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.

Comments

Re:Scary Tech

[spagetti_code]

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.

further development of an existing technology

[slash.dt]

Mobile phones in Japan already have a function to read barcodes - rather than the traditional barcode that the west are used to, it is a small square of barcode information which holds a lot more data.

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.

They put a CueCat in my phone!

[Panaflex]

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?