QR Codes

Whilst doing my morning peruse of sameshitdifferentshape I came across an blog post that caught my eye. It details a QR code poster on Shoreditch High Street in London.

Now I’ve clearly been in this technologically delayed country that is called USA for too long, as other than the fact that UPS use these, I had no idea they were the new (next) big thing in communication.

QR codes (or Quick Response Codes) are a sort of 2D bar code that uses some fairly impressive algorithms to encode data in a graphical scanable format.

It turns out that QR codes are HUGE in Japan (73% of those surveyed had used them) and are becoming more prevalent in Europe. The QR code was originally conceived and patented by Denso Wave (the makers of bar code and scanning systems).

These codes have become very popular in Japan, where most cell phones come (or can have added) QR Code Readers on them, these readers allow the customer to take a photo of the code and the code can be decoded. This is useful for a number of reasons, first and foremost the quantity of information that can be stored.

Numeric only Max. 7,089 characters
Alphanumeric Max. 4,296 characters
Binary (8 bits) Max. 2,953 bytes
Kanji/Kana Max. 1,817 characters

With that amount of data, being easily transferable from a poster, magazine article, bill board, sign, business card, etc. It opens the doors for lots of imaginative uses.

Imagine billboards or adverts that contain links that the QR reader will convert and allow the user to access, due to the fact that the URL no longer needs to be easy to remember (as it’s all done thru the code). This would allow the addition of location specific information in the URL - every poster or billboard could have a unique URL variable. That would give an almost “click-thru” like view of which sign locations get the most traffic and drive the most sales. Having that ability to pass much greater data, also opens the door for things like business cards, they can have a vCard encoded in them and the reader automatically adds it to their address book.

One commenter on a blog I was reading, pointed out the fact that this hasn’t picked up in the US is the fact that it requires software to be installed on the cell phone by the customer. I tend to agree and will take it one step further that this is an greater issue due to the somewhat restrictive practices used by US Cellular companies in preventing users from being able to download new Java apps to run on their phones, let alone allow them access to photo’s taken with the phone. They prefer to try and force customers to use their crappy apps which often include a fee for uploading or viewing images taken with their phones.

This existing and historical approach by the cell companies has lead to a much less progressive customer base, although I’m sure that will eventually change and the US market will catch up.

As an iphone user this is all rather alien to me, as I can’t do any of this fun stuff. What I need is a server that I can email my pictures to, that will bounce back the decoded message to my iPhone to do this.

I’m already in the hunt for some QR code reading PHP code. I’ll update this if I find any solutions or manage to put something together that functions.