While flying to San Diego to attend Qualcomm’s BREW 2006 conference I was reading the April 3, 2006 issue of Business Week and saw an article about a Japanese company developing a color barcode that can store videos.
Content Idea of Asia (Japanese Web site) has developed a color “PIM Code” with eight colors that can store 600K. That’s enough for 20 seconds of low resolution video, the article says.
Looking for additional information, I saw that I4U News posted an article in January that says the 3D code can store 600K – 1.8MB. The company’s barcode technology is based on the 2D QR code that’s popular in Japan.
I4U News also says PIM Code can support as many as 24 layers with different colors. The software to read the barcodes is free and the first PIM Codes are expected to appear in Japan this summer.
I agree. It's difficult just to obtain a sufficiently clear image of a black and white barcode, let alone many colors.
I assume much of it is in the research stage, except for the most basic color format.
Posted by: Alan A. Reiter | Wednesday, May 31, 2006 at 04:30 PM
So how do you get even 8 layers of colors (much less 24) with the standard 4 colors of a printing press?
How do you read even 3 colors ACCURATELY with the cruddy optics/sensor of a camera phone -- especially with a Bayer pattern, which cuts down the resolution?
How do you get the resolution and focus in a camera phone to read even a one color code of say 75K?
Answer: you don't. The techology is a crock. The only way it could remotely work is by reading a whole series of codes that get concatenated into a single file. And THAT would take just about forever.
Posted by: Yeah, sure | Tuesday, May 30, 2006 at 01:23 AM