QR code and mobile technology

In today's multimedia pioneering class, we had a guest speaker James Eberhardt . James is the partner of company named echomobile. There are lots of the things he is doing right now, IVR, SMS and iphone development. And he also teaches digital media in a college(sorry I did not get the name of it). James has done lots of the flash project, he is also regular speaker of flashinTo, the Toronto's largest flash user group.


Today's main topic is the two dimensional bar code, shot code, datamatrix and QR code. And QR code is the most popular one, it contains information in both vertical and horizontal directions, so it can contain much more information like address and URL than the traditional bar code. What is real cool is that there is a website which you can generate your own bar code. The picture above is what I generated for my blog. As you can see, QR code has a outline box which is the security area. And the three little squares on the corner are the registration areas which allows you to scan it on different angles and orientations.Is that convenience!

How does QR code relate to mobile/cell phone technology? While using a camera phone equipped with the reader software can scan the image of the QR Code causing the phone's browser to launch and redirect to the programmed URL. in Canada, QR code does not spread wide usage, only Nokia phone is pre-installed with QR code reader software. But in Japan, QR code is very popular, they are everywhere, QR code reader software is pre-installed on every phone. Our speaker thinks that it's because that Japan heads the way of the mobile technology and they also have the great amount of the cellphone usage. I would like to see one day in Canada, I can see QR code everywhere. I love to go shopping, when I see something I like, sometimes I will buy it, then after I found out it's not good enough, so I have to return it. Sometimes I will come back after I have done the research at home. It would be great if I can do some research right away so I can make the right decision.

For those without Nokia phone, currently there are three QR code readers on the market, keywa, shotcode and semacode readers. Jame also talked about a compromised way for those without the reader program, they can take the photo of the code, sent it as mms to the server, the sever decode it, then sent it back as a sms message.

James gave us an example of QR code usage. An Australia wine company put the bar code on every bottle of the wine. So they can collect their customer's physical location according to the QR code other than the IP address.

James also mentioned the most popular phone on the market now, iphone, the new generation of the smart phone. We can develop applications for iphone according to the gps location, access hardware(picture) or physical movement. To do that, you must be an apple licensed developer, and you can only sell your application on iTunes store. Other than iphone, James recommend another great developer phone, Nokia N95 which has GPS too. And it also support flash lite 3, which is a good news for flash developers. I just hope one day Apple will work with Adobe. He also talked a little bit about Blackberry. He think that blackberry won't be out because of the iphone because it is for business use only, not for fun.

Speaking of Flash lite, He said that he spend some time on it, but he can't sell it in Canada, then he moved away. Unfortunately, iphone doesn't support flash, as his personal point of view, the only future of Flash is flash running on iphone. I definitely hope to see that day coming soon.

Links:
QR Code
Definition from Wikipedia
wirelessnorth
Blog covering the Canadian mobile industry.
Kaywa
QR code Generator and Reader
flashinTo
The Toronto's largest flash user group.
cellphone news and forums
iPhone