oddlight

QR code for this blog, generated at http://qrcode.kaywa.com/

Thinking inside the square

THE prospect of flashing a mobile phone at a movie poster to get screening times and buy tickets might seem fancifully futuristic to most.

So, too, the idea of aiming a handset at a business card to spare the hassle of manually entering the details.

But the technology that allows this to happen is on its way to Australia.

Known as QR (Quick Response) Codes, the square bar codes on flyers, newspapers or T-shirts provide a direct link to a web page.

When mobile phones with internet capability are swiped over the top, the user is taken directly to a related web page.

The technology was pioneered in Japan. Advertisers started placing the codes on billboards, magazines and shopfronts in 2000.

Since then, it has been embraced by almost every retail industry and adopted by consumers to encode personal details on business cards, where they can be scanned and read by software provided in almost every one of Japan's 100 million handsets.

Some people, like 25-year-old Yuta Horai, even emblazon personal QR Codes on their clothes.

"It's just a quick and easy way to link to a mobile internet site about anything - restaurants, movie times - on your mobile anywhere," says the Tokyo artist, who sometimes wears a T-shirt with a code that links to a website promoting his friend's band.

Special phone software is needed to read the codes. In some cases this can be downloaded from the internet, but Telstra says it is planning to release a range of QR Code-compatible phones "in the very near future".

"It makes the internet more directly accessible - you scan a code to get access to the content that you want when you want it," the executive director for consumers and channels, Tim Copper, said. The Herald will be Telstra's media partner in the the new phones.

Even Facebook has taken an interest in QR Codes, in a sign this two-dimensional technology, designed in 1994 by Denso-Wave to track parts in Japanese car manufacturing, has finally pricked the global consciousness.

The social networking site produces T-shirts and bags with personalised codes that new friends can scan to add the code-owner as a Facebook "friend".

In Japan, mobile phone users only have to position the code inside a square viewfinder on their screen to be taken directly to a corresponding website.

The process allows them to easily obtain restaurant locations, book taxis, find nutritional information, listen to music, enter competitions and sign up for giveaways.

Lawrence Cosh-Ishii, director of digital media for the online publication Japan Wireless Watch, said: "The iconic QR Code symbol has served as a trackable call to action for businesses engaging with potential customers."

Japan's McDonald's puts the codes on hamburger wrappers. Supermarkets put them on meat and egg packaging to provide information about the farms that produced them.

According to a survey, 73 per cent of consumers have used QR Codes. Among teenagers the figure rises to 90 per cent.

from smh
QR code entry on wikipedia
check out semapedia while you're at it