Once considered a useless gimmick, camera-equipped mobile phones are set to take another step towards indispensability when they’re equipped with software that lets make a purchase or access information by pointing the lens at a printed barcode.

The technology, known as Active Print, has been developed by Hewlett-Packard and Gavitec, in an attempt to bridge the gap between print media and digital media.

It is already in widespread use in Japan and is being trialled in several projects in the UK, including a competition in The Times that begins next week. Readers will be able to enter by pointing their camera phones at a printed panel, similar to a barcode, which contains information about the competition and instructs the phone to submit the reader’s entry details.

The BBC is also using the technology to accompany the series Coast. Plaques containing the barcodes have been placed along the routes of 12 coastal walks, and walkers with suitably modern camera phones can use them to access information relating to the sites.

To use the service, people will need the latest Series 60 handsets (only nine such phones are currently on the market) and will have to download a piece of software that reads the codes, but the technology is likely to become widely used in the future.

"This is obviously not the system we would use long-term," said Tim Kindberg, a senior scientist at HP Labs, the research division of Hewlett-Packard. "In Japan, a lot of new phones come with the software ready-installed."

Mr Kindberg said that Active Print could help to make mobile internet access more user-friendly, by eliminating the need to type in fiddly URLs using phone keypads. Instead, users could point their phones at a barcode printed on a poster or advertisement and link directly to the related site.

"It’s saving you the time spent physically typing it in and it allows you to do it wherever you happen to be," he added. "If there was a code that’s unique to a particular hotel lobby then you could point [your camera phone] at that and order a taxi to come to that particular location."

In Japan, the system has been used to allow payment for goods using mobile phones. Shoppers can point their phones at the barcode attached to the item they wish to buy and the cost will be added to their phone bill.

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