Hope this is more successful than the last bright idea for making entire cities wireless...

thisgirlangie

This is being tested on my school's campus also. (Case Western) We have them on the shuttle stops, in the newspaper, etc.

gamble

I just love how the codes are about the size of a postcard while the ones in Japan are about the size of a postage stamp...

Gotta love those low grade camera lenses...

Ah well, I've been wishing QR codes would catch on here...I shouldn't complain now that they are (especially considering I'll be moving back to Japan next year...).

OddManOut

Uh, Sprint started testing them out promotionally for the last 2 or 3 months. It was in wired magazine and gave me a free background download...it was useless, and it took forever to get the damned thing to read the code properly, but it worked.

Jamez

@emergeoriginal: But that's not how it works at all. The information is stored digitally.

bestpersonintheunivers

Every nokia with symbian s60 and camera does this.
[blogs.s60.com]

kevininstereo

i can see it now:

man gets a tattoo of QR code to tell his stats.

man gets a divorce.

man alters tattoo.

tattoo artist wasn't paying attention and man's tattoo says he is a transvestite with homicidal tendencies.

emergeoriginal

Check out [reader.kaywa.com] for the software for your phone.

metrophage

@thisgirlangie: or Cue Cat. :(

strider_mt2k

These can lead to phishing problems when people figure out how to encode their own sites into the code, and I sure wouldn't want my phone to be pwned

JymmyZ

woW! its like pokemon!

Amiash

Those aren't Japan's QR codes, QR codes have squares in 3 corners. They are just yet another form of 2D barcodes. In fact the article doesn't even mention QR at all. It does however mention [app.scanlife.com] .

lakiolen

I don't get it. Is the code processed in the phone? Or is the picture transmitted back to a website to decode and query? Can we make this run with wikipedia?

ripfire4

@strider_mt2k: Ah, you beat me to it. This strikes me as one of those solutions looking for a problem.

FTA:
"For now, users have to download the ScanLife software to their phone. About 70 phones currently support the software, and users will have to pay cellular data charges when they access a Web page." (my emphasis).

[mini rant] I can assume we won't be seeing this in Canada any time soon. The 20-30 second audio clip will either eat up 5% of my glorious $12/10 mb data plan each time, or Figers will offer it as an "unlimited" add-on at $7/month. [/mini rant]

bailey_ca

I don't get why they don't just print the goddamn information in the space they use to print the barcode/link/thing.

Beelzeboss

Wouldn't restaurants that got bad reviews just NOT participate, thereby making the codes useless? (except as a quick thumbs-up/thumbs-down guide by their presence or absence.)

Xenobiologista

@Beelzeboss: thats exactly what i was thinking

exterminat25

@JymmyZ: With TRUE QR codes this problems is resolved by the phone displaying the data contained within the code to confirm that you want it (the URL, address book entry, whatever). This is not a QR code.

jamar0303

Wikipedia has good info on QR codes.
That Scanlife thing looks to be something different.
I suggest taking a look at QuickMark for a MS mobile reader.

vagrant

QR codes contain only a small bit of information, almost always a URL to a mobile friend website (here in Japan). The reason it's used is because typing in a full website on a mobile phone isn't always quick, so you just scan the code instead. Once scanned, you can choose to bookmark it or immediately surf to the site.

It's *everywhere* here, but it isn't overly popular. You'll see someone scanning a code occasionally, but not often. I've tried it once or twice just to see how it works, but I don't really want to spend the cash to surf (expensive with the mobile plan I have).

So, that's it (for QR codes). Just a fast way of copying a URL. These codes are different though, and I have no opinion on them.

Ravlen

Ravlen

Hello Quecat.

snathanb

The Cue cat actually was a pretty cool idea. It's a lesson in design. Don't come up with a cool idea then think, hmm how can we package this idea so that it looks as dumb as possible and will make people not want to use it. Had they made this thing like the end of a standard pen, it probably would have taken off.

soulfinger

@Beelzeboss: These are links to a review or digital constantly changing information, if they print it, it would be out of date with in hours or minutes.

vankoy

[www.semapedia.org]
community contributed content

illiniguy

@Ravlen: I second that.

You see these things everywhere around here, but people don't use them that often. I've only used them once or twice, and it was more for the curiosity factor when I first came to Japan than because it was necessary.

nightmajik

QR codes are an industry standard barcode that's read and decoded on the mobile device without the need of connecting to a network to do a lookup and anyone can actually download software to create their own QR codes for a variety of uses.

The codes described in the article are some kind of proprietary code that kind of looks like a QR code but requires their own special software and a network connected phone to decode things and only people who are willing to pay to be in their listing will have codes that work.

They are not even remotely alike.

Gev