The "Bokode" is the tiny dot in the center.

The MIT Media Lab will be presenting a new barcode technology in a paper at SIGGRAPH that uses angular-specific barcodes, providing a whole new way to encoding information.

The tiny labels are just 3 millimeters across — about the size of the @ symbol on a typical computer keyboard. Yet they can contain far more information than an ordinary barcode: thousands of bits. Currently they require a lens and a built-in LED light source, but future versions could be made reflective, similar to the holographic images now frequently found on credit cards, which would be much cheaper and more unobtrusive.

The paper is entitled “Bokode: Imperceptible Visual Tags for Camera-based interaction from a Distance”, and will be available at the SIGGRAPH website on Monday.

via Barcodes for the rest of us – MIT News Office.