Ever discovered a cool application or game while browsing the internet through your computer, only to find that you either have to type the full URL on your phone’s browser to download it, either download it on the computer then worry about transfering it to your phone? Well, I guess you’re not the only one. The easy solution, and one which I’ve been using for over a year now, relies on using mobile barcodes.
Step One: Generating the barcode
If you’re using Firefox as a browser, you can download this nifty add-on called Mobile Barcoder. It’s a lightweight add-on that generates mobile barcodes from any link or selected text. It is accessible from the right-click contextual menu on Firefox and takes less than a second to generate a barcode. Here is how it looks when you right click on a link:
It also works for sharing small blips of text. Usually anything longer than a sentence will take ages to generate and won’t be read efficiently by the mobile.
Step Two: Reading the barcode on your device
Several devices like the Nokia E71, E66, N82, N95 come with the Nokia Barcode Reader built-in. Check your Office folder on your device to see if it’s included. If not, you can see a list of mobile barcode readers here. Personally, I use UpCode as it is free, available in the Ovi Store or easily downloadable here.
Now all you have to do is launch whatever barcode reading application you decided to use, point your camera at your browser’s screen, and the link/text will be instantly recognized. Here is an image of the whole process
Once you have mastered the process, it won’t take more then 2 seconds to share any link between your browser and your phone. This is a potential time saver when you’re looking at painfully long and complicated links.
Have you ever used Mobile Barcodes to share information between your browser and your device? If not, what other solution do you use and how does it work for you?
