BEIJING, April 2 (Xinhuanet) -- Already considered the multipurpose tool of modern technology, the mobile phone is developing into a digital remote control that can read encoded information -- such as bar codes -- and translate that information into videos, pictures or text files on its screen.

    This new technology, which is already in use in parts of Asia but still in development in the United States, allows the phones to connect everyday objects with the Internet.

    "The cell phone is the natural tool to combine the physical world with the digital world," Cyriac Roeding, the head of mobile-phone applications for CBS, said recently.

    McDonald's customers in Japan can already point their cell phones at the wrapping on their hamburgers and get nutrition information on their screens. Users there can also point their phones at magazine ads to receive insurance quotes, and board airplanes using their phones rather than paper tickets. And film promoters can send their movie trailers from billboards.

    "You've picked up this product, and you don't want to go back to your PC," said Tim Kindberg, a senior research at the Bristol, England, lab of Hewlett-Packard. "Or you're outside this building, and you want more information. We call it the 'physical hyperlink.'"

    Advertisers say they are interested in offering similar capabilities in the United States, but cell phones in the States do not come with the necessary software. For now, consumers have to download the technology themselves.

    But big advertising and technology companies such as Hewlett-Packard and the Publicis Groupe, an advertising conglomerate, are pushing to popularize the technology in America.

    The most promising way to link cell phones with physical objects is a new generation of bar codes: square-shaped mosaics of black and white boxes that can hold much more information than traditional bar codes. The cameras on cell phones scan the codes, and then the codes are translated into videos, music or text on the phone screens.

    There are other technologies being developed for consumers to scan objects, including radio waves, computer chips or satellite location systems, but the bar code technology is the most developed -- and simple and cheap enough even for individuals to publish them on printed materials or on websites.

    In Japan, the codes did not become mainstream until the largest cell phone companies started loading the code readers on all new phones a few years ago. Now, millions of people have the capability built into their phones, and businesseson billboards, street signs, published materials and even food packaging.

    (Agencies)