Chances are, unless you spent a lot of time in Japan lately or do IT-related studies at a technical university, you never heard of Semacode before. The concept is simple: A web URL is encoded into a two-dimensional grid image, which can be read by software and turned back into the embedded link. The creators claim that any such image can take “up to 50% damage” without making it unreadable. So what you can do is snap a picture of a semacode with your camphone, and your mobile automagically opens the corresponding website.

Sounds geeky? You bet. I first heard about the technology about 1 years ago, probably at BoingBoing, and considered it a cute, but currently useless idea. Back then, camphones were still pretty new, pretty rare, and pretty expensive. That has changed a lot in the last months, and now you actually have to search for a phone that comes without at least a VGA-quality camera built in.

Remember those pink and white posters for the electric beats festival at the MQ - the Stereo MC’s/Gus Gus/Zoot Woman one? Well, they had semacodes on them that sent you directly to the ticket ordering page. And yesterday, I met Alexis at the Phil, who told me about his current project - the Semapedia.

Everyone knows the Wikipedia - the world’s largest and best-organized free encyclopedia. And if you’re like me, you often stumble about things in the so-called real world and think “Hm, I’d like to know more about that, can’t wait to get home and look it up.” The Semapedia project aims to make it easier for information junkies to get their fix the moment a need kicks in. They tag buildings, places and other things with semacode stickers that link to the corresponding Wikipedia entries or websites. The project is less than a week old, but it moves along really well - if you look closely, you can find semacode tags all over Vienna’s inner city.

If you want to join the idea, get some reader software for your cellphone, and/or use the Semapedias’ Tag creator. The guys also keep a blog about their progress, and if you’re a theory whore, you can read the paper they made about the whole thing.

Finally, there’s something actually useful you can do with a camphone! Now if the carriers get their act together and provide some actually affordable mobile net connections, this could become a really, really cool thing. No, wait, it’s already really cool, but it has the potential to become HUGE (with fries).

FYI, the semacode embedded into this article links to http://vienna.metblogs.com - that might be redundant since you’re already here, but redundancy is the new black, anyway.