DNP has launched a service that will allow cell phones to read bar codes from displays. Imagine watching a TV show and taking a picture of the screen to purchase a product being discussed. Pretty cool!

Dai Nippon Printing (DNP) launched a new service January 5th which allows cell phones to read the 2-dimensional bar code displayed on "data-broadcasting screens". (This 2 dimensional bar code gives significance to both the x and y axis, unlike a traditional "grocery store bar code" in which only the x axis is significant.)

This service allows cell phones which have cameras capable of reading the 2D bar code to read data from these displays. By doing this, the cell phone can easily jump to URLs referred to by the barcodes. This will allow broadcasts to allow interaction with their audiences. For example, real time voting could be enabled, or direct selling of products.

Also, these sites can record a viewers activity history, and also know the time of day that a viewer is accessing their site. This will allow customized content to be delivered to viewers.

DNP plans to provide these data embedded broadcats to a wide vareity of views in the future. 300 million yen in sales are expected 2005 year.