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QR Codes - Internet to Cell Phone via Camera

Posted by Zonk on Sun Dec 02, 2007 04:21 AM
from the want-to-be-able-to-buy-a-soda-with-my-cell dept.
Cellphones The Internet
An anonymous reader writes "From ITWorldCanada comes an article about a technology that might change the way people use their cell phones in North America: 'A Toronto-based software developer wants to bring Quick Response (QR) codes to Canada, and an industry analyst says this may appeal to companies offering products and services to youth.' McDonald's restaurants in Japan having been using the codes for over a year to present nutritional information on the cell phones of their customers. QR codes were originally developed by Tokyo-based Denso Wave Inc. and are common in Japan. When published in print form — on billboards, transit ads, vehicles or other media — consumers can then take pictures of the images and have them converted to links, phone numbers or other advertising messages."
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  • What a great idea!
    They should get Rowdy Roddy Piper [imdb.com] to be their spokesman here too!

  • elementary, my dear watson (Score:5, Funny)

    by User 956 (568564) on Sunday December 02 2007, @04:27AM (#21550541) Homepage
    McDonald's restaurants in Japan having been using the codes for over a year to present nutritional information on the cell phones of their customers.

    This article was almost believable, except for the fact that there's no such thing as "McDonald's nutritional information".
    • http://www.mcdonalds.com/app_controller.nutrition.index1.html [mcdonalds.com] While nothing on there is very healthy, with proper planning, you could fit a burger into a CAREFULLY PLANNED day of eating and still stay eating quite healthy, make it a regular habit and then things start to become a problem. That said, you're probably happier not knowing what's in it if you're not willing to stop eating it constantly.
    • Here you get them. On the back of that paper sheet they put on the tray so the tray has a higher chance to steer clear of the crap they dump into your burger. And if you don't mind turning over a greasy sheet of paper so you can at least find out what kind of crap you just pumped into your body, you can read it up.

    • Read the post more carefully (Score:5, Funny)

      by Kupfernigk (1190345) on Sunday December 02 2007, @06:15AM (#21550871)
      It says "present nutritional information on the cell phones of their customers." They tell you how much nutritional value there is in eating the cell phone. As nylon and some other plastics contain amino acids, this is not quite as stupid as it sounds.

  • Why not just have bar codes on the ads? (Score:5, Funny)

    by AuMatar (183847) on Sunday December 02 2007, @04:43AM (#21550573)
    Then they can scan the barcode for the information. Heck, we can even give away free barcode scanners with magazines to make them do it- just make them cute looking. I'm thinking maybe a cat.
    • Ha! I'm in the process of moving, and buried in one of my boxes of archived computer schtuff was my cuecat. I had forgotten that I even had one :)

      Wish I could trade it in for a smart card or barcode reader/writer. I could definitely have more fun with that equipment.
    • Most people (who haven't owned a Japanese phone in Japan) don't really get why QR codes are great.

      Every single Japanese phone made in the last 5 years has this. Which means virtually every Japanese person has a read on them at all times. Sometimes two.

      And QR codes are everywhere. Sure, advertising, magazines and whatnot, but there are a lot of other uses. If you could go around and tag anything with a URL or 1-2 K of text, what would you use it for?

      You can embed contact information in them, so having on
      • The reason cue cat failed wasn't the lack of the scanner- they gave them away. It was the lack of a use for the service. Its still a solution searching for a problem, and will fail as completely.

        • Re:Why not just have bar codes on the ads? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by jamar0303 (896820) on Sunday December 02 2007, @06:28AM (#21550915)
          Well, it seems to be an enormous success in Japan, and I imagine it will succeed just as much in Canada. You have to have widespread adoption- by cellphone manufacturers, but people who would have a use for QR codes, etc. Example- a Japanese arcade game I play will put up a QR code after the "game over" so that you can post your high score online via cellphone because it would be cost-prohibitive to put the individual machines online (for the arcade owner, mostly). Another use- business cards. That way it's incredibly easy to scan in all the contact info. Third use- small MIDI ringtones and graphics can be encoded in a QR code. All of these mean that QR codes have far more potential for success than the CueCat did.

        • Re:Why not just have bar codes on the ads? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by ArwynH (883499) on Sunday December 02 2007, @07:40AM (#21551131)

          And that is where you are completely wrong. Sure the lack of service killed the cue cat, but that was because the lack of cue cats killed demand for the service.

          The possibilities of the QR code are not limited to advertising either. You can encode ~4k bytes into a QR code. That is enough for quite a few purposes. Here in Japan almost every mobile phone has a scanner and the QR codes are everywhere. I have seen them encode links to web-sites on posters, address book entries (incl. photo) on business cards and more recently, virtual tickets.

          So far, the virtual tickets are by far the coolest use I've seen. The QR code is sent to your phone via email or obtained from a web page. Then you display the QR code on your phone screen and the ticket inspector scans it. No more need to print out plane tickets, cinema tickets or any other form of Id really. I've even seen the system used with shoppers club cards.

          There are probably many more uses for this that haven't been thought of yet.

  • Oooh, can I point out the flaw in the plan? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SmallFurryCreature (593017) on Sunday December 02 2007, @04:45AM (#21550581) Journal

    Yes this exists in Japan. QR Codes are an "open" patent, the company that owns the patent has published the details so that anyone can implement it and doesn't enforce its patent except for the name.

    This means it is IMPLEMENTED on a LOT of phones.

    So what does this western company do? Implement it on Windows Mobile 5 or 6.

    Eheh, why not implement it on the iPhone and go for an even more limited audience? (Sorry fanboys, but even with its massive success the iPhone is still only a tiny part of the market, although it is possible that with just 1 phone Apple will get a share that reaches while digits)

    Hint, MS ain't exactly owning the market for mobile phones, especially those owned by youths. What advertiser is going to include a bloody ugly area in their carefully designed ad that can't be used by 95% of phones. (Getting real market share data from MS in this area is next to impossible, they are very reluctant to release hard figures)

    If this canadian company had any smarts they would at least get it to run on Symbian (the majority OS) and preferably do it so that it simply runs on anything that has a camera. That is what the Japanese did.

    Without this, this will just be another, it worked in Japan and failed in the west tech stories. Remember i-mode anyone?

    I would also try to launch this in europe where carriers are slightly less restrictive about third party software on "their" phones.

    • http://mobilecodes.nokia.com/scan.htm [nokia.com]

      "Point and shoot your camera phone at a mobile code to connect directly to a website, view a message or get a phone number ready for dialing." --from the site.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by mutende (13564)

        http://mobilecodes.nokia.com/scan.htm

        There are several readers available, not only covering Nokia and Symbian phones:

        There are also several other 2D "bar" codes in use besides QR-code: quickMark, trillCode, mCode, shotCode, semaCode, beeTagg, ... You name it!

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MrNonchalant (767683)
      Somebody needs to make this a MMS-accessible web app. That would make it completely cross-platform and instantly available on all mobile phones. You just snap the picture, send it off to a mail address or short code, and it send back the decoded text. If you want, you could create an account, verify your phone number, and then access anything you send later on the web.

    • Yes this exists in Japan. QR Codes are an "open" patent, the company that owns the patent has published the details so that anyone can implement it and doesn't enforce its patent except for the name.

      Why is a patent-encumbered solution preferred to the public-domain, ISO-standard Data Matrix [wikipedia.org] format? Isn't this marketing triumphing over common sense?

      • The wiki page you linked says there's currently ongoing patent litigation for the Data Matrix. QR codes are also an ISO standard.
    • QR Codes are an "open" patent, the company that owns the patent has published the details so that anyone can implement it and doesn't enforce its patent except for the name.

      Well yeah, sorta. QR Code is an open patent, so there's no fee for usage, but it's also an ISO standard. This means if you want to get the spec, it will cost about $200 for ISO to e-mail you the appropriate 1.2 meg PDF. There are a couple of open-source QR Code libraries out there, but they're a tad buggy and don't support all of t

    • If this canadian company had any smarts they would at least get it to run on Symbian (the majority OS) and preferably do it so that it simply runs on anything that has a camera.

      It already does run on Symbian. I can scan any random QR code with my Nokia N93 and it will decode it and then let me open the web page, call the number, or do whatever the code points to.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by jamar0303 (896820)
        BTW- before you try; that QR code stamped in your passport holds encoded/encrypted data. I tried reading the QR code on my Japanese entry permit with my Toshiba cellphone, and it spewed garbage on the screen.
      • A data-rich QR code can contain the information, not just a URL to take you to the information. If you can decode it in the phone, you can view the information on the phone, no data plan needed. If it' contains a link, you now have a copy of that link to take with you to check out later.

  • "wants to"? (Score:5, Informative)

    by m2943 (1140797) on Sunday December 02 2007, @04:47AM (#21550587)
    My cell phone shipped with a QR barcode reader application. Some magazines and newspapers have started printing them. There is an open source community at http://semacode.org/ [semacode.org]

    This stuff is already being used. For the time being, it's more of a novelty, though: typing in a phone number or URL is still faster and more reliable.

    • Re:"wants to"? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Asmodai (13932) on Sunday December 02 2007, @04:59AM (#21550627) Homepage
      That's merely due to market penetration.

      In Japan these things are printed all over the place. Posters in/at subways, papers at restaurants, magazines, et cetera.
      Then it makes a lot of sense of being able to use your mobile phone to snap the QR and access whatever site it references.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mooglez (795643)
      So that's what those weird pictures are. I have been wondering for awhile what exactly they are as a pretty large portion of housing sales ad's now days seem to have those. (in Finland).

    • Re:"wants to"? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by phoebe (196531) on Sunday December 02 2007, @07:39AM (#21551129)

      There is an open source community at http://semacode.org/ [semacode.org]

      That's neither open source or a community, its a software development kit that is cost-free, with restrictions, for non-commercial use.

      What is more interesting is ZXing (Zebra Crossing) [google.com] a free open-source J2ME development kit from Google that is part of the Android [slashdot.org] platform.

  • Finally someone is seeing the usefulness of this outside of Japan.

    Man, I've been wanting to get more features from Japan and Korea. Finally now that Japan and Korea are adopting 3G GSM I don't have to rent a phone there and can just roam with my provider. But then you would still miss out on some features, this will finally bring other mobile phone makes in line.

    Now to get a phone with a Japanese IME, English and support for my own language. I seriously wish that kind of software was more modular, might be
    • There's a picture of one in the UK here, it's big! http://www.giagia.co.uk/?p=202 [giagia.co.uk]
      But I've only seen about three ever, most people probably don't know what they are. They're very useful though, I expect they'll become more popular pretty quickly.
  • This means my cell phone in 2009 will finally be able to read those QR graphics on Japanese web pages written in 2004!

  • Already on handsets - needs to be in "meatspace" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tryfen (216209) on Sunday December 02 2007, @05:06AM (#21550661) Homepage
    Most Nokia devices in Europe already come with a bar code reader. The N95 comes with a reasonable one, but there are plenty of 3rd party apps, especially for Symbian devices.

    I favour Quickmark from http://www.quickmark.com.tw/ [quickmark.com.tw], although i-nigma from http://i-nigma.mobi/ [i-nigma.mobi] is fairly good.

    Here's a good generator of QR codes, available in PHP or Perl
    http://www.swetake.com/qr/index-e.html [swetake.com]

    QR codes are great for pushing complex information into your phone, forget scanning in a business card - just snap the QR code and have a vcard on your device instantly.

    With Google pushing them on print ads, everyone and his mother having a camera phone, phones with good mobile browsers, I think the time is right for these to take off in a big way.
  • Why would I want to get "more information" (read: more advertising) than I already get? I mean, yes, there are maybe quite sensible applications to this, but I doubt we'll see many of them. Instead we'll see a lot of ways to cram ad crap onto our cells.
    • QR codes are not just about advertising. They're just a quick way to get small bits of information into your phone. There's lots of use cases aside from advertising. For example, you could print one on your businesscard or display one on a website. A QR code on a business card could contain a url to a vcard (or the vcard itself). So basically to add someone to your contacts, just point the phone to the business card and snap. Same with any url.

      The killer use case is not having to type in stuff on your phone
    • As an expat living in Japan, I have experience with these phones and have actually seen some good uses, and rarely is it more advertising. Here's one example:

      You picked up a card, see an advertisement, or something else for a restaurant that sounds pretty interesting and it has one of these square bar codes on it. You take a photo of it, and it takes you to a mobile enhanced site with a menu, prices, daily specials, and sometimes even coupons. Seems like a pretty good deal to me if you're out and about a
    • Maybe if you're interested in whatever's being advertised.

      Occasionally there's an advert on public transport, a poster in the street, on a card someone hands to me in the street, etc etc, and I'm actually interested in it! Usually, I forget about it though -- if I could just snap a photo I'd remember.

  • QR is great! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dancingmad (128588) on Sunday December 02 2007, @05:15AM (#21550679)
    I feel like every time I post to Slashdot in the last few months, it's almost been exclusively about my cell phone (I live in Japan).

    I bought my phone this summer and the QR is awesome. My au phone bill comes with QRs to the site and this month's free downloads. I just went shopping at the Village Vanguard (like a cooler Japanese Spencer's) and the bag I got for the stuff I bought had three QRs, for directions, info on the store, and other things. I've even used QR on PC websites to access mobile versions of sites.

    It's really, really useful, but I think it needs a semi-decent camera on one's phone. I'd love for it to become popular in America, but American phones would have to start supporting it and then others will. While the three major Japanese phone companies are follow each other, getting American cell phone companies to go in one direction is like herding cats. I seriously doubt it'll take off in America.

    Don't get me started on the Japanese OCR program, which can take pictures of kanji and passes it on to the Japanese / English dictionary - it's so awesome.
  • You just can't keep a good cat down. Or even a mediocre one [wikipedia.org].

    Cheers,
    Ian
    • Wow, I didn't think anyone else would've thought of the cuecat this quickly after reading the article. Surprised there aren't any "Eye of Judgement" posts yet, though...

  • Big in Japan (Score:3, Funny)

    by LostInJapan (1197211) on Sunday December 02 2007, @05:41AM (#21550749)
    For proof of just how big QR codes are in Japan, have a look at this. http://arity.blogspot.com/2007/12/information-density.html [blogspot.com]
  • Also see Semacode [semacode.org] for a similar idea.
  • QR codes are being used to affix "What's This?" tags
    to objects in Real Life, so you can aim your cellphone
    at something and get directed to its Wikipedia article.
    See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semapedia>.
  • A QR code reader app comes with the Dopod release of WM6 for the HTC Tytn (Hermes) phone - and, no doubt, other WM6 ROM packs originating from Japan. These ROMs have been widely leaked for the HTC phones. A good starting point for more info is here: http://www.xda-developers.com/ [xda-developers.com]

    I have played with the QR code reader on my phone and while I like the idea, I find that getting the camera aligned 'just right' to get an image shot that decodes propely is a real pain. I hope that it's perhaps the optics of the ph

  • tattoo virus anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by garlicbready (846542) on Sunday December 02 2007, @06:27AM (#21550909)
    This reminds me of some of the logos I saw in the "ghost in the shell" series
    (hmmm I wonder if they actually are QR codes)

    would it be possible to get a working tattoo of one of these?
    a fun way to stop anyone taking your picture, a tattoo virus on your forehead that places an image where your face would be :)

  • So really too late (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AdamInParadise (257888) on Sunday December 02 2007, @07:16AM (#21551049) Homepage
    QR codes is a well-known technology that worked very well in Japan. However, the rest of the world will probably never hear about them since another technology is about to place its place: RFID tags and NFC phones. NFC is a much better technology since you do have to position the camera just above the tag to read it. Also, NFC phones and RFID tags communicate with a bidirectionnal connection while QR codes are unidirectional only. There is no doubt that NFC phones are going to replace tickets and credit cards in many cases (but not all of course).

    So it's really too late to try to bring this kind of technology in the Americas or in Europe. Even in Asia QR codes are only used in Japan.
    • QR won't be supplanted by RFID and NFC because it can also be used in a broadcast content, which RFID and "near" (contactless) communication can't. QRs can be put placed in a TV commercial, or on a large billboard (imagine a video screen at a rock concert with a QR on it) which can reach hundreds of people simultaneously at any distance as long as it can be photographed. I could create and print a QR on a flyer and distribute a thousand copies but I think it'll be a long time before I can crank out a thousa
  • Why don't they just use Kanji, seeing that all Japanese children already know it? Pictographs generally has one symbol per word so there must be a symbol for everything already.

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