Barcode Scanner - book text search tool on Google Android

New software for the new Google Android phones connects books in the bookstore (or in the library) to Google Book Search - more useful for doing "search inside" than for reading on the fly.  From EReads:

http://www.ereads.com/2008/11/dont-forget-to-take-your-android-to.html

Google has announced a book-text search tool called the Barcode Scanner that works with an Android-powered cellphone. According to Google Book Search engineer Jeff Breidenbach, when you download the software into your Android and point your phone camera at a book's barcode, "it will automatically zoom, focus and scan the ISBN - without you even needing to click the shutter...You'll then have the option to search the full text of the book on Google Book Search right away"

No particular reason that this same application design couldn't work with any existing book or barcode scanner - this is totally the sort of thing that could live inside the library, since all of the book checkout scanners are already there.  (Indeed, you could use the RFID inside the book to do this so no need to have a camera.)

It looks like some of the underlying barcode software is from a project called Zebra Crossing which is open source decoder software - 

ZXing (pronounced "zebra crossing") is an open-source, multi-format 1D/2D barcode image processing library implemented in Java. Our focus is on using the built-in camera on mobile phones to photograph and decode barcodes on the device, without communicating with a server.

The Inside Google Book Search blog has more, 

Comments

[Dinah Sanders]

Hi Ed,

I'm not that familiar with the Android phones. Wouldn't this require a better lens like the iPhone apps do? The ones I see listed that say they support UPC codes all require the magnifying lens cases like the one Griffin makes.

Have you heard anything about adoption rates for the phones supporting this kind of functionality? I see iPhones all over the place, but then I live in the land o' the Apple nerds. ;)

Dinah

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