (except that it was a 2D "barcode").
OSx86 FTW