In JR train stations many posters advertising tourist resorts are put on the wall. Most of Japanese people can perceive the message at a glance and pass by them without serious attention when not interested. But for foreigners who don’t have enough knowledge can’t get adequate information even if attracted by the photo on the poster. I think OCR bar code for foreign tourists should be marked on such posters that can be read by cell phones with Chrome terminal that enable to display the search results automatically. Typing any characters into keypad or pushing buttons may be troublesome in such situations. If the poster couldn't catch the moment, the scenery photo would be mostly forgotten.
Similar situation will appear also in car advertising and therefore applications in that segment may be promising. To catch design-sensitive car fans, real streets on the ground can be the most powerful showrooms of cars. If some foreign person happened to encounter a favorite type design unknown car running on the street, and its photo was taken with G-phone camera, the car name could be displayed by image processing program on the phone. Developing such application seems to be becoming more realistic since the appearance of Android.
Perhaps, application in the apparel industry seems to be interesting, if linked with sensitivity engineering.
(Above illustration is from the CD attached to the Book 'Selections from figured paper in Kyoto and Japanese patterns' published by Impress Japan.)
