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Suitable Thesis Projects for students at Magee College

Online Barcoding/Smart Tags

Smart Pox is a barcode that can represent either a website link, e-mail address or contact details allowing people to link their online world with the offline world. SmartPox has a feature that allows other users to view members profiles and add comments, not unlike BEBO or MYSPACE. The Technology works by allowing users to encode a 2d barcode with their e-mail address for example. Once this image is generated it can then be printed on paper, this image can then be captured using the supplied java phone software that utilises the users camera phone, once the image is recognised and verified it can then be decoded on the users phone by contacting the smartpox website. Here, the phone connects to the web and retrieves the relevant information based on the 2d barcode’s instructions.

This technology allows one to take a snapshot of an image to gather information rather than having to manually type in a url address or contact detail into your phone. Details of any pox that you capture are automatically saved on your profile online for you to check later. One major use at present is advertising. Companies such as Guinness and coca cola have had their URLs encoded as a smartpox 2d barcode.

Other sites include ShotCode. Their approach is to adopt a circular image with a bullseye in the middle, the code is read using a mobile phone by aligning the phone target on the bullseye assuring accurate image capture. The software translates the code by measuring the angles and the distance away from the bullseye.

BeeTag uses a similar technology to smartpox. The code is represented like a honeycomb with certain dots in the honeycomb blacked in. this code is also read using mobile phone software.The reader software works in the same way, you have to capture the image using the software, the image is then stored and can be accessed on your phone via GPRS or you can send it to your pc to be viewed later. Beetag also offers users that do not have a camera on their mobile phone to manually enter the beetag using the ‘Beetag Lite’ software. To install the software you can either Install directly with your phone’s web browser by connecting to the beetag website. You can also send a text message to a uk number which will reply with the beetag software installation link. Ebay also offers a service using beetag in which users can scan a beetag on an ebay item to view the details on that item.

Task

Review all the approaches above. Examine which works best. Apply the system to work in a wide area urban gaming scenario. Investigate how it compares with the RFID approach.

Also visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2D_barcodes and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code