Rich Jenkins opens a child?s picture book and aims a camera phone at a page depicting a cartoon panda bear that is gesturing toward a set of Chinese characters. As Jenkins and I view the page through the cell phone screen, the printed panda suddenly erupts into a 3-D video version that points at the first symbol, pronounces it in Mandarin and then defines it in English.

Jenkins, who leads Media Power, a New York City?based firm that develops mobile communications applications, smiles at my rather startled reaction. ?A software application that we?ve downloaded into this phone reads cues that the book designers have embedded into the graphics,? he explains. ?It then calls up the video segment appropriate for that page from the network server. The result is like a pop-up book on steroids.? Jenkins notes that this new kind of animated content could help kids learn and that these ?magic books? could become available by the end of this year. The company will also be introducing cell phone?enabled museum exhibit tours based on the same technology, as well as the means by which consumers can trigger delivery of targeted advertising by directing camera phones at brand logos.

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