Method of information transfer using optical zones

A method of transmitting data from a host computer to a portable information device is disclosed. Optical pulses are displayed by illuminating an area of pixels, or optical zone, on a display monitor. Time series of optical pulses are displayed, including a bit stream that provides clocking information displayed within an optical zone concurrently with a data bit stream encoded using a standard encoding scheme (such as a serial or parallel transmission scheme or a combination thereof), and then detecting and downloading the bit stream data by using a suitably configured sensing device connected to a portable information device. If the display monitor is a color display monitor, brightness of each primary color may be used as an independent transmission channel. In addition, multiple optical zones may be used to transmit data, which allows the present invention to be used with monochrome display monitors. The use of a plurality of optical zones has the additional advantage of increasing the effective bandwidth of the data transmission. This method is portable and suitable for use on both CRT and LCD display devices.