Will paper tickets be a thing of the past? Continental Airlines is looking to offer passengers another option when checking in, one that would see their cell phones carrying digital boarding passes. Cell phone owners will receive a two-dimensional barcode sent to their phones when they check in, which can be scanned at the gate to validate boarding. The technology is currently being tested over the next three months at Continental's hub in Houston, Texas. The airline, like many others, has moved from ticket printing to e-ticket sign-ins that prefer users at home to print passes themselves.

Continental Airlines is the first carrier to bring the cell phone sign-in process into live testing, though other airlines, such as Delta, are hot on its heels.

USA Today, via Switched