I just read this webpage about QRcodes, special 2D encodings that can store text and data. They've been made popular in Japan where many of their camera phones have decoder applications. In effect, it's like beaming data to a device, but rather than device-to-device, it's printed symbol-to-device. A website that will generate QR codes from text or URLs you enter is here.
There are already a number of Palm OS phones and devices that should be able to decode these. Sony CLIE PDAs have had cameras for years, and the PalmOne Zire 71 and 72 are both really popular, and don't forget about the Treo 600! Now, it's hard to tell if this would take off in places like the US and Europe, but I'd love to have my contact info on a physical business card in a form that could easily be pulled into whatever mobile device was handy.
It does look like the technology is out there. One example is Gavitech's Lavasphere SDK, which promises Palm OS support. However, I've not seen many deployed applications using this technology. In my searches, the only thing I saw was this Japanese application that lets you generate the codes. Getting a basic reader on the device would be a first start, but it would be even cooler to see an application that worked with Exchange Manager to support "beaming" data from the scan into registered apps on the device. The information density isn't high enough to support complex objects, but for a wireless device, all you need to be able to do is point someone at a URL where more data is stored.