Usually I hate QR codes. They’re ugly technology needlessly solving non-problems in a flawed attempt to be futuristic. Even worse, people plaster them on the dumbest things: bikinis, burqas, butts, etc. And now, setting a new low, they’ve painted a whole town with QR codes. There are literally over a 1,000 QR codes scarring this entire town.
QR codes, those impractical little squares that deliver information through a phone’s camera, have seen their fair share of bad ideas. But this explosion of tackyness seems especially dumb and horrible and gross and UGH.
For whatever reason, QR codes still haven’t died. Near Field Communication is far superior in every conceivable way, yet it’s only in a small handful of phones. And apparently I’m not the only one angry about the nine lives of this insufferable technology, because some people have dedicated a Tumblr to its terribleness.
Picture this: You’re sitting in La Premiere, watching the latest superhero blockbuster on the big screen. Just as the superhero in question is about to be pummelled by the bad guy, you have a sudden and irrepressible craving for a choc top. Do you leave the movie to satisfy your hunger, missing the key action sequence? Or do you suffer through until the movie shifts to the unavoidable romance subplot? The answer is neither, thanks to a new technology being trialled by Mastercard, Commbank and Hoyts.
If you ever want to log into your Google account when you’re at a public computer, where you’re unsure whether or not there’s a keylogger installed, there’s now a solution. And it’s from Google!
At a Seattle event, Microsoft demonstrated a way for Xbox 360 games like Kinectimals to share information with a Windows Phone handset. The connection uses a QR code that can be scanned both by the handset and the Kinect.
