Recently there have been quite a few interesting new services launched in Japan which use the cameraphone in some pretty unique ways. I wrote a little while back about the beauty site targeted at females which gives free skin consultations and the promotional app from Sega which analyses your photo to reveal which Sega character you most resemble. This week saw the launch of another two interesting camera-based services.

First is “Business Card Reader” – a mobile app which does exactly what its name suggests. The app sends photos taken of business cards to a special server which reads them using OCR software and then adds the details as an address book entry on the phone. The service costs 30 yen (around 15p) per business card or 315 yen (around £1.50) per month if you prefer an all-you-can-scan option.

The second service is a palm reading site which offers palm reading using the mobile’s camera. The site can identify and analyse the life line, heart line, head line and fate line from a photo taken of a palm and return personality and compatibility readings. The service is either billed by subscription at 315 yen per month or per reading at 210 yen (around £1) each.

# posted by Jan Kuczynski @ 8:48 am