About

The Company

Semacode Corporation is an innovative software company based in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. A semacode, established by the company, is an ISO/IEC 16022 Data Matrix symbol which encodes URLs and other textual data.

Semacode Corporation was founded by Simon Woodside in 2003. Since then the company has established itself as the leading provider of mobile marketing solution with use of two dimensional symbology. Semacode tags are quickly captured by the camera of a mobile phone and decoded to obtain a URL which can then be accessed via the phone’s web browser.

We are currently exploring the potential uses of 2D barcodes. In particular, we are interested in the development of technology in relation to information gathering and exchange.

The Science Behind Semacode

Ubiquitous Computing is a futuristic model of computing where you have “a level of interaction with your environment where the computing disappears into the fabric of the environment, so that you only see the task.” We believe that Semacode, and mobile barcodes in general, is a important step towards this future.

Semacode technology assembles a number of key pieces to create a seamless system. It uses 2D barcodes composed of dots to store massive amounts of information, i.e. potentially thousands of characters! Semacode’s mobile image recognition software accesses the phone’s camera to capture the barcode image. Custom algorithms are then applied to determine the presence of a barcode. If present, the software will process and convert the pattern into meaningful information. Typically, URLs are obtained and the user is directed to digital media through the phone’s web browser.