Camellia Introduction

NTT and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation grant royalty-free licenses of the essential patents for Camellia in order to establish a leadership role toward achieving a low-cost secure advanced telecommunication society through the proliferation and promotion of Camellia that contribute to the construction of an environment in which various security products and services can be used widely.

QR Code Affiliate Model

Betrend and Linkshare Japan started providing a new service that allows people to (possibly) earn money by including QR codes on their websites, distributing cards with printed QR codes, or printing QR codes on anything. Someone who takes a picture of one of these QR codes (using a camera phone) will be guided to a corresponding mobile commerce website.

Two mobile commerce websites will experimentally use this system: Girls Shopping (women's apparel) and LaCASTA (body care and aroma oil products).

The next step of this service is to use the same affiliate model for brick and mortar stores. So, it'd be like, I paste a QR code here and there, someone camphone-click one of my QR codes, go to a corresponding (physical) store, buy a corresponding sales item, and then I get a small percentage of that revenue. The companies expect that such a "real affiliate tool" can be used at car dealer shops, beauty and health shops, and restaurants.

See also:
Linkshare
Xavel
Betrend (Press Release).
Also interesting: Betrend's Mobile Sitebuilder and Keitai Picture Service