British researchers are developing a technology that will allow phone users (with a camera) to take a picture of any map and receive back an interactive version of the same map on their handset.

It's enough to have a city-map provided by the tourism office, or displayed near the metro station, or in the Michelin, or .. ok, got it.

The system Map Snapper returns a map with clickable icons for restaurants, hotels, festivals, sausage-fairs, miss-universe elections, etc. With more photos, informations and a link to the website, eventually.

The phone sends a photo of a portion of the map to a central server that uses the image to generate a unique signature for that area of the map and then searches matches in a database of signatures.

The persons in charge for the project also envisaged to allow users to generate their own content for maps using an online interface, but we still didn't understand this one.
The wire also says that they are conscious that the technology could become obsolete shortly with the emergence of cell phones featuring GPS receivers.
Well done, guys ;)