ScreenFTP

ScreenFTP was created by DKJ Research in 2004. In brief, it allows a device equipped with a digital camera and ScreenFTP software to download information directly from a computer monitor without any other hardware or software. It was created to give mobile phone and PDA users access to a much larger number of computers in the world which they could not normally use to receive information.

Currently there are three main ways used to connect mobile devices and computers. The first is to transfer information from the computer to some intermediate storage medium such as a memory stick, and then copy the information from this to the mobile device. Unfortunately this requires the purchase of additional hardware (the removable memory) and also requires the computer and the mobile device to be able to use the same type of removable memory. Connecting and disconnecting the removable memory from the computer and the mobile device is also time consuming and can involve considerable effort.

The second way to transfer information is to use special cables. PDAs for instance commonly use docking stations to allow users to transfer information. While these are practical where the user only wants to use that single computer, it becomes problematic when more than one computer is used. The solution then is to carry the cables with you and reinstall the software on every computer, an awkward and time consuming task. In some cases this is even impossible if the user is not allowed to install software.

The third method involves using a wireless technology to transfer information, such as Bluetooth. This is perhaps the most convenient and quickest solution, however it does require that both devices have compatible hardware. While there are a large number of mobile devices being produced with Bluetooth capabilities, the same is not true of desktop computers. Thus at the current time there are a large number of computers in use which cannot uses this method.
In order to overcome the limitations of these methods, ScreenFTP was created. It provides a way for any computer running Java to transmit data to a mobile device without the need for any additional hardware or software. It does this by converting the data to be transmitted into a graphical format. A sequence of frames are displayed on the computers monitor, and at the same time the camera on the mobile device decodes these images to recover the original data.
The software is currently only available on the Nokia 6600 and is completely free - we make money from the advertising on our site. In the future we plan to make the option of registration with no adds and faster downloads (up to 1.3kb/s) available - see the registration section for more information.

http://www.screenftp.com/index.html