Mobile Tagging – 2D Barcode…Tag my world!
Thomas Menguy | February 6, 2007After reading a product description of what Abaxia is doing with its MobileTag – What is a Tag ?. I dug a little and found a really great and fast moving technology.
Did you know that nearly everything in Japan is tagged with QR Codes – two dimensional Matrix codes – these days? Okay, I guess you don’t, but believe me, you have to know about these funny codes. ^_^…Whenever you see a QR Code just take your phone out of your pocket, point with it’s camera at the QR Code and let the QR Code reading software decrypt the QR Code. That means: The QR Code reading software turns your phone into a mobile scanner for QR-Codes. Cool, right?
Robert Peloschek aka Unic0der: Free QR Code Readers for your Cellphone
CHeck this Video fora realife example:
Many formats seem to compete today, Code 2D (in French) gives some examples:
MobileTag |
Data Matrix |
QR Code (The most deployed, especially in Japan) |
Shot Code |
SemaCode |
Basically you have two kinds of storage: either the data is directly embeded in the matrix (like in QR Code or Digimatrix, few KiloBytes of data) or the code is “only” a redirection to an URL where the content is stored and can be read (MobileTag is working on that principle).
What really buzz me is the concept of “physical world hyperlink”, as described by the pondering primate :
Physical World Connection Companies
When a display was added to the first mobile phone, a new media was created. Since then, Internet connection and a camera have been added that have created a new way to interact with the physical world.Soon speech recognition will allow an additional way to browse the physical world too.
Every physical object will have a physical world hyperlink
That means every physical object will allow connection to a designated website and the mobile phone with it’s physical world browser will be able to surf the “real world”, the physical one.
The Pondering Primate: Physical World Connection Companies
(This vision seems to be shared also over at barecodemobile)
This can be strongly related to augmented reality where the “web world” is augmenting the “real world”. Even microsoft is taking the bandwagon as described in the always good Mobile Learning
Really getting an address from an advertisement right into my cellphone by taking a snapshot, or storing an appointment for a movie or a special event by taking a photo of an ad seems really valuable to me: today even with my glorified Treo with its big keyboard, I’m reluctant to loose my time entering those snippet of information.
This sounds exciting! … and for now all the generators and readers seem to be free of charge, I only wish we have more of this tagging in Europe….
It is to bad that the Pondering Primate has a
swampthing | February 7, 2007It is to bad that the Pondering Primate has a one sided view of ALL the PWC players.
The connection to some of the PW players that you may not be able to link to are:
http://www.neom.com
http://www.qode.com
Unfortunately the truth is not told by some.
Hi, Thanks for your comment, I wasn't aware of the Qode product,
tmenguy | February 7, 2007Hi,
Thanks for your comment,
I wasn’t aware of the Qode product, is it a new 2D Code provider and have a new format?
Thomas
QR code is limited dude to optics on phones.
TOdd | February 15, 2007QR code is limited dude to optics on phones. Other formats have been developed just for the camera phone: OP3 and Nextcode’s mCode. Nextcode has one of the only carrier deals in this area with SMART. Great local post on the service:http://www.chette.com/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=99&Itemid=1&pop=1&page=0#thecomments
So QR code can't be easily scanned and analyzed by
tmenguy | February 16, 2007So QR code can’t be easily scanned and analyzed by current phones optics? wasn’t aware of that, nor of the 2 other technologies. This becomes to be a little bit overcrowded in the 2D barcode format area ….standardization will have to follow if the market really take off (or is it th eother way round? …)
Yes. it comes down to customers deciding. so
todd | February 19, 2007Yes. it comes down to customers deciding. so far SMART is the only carrier outside of JAPAN to go to a format…Like NEXTCODE’s mCode. Nobody is really looking at QODE except for the people that are invested and underwater….
Hi Todd, Are you interested in that area? (and yes
tmenguy | February 19, 2007Hi Todd,
Are you interested in that area? (and yes it seems so ) do you have a blog or something?
Thomas
I think just look the way the big players go.
oliver | April 6, 2007I think just look the way the big players go. Like Nokia.
They will do the decide.
Oliver
adtagg.ch
Hi Oliver, Thanks for the comment. Not sure anyway that Nokia will
tmenguy | April 7, 2007Hi Oliver,
Thanks for the comment.
Not sure anyway that Nokia will decide for this kind of thing, but more if Carrefour or WallMart are beginning to tagging their goods this way. After all what is important here is really WHAT is tagged and not HOW it is done no?
Regards
Thomas
Hi Thomas Nokia now has startet with an own qr generator
oliver | April 22, 2007Hi Thomas
Nokia now has startet with an own qr generator on their website. … wondering where they go;-)Not the WHAT or the HOW is the question. What will be the service behind the code ist the important thing. And that offers unlimmited creativity…
regards oliver
Hi, Yes I've just seen this nokia anoucement...and I really agree
tmenguy | April 22, 2007Hi,
Yes I’ve just seen this nokia anoucement…and I really agree that the services offered by those technologies are amazing!
Thomas
Hey! It looks like its already done. Googling
Marc Driss | June 15, 2007Hey! It looks like its already done. Googling yesterday night, I fall on this little company. Sight… the downloads are password-protected, but I sent a mail to these guys and, this morning, I got a test version for my Sony-Ericsson (they look for testers.) Nice people. And, as much as I can tell, their solution does work for European phones, even with big Qrcodes. You need to practice a bit, staying put, parallel to the picture, etc. After a while, you get used to it. It’s kinda cool: you can insert hypertext, or phone calls, SMS’es, etc.
Great find Marc, thanks for th elink Thomas
tmenguy | June 15, 2007Great find Marc, thanks for th elink
Thomas