(keitai-l) questions abt Japanese phonecams, focal distance

From: Slavin (area/code) <kevin_at_playareacode.com>
Date: 08/31/05
Message-ID: <01d101c5adc1$4c811af0$1211a8c0@PC713697014916>
Desperate questions below, my thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide.
I'm developing something (noncommercial) that will be using optical recognition, for use in Tokyo. 

The issue is that the images being recognized are quite small: possibly as small at 22mm x 16mm.

With standard American phones, the focal distance for images like that falls to pieces -- the image gets blurry, which makes recognition quite difficult.

But I understand that Japanese phonecams are far better, and I wonder if this is reflected in a much tighter focal distance on the lenses. If anyone has hard facts or anecdotal evidence, I'd appreciate it greatly. For example, Joi has this image on his blog, from a year ago: http://joi.ito.com/moblog/entries/2004/08/07/002851.html

Is this typical? Would many Tokyo residents have phones capable of something like this now?

Finally, I guess many people are using QR codes with their phonecams -- does anyone know 

* what the minimum or general size for those QR codes are? (I couldn't find it quickly via Google)
* how common QR-capable phones are? Anecdotal or quantitative data welcome.

Anyway, any help on any of these questions would be much appreciated. If you like, hit me offlist: kevin at playareacode com

Thx
Received on Wed Aug 31 03:17:03 2005