Remember the Star Trek episodes when Spock would be wandering around on the planet Styrofoam 4, taking readings of this or that with his tricorder? He’d just point that thing at a rock or a plant and boom! He knew its chemical composition via spectrographic analysis, how old it was, whether or not you could eat it, and how much it cost on Amazon. Nokia just released beta software that will turn your GPS-enabled Nokia phone into a tricorder. Beam us up, Scotty.

Okay, that’s maybe a slight exaggeration. Or even a big stretch. It’s more like a marketingcorder. But still, Nokia’s Point & Find sounds potentially pretty cool. According to Nokia the software enables users to access info and services on the Internet by simply pointing their mobile phone camera at real-life objects. A version of Point & Find that focuses on movie posters is now available in the United Kingdom and the United States. That sounds kinda like weaksauce to me, but Nokia promises capabilities will later expand into other services and countries.

“We believe that this first Nokia Point & Find-based service for movies will add something special to the cinema experience. Simply by pointing their camera phone at a poster for a new movie, people can watch the trailer, read reviews, and find the closest cinema where it is playing,” said Philipp Schloter, general manager for Nokia Point & Find. Essentially, Nokia Point & Find uses image processing and recognition technologies to link the user to digital content and services. It also recognizes bar codes, integrates GPS positioning technology, and supports category-specific text-entry search. When the phone is pointed at an object, Nokia Point & Find uses a phone’s camera, Internet connectivity, and GPS positioning to evaluate the object, according to the company. Then, by rapidly searching through a database of virtually tagged items, the system identifies the object and returns a set of links to associated content and services.

So far, it sounds like Nokia wants to use Point & Find as a marketing tool for business customers. It is opening it up for development by other companies to build related services and applications, the company says. Some companies have already jumped on board.

“Nokia Point & Find is an innovative new service which will enable users to point their camera phone at various Cartoon Network related objects and receive relevant show or product information direct to their handset,” said Casey Harwood, Senior vice president, digital media at Turner Europe said. Meanwhile, the folks behind the Body Worlds exhibit have also been using the technology in their outdoor advertising around London, to enable people to get information about the exhibit.

Point & Find is potentially either the greatest — or worst — thing to enter the world for impulse buyers. “Not only does it allow consumers to engage with brands in an innovative way but provides brands point and purchase opportunities with an on-the-go audience,” said Julian Pate, Client Partner, AKQA.

So, we’ve actually been hearing for a while now from those involved in location-based services that stuff like this was coming; looks like it’s finally getting here. I guess I can’t really call it weaksauce, but it seems like the technology would just be wasted if it’s consigned to marketing. I don’t expect spectrographic analysis on my phone, but hopefully we’ll see the technology move beyond marketing to something even more useful. Imagine being at a museum and being able to point your phone at a work of art or an exhibit and get more information beyond what is on the identifying plaque — a point-and-find Wikipedia, if you will.

For more information, hop on over to Nokia’s Point & Find website.

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