ScanLife is a free app for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry, plus Symbian and Java phones too. It turns a camera-equipped phone into a barcode scanner for two-dimensional barcode tages (as opposed to the one-dimensional UPC barcodes on nearly everything you buy) made to the specs of ScanLife's' maker, Scanbuy.
The New York Citycompany, founded in 2000, has convinced print publications Esquire, InStyle, Entertainment Weekly and Star to include its barcodes on their pages.
Esquire's March issue, for example, will carry ScanLife barcodes in a feature titled “The Esquire Collection: The 30 items a man needs to get through life." Entertainment Weekly and Star will place the barcodes on ad pages instead of editorial content. A competing product, Snipp, appears in ESPN magazine and People StyleWatch.
The managing director of Motorola Ventures, Reese Schroeder, said in a prepared statement, "The camera quality, display capability and processing power of today's smartphones, coupled with advanced network speeds, now enable consumers and the advertising community to fully take advantage of mobile barcode technology. Motorola ... believes that Scanbuy has the best combination of technology and strong ecosystem partners in its space."
The short video below shows ScanLife barcodes in action.