Google bellies up to the bar code
One of the problems print publications have had in trying to expand into digital space is the difficulty of linking content on the paper page with content online. When we launched the digital home of the Mercury News on AOL 15 years ago, there was no convenient way of directing the newspaper reader to, say, an expanded online version of a news brief, so we assigned “bingo numbers” to the stories we posted. Each brief in the paper would be followed by a number like B321, and by plugging that number in the site search, the reader could pop up the story. Crude, but effective. Things got a lot more complicated a couple years later when we migrated the paper to the Web. The paper printed all the URLs, but it was a lot to expect of the reader — saving the paper until a computer was convenient, then typing a long address.
At the turn of the century, a company called Digital Convergence Corp. tried another approach with its CueCat, a home scanner that attached to your computer and was used to read bar codes included in print advertisements; scanning the code would take you to the desired Web page. The required purchase of hardware, along with security issues, the hooting of critics and general public indifference, eventually sent the CueCat out with the litter.
Now Google’s taking another whack at the problem, working on bar codes that can be photographed by a cell phone and translated by software to pull up a specific Web page. Despite the CueCat jokes, the idea has some potential advantages, particularly its use of existing hardware and the analytics that Google could provide the advertisers. But until Google’s dream of an open wireless platform takes shape, it would need the handset makers and wireless carriers to agree to include the software, then teach both advertisers and consumers how it all works. You can never dismiss a Google initiative out of hand, so most of the blogosphere is willing to play wait and see, but skepticism abounds.
Telldodo presents an alternative to print barcodes: keywords that are easy to remember and easy to type in. Just enter the simple key-phrase at telldodo.com and get back the original URL, however complicated it may be. For example: “light saber toy”
But isn’t this already SOP in Japan? You point your very capable iMode cell phone at the QR Code printed on an advertisement or in the newspaper, take a “picture” of the QR Code, and then get directed to the web content, which you read using your iMode cell phone browser.
Works great - what’s the big deal here?
Oh, I forgot, we are about two generations behind Japanese cell phone technology and services.
Paul Werbaneth is right. This is old hat in Japan. The article should have mentioned that instead of giving the impression that this is cutting edge. But it is a big deal — precisely because the US cell phone industry is so moribund. Apple’s iPhone strategy and Google’s initiatives have a hope of shaking the industry up. Think of all the nation’s cash in those monthly wireless subscriptions that could be applied to new ideas, businesses, services and technologies.
QR code readers standard in Japan phones for 3 years. Docomo, au and Softbank “keitais” include cameras that can also ’snap a picture’ of a QR code. in a flash this pops up a URL on the phone display and connects to the web site. the reader is smart in that it not necessary to align with the QR code. i was driving near the Tokyo bay area and pulled up next to a large truck with an over-sized QR code on the cab door; so i just pointed my cell phone in the general direction of the door, about 5 feet distance, and up pops the URL on my phone.
Printed bar codes (2D) and camera phones are being used in Europe, (Vodaphone, gode, Gavitec; Neomedia in the US.) For linking signs, to embedded web pages; a bar-code sent to a cellphone display, used as a concert/game/movie admission ticket. To download audio/video text to a users phone from a display, or trail sign. I guess the possibilities are endless, like linking print adds to web pages for high value items like antiques, collectibles, real estate, fast cars–
I have been waiting for someone to design a way to scan a bar code for articles in magazines that I want to save. Then have it sent to my e-mail for future reference. I am sick of saving old periodicals or cutting pages for articles that I want to save for future reference.