Mainstream America is Ready for Bar Codes - Converging “Realspace” and “Mobilespace”
One thing that has become obvious as of late is that along with educating people about the mobile Internet, it’s necessary to also offer tools that provide easy access to it. This is especially true when it comes to helping people discover and connect with off-portal mobile content and services. Part of this requires finding solutions that are successful at making connections between the physical world and mobile Internet.
One of the tools which aim to converge “realspace” and “mobilespace” are bar codes (think of them as a form of physical hyperlink.) It works like this. Let’s say you’re walking along a sidewalk and someone hands you a flyer. Glancing down you notice a bar code placed neatly within the design. Immediately you take a photograph of the bar code with your mobile phone. Software on your phone converts the snapshot of the code into a mobile address. You are automatically offered the option to launch this address in the phone browser. Doing so launches your mobile browser and you are taken directly to the linked content — jumping you from printed content to online content.
You might be asking yourself about now, “Gee. I don’t know if people will actually do that?” Well the short answer is – people already do, lots of them in fact. In Japan, for example, QR codes have become part of everyday life, available on everything from business cards, id cards, magazines, newspapers, flyers, posters, stickers, food products,puzzles, web sites, billboards, more billboards, CDs, confectionary delights, calling a cab, vending machines, coffee cups, advertisements, and tickets –- even including the occasional booth-babe (my apologies to Darla Mack). 
All these little codes eagerly await — ready to link people to content that matters to them — mobile sites, profiles, videos, podcasts, products and other little pieces of content (think ringtones and wallpapers). Individuals also have joined in on the opportunity as publishers themselves — printing codes on stickers, placing them on their web sites or blogs, even walking around with cute little stampers to easily affix codes practically anywhere for any reason. As such, QR Codes have become the door to the mobile Internet for the average mobile user.
Much like other mobile technology, such as SMS, it typically takes a while for the US market to embrace new mobile technology, but once it does we quickly match the usage seen in other parts of the world. I believe that will happen with bar codes as well. Already I see the signs…
For example, Semapedia.org brought to you by the brilliant minds of Stan Wiechers and Alexis Rondeau, are connecting the virtual and physical world by bringing the best information from the Internet to the relevant place in physical space. They do this by combining the physical annotation technology of Datamatrix codes (another flavor of bar code) with high quality information from Wikipedia. (see Semapedia explained with pictures)
Others like the creative team of Kevin Slavin and Frank Lantz from area/code turn city streets into huge public game boards using bar codes and cell phones as part of the game play.
Still not convinced people find this useful, fun or both? To highlight usage, I’ve provided results from a survey originally taken by InfoPlaint that was carried out at the end of August 2005. The respondents selected the survey themselves via a link in the DoCoMo iMode menu system. 7,660 people completed the survey; 5,023 of them were women.
Q: Do you know about QR codes (2D barcodes)?
- I’ve used them 73.3%
- I know about them, and have a reader feature in my phone, but I haven’t used them 7.6%
- I know about them, but don’t have a reader feature in my phone, so I haven’t used them 15.6%
I don’t know about them 3.5%
Looking at the age breakdown, for both males and females almost 90% of the under 20’s use them, but the rate steadily drops down to end up at just about half of all the over 50s.
Q: For those who answered that they used them, in what printed materials have you used QR Codes? (Sample size=5,513)
- Business card 5.7%
- Newspaper 31.9%
- Magazine 84.2%
- Advertising flyer 51.1%
- Poster 14.2%
- Direct mail 25.0%
- Mail-order catalog 24.8%
- PC web site 20.7%
- Other 13.1%
There was no significant differences between the sexes, except for almost two and a half times more women used mail-order catalog QR Codes.
Q: Which of the following QR Code-based services do you want to use? (Sample size=7,660)
- Easy phone book registration from a business card, etc 36.8%
- Read a URL and access a site 74.3%
- Replacement for company identification badge 29.0%
- Cashless shopping at vending machines, etc 28.3%
- Buying goods written about in magazines 27.7%
- Replacement for tickets (concerts, travel passes, etc) 32.5%
- Others 5.5%
- Don’t want to use 7.4%
Okay, so I’ve tried to do a bit of convincing but to what end? I see it this way, WINKsite is the quickest way to build a mobile audience. Our RSS-driven publishing tools let you simply and easily add your information to the mobile Internet in ways that thrill mobile users. Thousands operate mobile spaces at WINKsite with the added benefit of community features such chat, forums, and polls. We also want to help our publishers and their fans promote their space to mobile users. One way we do this is by aggregating our communities into a blog sidebar where mobile and desktop users find each other by interest and location.
Pulling It All Together
Another way is to help people promote their spaces in everyday situations and circumstances. Current camera phones now have good enough optics, resolution and processing power to be able to read these special bar codes on the printed materials we come across each day. As such, WINKsite now provides a set of unique bar codes for each of our publishers that link directly to their mobile sites and communities. With the ability to create a universally accessible mobile site that’s connected to physically distributed bar codes, we see our publishers creating a wide range of useful applications.
These applications include:
- linking print articles to RSS feeds and blogs
- delivering product or tourist information
- linking “lost pet” flyers to contact forms
- dating - use your imagination on that one
- “find me” maps
- promoting an event or concert on flyers/postcards
- connecting geocachers to mobile logbooks
- creating museum exhibits and street tours
- building scavenger hunts or “collect-them-all” games
- downloading ringtones, music, wallpapers or video (think indie artists)
- ticket sales for clubs
- directing people to your mobile site and/or storefront
- enabling mobile sales from catalogs or flyers
- distributing coupons
- conference badges connected to profiles
- business cards connected to company sites
- signing up to text alert services
- running competitions
- connecting mix tapes to podcasts or vidcasts
- connecting posters to podcasts or vidcasts
- enabling community interaction at public locations
As the World Wide Web showed, things really take off when users build out their own real estate. The success of the Web was partly a result of the distributed development of local content and economies driven by individual passion. It’s happening all over again on the mobile web. Be a part of it.
Please Note: “Booth-Babe” photo provided by news.3yen.com.
April 5th, 2006 at 4:51 am
[…] This this the first of several releases concerning WINKsite, our efforts to move mobile bar coding forward in the U.S., and the partners we’re doing it with. NEXTCODE INTEGRATES CAMERA PHONE CODE SCANNING SERVICE FOR WINKSITE […]
April 8th, 2006 at 11:31 am
I love QR codes and now that WINKsite has given me an easy way to create a content rich mobile site, in addition to having a QR code on my business card I’ve now included it as part of my photo on my homepage and the photo I will use across other sites.
I hope we are not in for a codes standard war though! See the latter part of this article for a bewildering array: http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/infolust.htm
April 9th, 2006 at 10:32 am
Killer reference Andrew. Thanks. Noticed the size of the QR Code you chose to embed in your photo (http://hq.andrewshuttleworth.com/andrew_shuttleworth_photo.jpg) - i assume that small size worked on your keitai (phone for US readers). I’m curious - what is the resolution for the camera you used? US market is mostly 1.3/2.0 at the moment. The 3.0/3.2 mega pixels camera phones are being released by carriers here in the US next quarter.
April 9th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
I’m using a D902i which has a resolution of ‘2 million pixels (4 million recorded pixels)’. http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/product/foma/902i/d902i/index.html.
The first phone I had with QR code reader was a Sharp a year or so back and was terrible, but these days they same to be much better.
Would be interested hearing if anyone has trouble reading the code.
Andrew
May 4th, 2006 at 12:10 am
WINKsite: fusing the mobile and Web worlds through barcodes…
You all know my fascination with WINKsite, a really versatile service for building mobile Web sites that fits into the mobile lifestyle. It’s simple, easy to adapt to any region, makes it easy for folks to connect (and there’s more…
May 4th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
[…] This is exciting stuff. Carriers and operators (hey HELIO take note!) this is something that makes life easier, for marketing, for customers, for mobile folks on the go. On a post dated last month, Dave Harper comments “Mainstream America is Ready for Bar Codes - Converging “Realspace” and “Mobilespace.” In this insightful post, Dave states: (from Dave Harper’s blog) One thing that has become obvious as of late is that along with educating people about the mobile Internet, it’s necessary to also offer tools that provide easy access to it. This is especially true when it comes to helping people discover and connect with off-portal mobile content and services. Part of this requires finding solutions that are successful at making connections between the physical world and mobile Internet. […]
May 16th, 2006 at 11:42 pm
2D barcodes will rule the earth…
I noticed that the user manual of Nokia N93 mentioned our barcode reader application on page 109, so I guess it is safe for me to write about this subject. Here is a 2D barcode in Data Matrix format that……
May 21st, 2006 at 4:25 pm
[…] David Harper’s Different Things » Blog Archive » Mainstream America is Ready for Bar Codes – Converging “Realspace” and “Mobilespace” Mainstream America is Ready for Bar Codes – Converging “Realspace” and “Mobilespace” […]
July 31st, 2006 at 6:39 am
[…] Read full article here. There are some interesting QR code survey answers here via Tommy’s S60 […]
August 9th, 2006 at 7:59 pm
Mobile Web (un)usability…
My fellow mobilist and host of this weeks Carnival of the Mobilists, Daniel Taylor at Mobile Enterprise Weblog has posted an interesting piece on mobile web usability or lack there of. Daniel’s article, Who Designs This Stuff? describes the difficulti…
January 15th, 2007 at 9:58 am
[…] Previously I’ve written about the need for connections between the physical world and the mobile Internet. I’ve also expressed my opinions on various aspects of how that should work in the comments area over at Tommi’s S60 Applications Blog. Along the way Dennis the founder of ShotCode and I got to talking (original intro courtesy of Oliver Starr) and we convinced each other that teaming up would make sense. As such, I’m excited to announce that Winksite now supports ShotCode. […]
August 29th, 2007 at 8:16 am
[…] One of the things I actually miss about the E61 is the camera. Not so much for taking images that I want to save, but because the optical sensor in a phone is a good way to tie physical objects to online representations. So one of the options instead of going with the N95 is to get an E61i, an update to my current phone that includes a camera. Not a bad option, but also boring. The N95 also has GPS. If it’s anything like trying to use a bluetooth GPS unit with any existing phone software, I expect that besides testing out whatever nav software is built into the phone I will never use it. Just too frustrating and unreliable. Last time I brought my bluetooth GPS and my phone in the car with me to help out in case I got lost I found that the free Nokia software I had downloaded to fool around with would pop up a screen trying to get me to pay pretty much no matter what I asked it to do. And MGMaps was taking so long to pull GPS data from my bluetooth module that I was able to start up standard GMaps and enter in the intersection I was at to find my location before it worked. Location based services are the future though, seriously. This year it’s going to happen. I’m just betting that it has nothing at all do with with GPS or the E911 system, the models around those systems are just too screwed up. […]
August 30th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
I am a little baffeled at to why your blog would not post or incorporate the mobile platform qode in your write up.
Neomedia now has a new code reader dubbed, NeoReader.
I am a little surprised to not see you covering their moible application.
From what I have heard the NeoReader will read more than just QR, datamatrix and 2D codes to get to content in one click.
September 2nd, 2007 at 6:13 pm
@ Swampthing…
I for one do not want the bar code reader providers becoming points of failure to decoding or portal/gate keepers to the content or services at the other end of open standard mobile bar codes.
ONLY a universal reader that optionally delivers the person scanning the code to the intended encoded URL - DIRECTLY and without INTERCEPTION is acceptable.
Follow the indepth conversation here:
2D Barcode Manifesto
http://blogs.s60.com/tommi/2006/12/2d_barcode_manifesto.html
Better yet continue the conversation at Mobile Bar Code Camp
MobileBarCodeCamp is bringing together mobile enthusiasts, explorers and professionals in North America to share the current state and their visions for the future direction of mobile bar codes and other cellphone-readable physical hyperlinks. MobileBarCodeCamp hopes to support the many voices helping to unlock the potential of a hyperlinked first life. Topics may include - but are not limited to - mobile code formats, mobile code readers, mobile gaming, mobile web sites, entrepreneurship, social mobility and presence, near field communication, physical hyperlinking, the importance of open standards, protocols, and platforms, and mobile bar code usage on other continents.
We are extremely interested in having the various Bar Code Platform & Reader companies represented at this event.
MobileBarCodeCamp grows by word of mouth (and word of blog). Tell your friends and people that you think will enjoy sharing a day with likeminded.
Go to the BarCamp page for details and sign up.
http://barcamp.org/MobileBarCodeCamp
September 17th, 2007 at 7:28 am
[…] 2. Provide and distribute a mobile bar code (physical world hyperlink) on printed materials, stickers, or t-shirts. One example is a QR Code - a bar code that can be scanned using your camera phone and a QR Code Reader. You can easily create QR codes that serve as hyperlinks to mobile content (Try it yourself here). In many parts of the world the scanning of a QR Code has become the door to the mobile Internet for the average mobile user. For more go here. […]
November 1st, 2007 at 5:41 am
playing tag!…
swiss post is issuing a rather special stamp these days — no, not the einsiedeln stamp, though that is special as well (and i need to get a couple of those if just for the christmas post ;-), no, it’s a stamp with a beetagg on it: turns out…
November 1st, 2007 at 5:41 am
playing tag!…
swiss post is issuing a rather special stamp these days — no, not the einsiedeln stamp, though that is special as well (and i need to get a couple of those if just for the christmas post ;-), no, it’s a stamp with a beetagg on it: turns out…
February 4th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
[…] 4) QR codes. Like a link to more information, but way cooler. QR codes or 2D codes are bar codes that are created horizontally and vertically. Take a picture of one and the code reader on your phone will automatically link you to the information it accesses. Make your own QR code here. Or make a treasure hunt like these guys. […]
February 11th, 2008 at 7:29 am
[…] […]
April 5th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
[…] codes are being slapped up on just about everything in Asia. Here’s just a few examples (via David Harper […]
April 8th, 2008 at 3:11 am
[…] David Harper has a great list of other uses for QR tags, including linking to podcasts, building games or scavenger hunts, “find me” maps, creating newspaper-branded walking audio tours (at bottom of page) and others. Check them out! […]