The operators have been terrified of irritating their subscribers through any sort of advertising and have not been able to come up with innovative wireless e-commerce products.

Commerce over wireless is primarily ringtones and wallpaper and, most recently, music downloads. In the past year there has been an explosion of companies offering their solutions to wireless commerce and advertising.

A few barcode companies, such as Scanbuy and NeoMedia, for example, have been aggressive in promoting barcodes for camera phones.

Taking a camera phone photo of a barcode — and then receiving information about the product — seems to make a lot of sense. But camera phone photos usually do a terrible job of producing an image that can be readable.

This is changing, somewhat, as we’re seeing one megapixel, two megapixel and, just recently, a three megapixel camera phone. Alas, getting a good barcode image requires much more than a high number of pixels.

It looks like advertising, pay-per-use, or a periodic fee could be explored?…