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About the Company

Semacode Corporation is an innovative software company based in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Semacode is also used by the company as a trade name for machine-readable ISO/IEC 16022 Data Matrix symbols, which encode internet Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) and other textual data.

Semacode was founded in 2003 by Simon Woodside and since then it has established itself as the leading provider of mobile marketing solution that use 2 dimensional symbology as the driving agent. Semacode tags can be quickly captured with a mobile phone's camera and decoded to obtain a Web site address. This address can then be accessed via the phone's web browser.

Our R&D efforts explore many potential uses of 2D barcodes that support and complement development of the concept of using mobile phones as devices for seamless information gathering and exchange.

Using Semacode with social networks through a Facebook application is our current main focus. More about our application. (link to about)

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 more generally, is a important step towards this future.

Semacode assembles number of key pieces together to create a seamless system. 2D Barcodes, which use use dots rather than lines to store an enormous amount of information, up to thousands of characters. URLs can point to virtually any kind of digital media. And the mobile Internet allows content producers to cater to small screen devices by adapting their existing infrastructure.

Semacode's mobile software uses image recognition techniques to scan the image that is being generated by the phone's internal camera. It uses custom "intelligent" algorithms to "see" if there is a barcode in the camera's range, and then if there is, identify the pattern of light and dark squares and convert them into a useful message. Then it acts on that message, for example by loading the URL stored in the barcode into your phone's web browser.

What are 2D Barcodes?

Semacode uses 2D barcodes as a physical world hyperlink. Our software provides the infrastructure to allows any cell phone to do a one click purchase, one click coupon, one click download, one click customer service. A Semacode gives any website a tangible physical presence, one that can be acted upon by users impulse anywhere. A Semacode is a barcode, a 2-dimensional created code, a registered word, a fingerprint. Don't think of a barcode as a barcode, imagine it's a web address and your cell phone's browser works just by clicking on it. No need to type the web address in, just click on it.