Seeking barcode

Skycore, a mobile messaging service and the parent company of Cellyspace, debuted mDAR (Mobile Delivery, Authentication and Redemption) at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES 2009) this week.

mDAR enables clients to build 2D barcodes, which some believe will ultimately wed the web to outdoor/print ads and make e-commerce mobile. When the barcodes are scanned, the information stored in them is decrypted. They can be used in grocery stores to give discounts, on print ads to provide more information on a given campaign, or to send users to a mobile subsite.

Prior to WES 2009, Skycore sent 2D barcodes to the phones of conference attendees via its MMS. The barcodes contained an event ticket, which could be redeemed at the venue entrance via 2D readers on a handful of BlackBerry smart phones.

mDAR's 2D barcode generators are open-source — meaning they can be improved by outside developers — and compliant with existing global standards. When a barcode is created, it is uploaded to Cellyspace.com, then integrated and delivered to customers' handsets. When a barcode-reading mobile phone scans the image, data goes back to Skycore servers and the clients, which can track the popularity of their respective codes.

"Our mDAR technology is a revolutionary service enabling virtually any business or organization to use mobile barcodes," stated Founder/CEO Rich Eicher of Skycore. "[It] allows you to create and deploy redeemable tickets and coupons with complementary text and multimedia content and send it cross-carrier to your customers' mobile handsets. Redeeming 2D barcodes is easier now, too, since users can choose smart phones or other 2D scanning devices."

Eicher also expressed optimism that mDAR's ease-of-use and low financial barrier to entry will stimulate mobile barcode adoption across applications beyond events ticketing — including mobile coupons, vouchers, reservations, IDs, payments and loyalty programs.

Recently, Google opened beta program for advertisers interested in incorporating barcodes into print ads. These can be scanned by barcode-reading mobile phones, so users can instantly pull up more information about a given product or service.

Last year Samsung partnered with Scanbuy, another firm that specializes in 2D barcode technology. As a result of the liaison it launched a camera phone with barcode-reading capabilities.