QR-Code

At mobile browsers compatibility test website from w3c we found a page where you can test how good your mobile browser is. You can access the URL by 3 different ways:

- Typing the URL (http://dev.w3.org/2008/mobile-test/test.html (quite creepy).
- A short URL (using a URL at tinyurl.com)
- But, the most interesting one in by a QR-Code we can capture and have intant access to test our mobile browser.

At the W3C they use QR-Codes!!

It is a very complete test that checks the standards to take into consideration when displaying a website in a mobile display:

I want to pass the test now!

If you want to see the results and see the performance on different mobiles here you have them. “And the winner is…”

Read more »

We just found an add-on for firefox that automatically generates a QR-Code containing the URL we are currently visiting.

If we want to add a website to our cellphone favorites, test a URL visualization (without typing the whole text) or to read some text on our way home we just need to capture de code fromour screen.

What are you waiting for… Mobile Barcoder Add-on?

Mobile World Congress , February 11th-14th, besides leaving Barcelona without a free hotel room, nor free taxi and bringing Robert Redford to our hometown, the first cellphones using Android have been presented.

Secretism and speculations have surrounded the first demos of this system we talked about last January, 14th.

According to the following video (InfoWorld) during the 2nd half of this year first cellphones using pre-installed Android will be launched into the market. This OS simplifies the creation of mobile applications like QR-Code readers.

Android, welcome to Barcelona.

Via InfoWorld Videos

PS. Robert Redford, “Lions for Lambs” is almost as transgressor and commited as Mary Poppins. Welcome to Barcelona anyways.

We have talked about this organization before in this blog, but we remind you here what the MC2 is by copy+pasting their mission statement: “To create standards to ensure interoperability, to ensure a business framework for profitable growth, and to encourage and educate the market in general. ”

You can see all about the Mobile Codes Consortium at http://www.mobilecodes.org or read their full mission statement document.

Recently they posted a new document about their last activities and thoughts.

“Global mobile industry bodies GSMA and OMA commit to drive worldwide mobile barcodes standards” - December 17th, 2007.

Yesterday we found out thanks to Roger’s blog from Kaywa that Google has launched their Print Ads 2D Barcodes.

Everything we have written in this blog now loses all its sense (if it has ever had any). All of the hypothesis and predictions must be left behind.

QR have succeeded and they now are part of Google. Let the QR-party begin!

Today’s post title is paraphrasing “I shop therefore I am” by Barbara Krueger (http://www.barbarakruger.com/) who also paraphrased “I think therefore I am” that a guy named Descartes said once (he has not a website so we cannot link ;).

“Bonus-track”

For what we see in their page, Google is planning to capilarize into the physical world. At the same time they are presenting QR codes the offer their services as a traditional paper-based agency.

Whoa, what a day!

As we recently posted in our comparison table of 2D codes, the two types we think are the best options at this moment are QR-Code and Datamatrix, but what are the differences between them?

The evolution of 2D code systems and cellphones technologies in Europe/US and Japan has been opposite, that is, while Europe/US developed the first 2D codes, Japan mobile technology and connectivity has spread out so much faster.
Maybe that is why Datamatrix defined in 1989 left out of its specs Kanji symbols (japanese) and make them useless for this community. Denso-wave then developed QR-Codes in 1994 and it allowed the usage and growth of this technology in Japan.

If we go through Semapedia white-paper we find three main differences between them:

1. The minimun size of a Datamatrix code in smaller than any other. “Datamatrix has proven to be the most space efficient of all 2D symbologies”.
2. QR-Codes can embed kanji signs (japanese symbols)
3. QR are codes rrrrule!! (this one is not in the report. We added it ourselves because it’s true)

The report is 5 pages long and we truly recommend reading it (specially the part against proprietary codes).

Space efficiency
This advantage is not such when talking about cellphones. If we try to read a very small code there are usually focus /macro problems and a very small code is impossible to read. In the other hand the amount of data we may want to embed will be in most of the cases a URL.

Densowave developed Micro QR Code for reduced surfaces, but we don’t believe this is going to be critical on the end-user.

Kanji
Before the Internet the physical world limits allowed standards not to be very strict (or at least to be slightly different from a geographical/idiomatic area to another). Now, world is more interconnected than ever and if you leave out symbols, cultural aspects, etc… that before may seem irrelevant now can put you out of business.

We don’t know how QRs manage other symbols (e.g. arabic). If anyone has information we will add it to this post.

QR-Code rrrrule!!!.
This one is clearly a subjective advantage, but in a market where efficiency is a must, esthetics are a key-factor and in this aspect QR-Codes are generating more traffic in blogs and creating more trends that Datamatrix in the end-user.
Coexistence

We do believe on the coexistence of this two 2D codes. The fact that exists more than one open-source alternative balances the system and avoids temptations on charging money for using this technology.

Main 2D-Code readers can decode both QRs and Datamatrix.

We detect a consensus when browsing QR-related websites and comments we read that states two requierements for QR success to happen:

1. codes standarization
2. global access to a reader

We have dedicated some posts to standarization issues and MC2 is working on it although some think that W3C should take care of this (maybe it is not a bad idea since two technologies are tightly related). Most of readers are downloadable (via SMS or web) and need to be installed into the cellphone (.jar and other) but until they don’t become part of its software it will not be transparent enough.

Until readers quit being “plug-ins” attached to an existing software and become part of the cellphone or other device and “met-in” the global access won’t bea reality. Good news are that some Nokia terminals are already going through this “melt-in process” and include a QR-Reader.

Another example of plugins are CMSs like WordPress (content manager used by qrcode.es). There is also a kind of “darwinism” by which best plug-ins melt with the main programming structure and become a function of it.

For your information, curiosity and acknowledgement to its creators we comment the source and functions of the main plug-ins we use in our blog.

• WP-Cache, by Ricardo Galli Granada
  Improves the performance and reduces response time when processing pages. By the use of an efficient cache system reduces the resourced requiered to manage the web traffic.
• All in One SEO Pack, by uberdose
  Increases the blog’s findability. When activated, extra options/fields appera in the post edit section oriented to improve our position in main search engines.
• Gengo , by Jamie Talbot
  Allows the edition of a multilingual blogs (in our case Spanish+English), but it is a flexible enough plugin to manage languages written right to left
• WP-QRcode, by Maou
  Little QR-Codes shown next to the post title (H1s) are URLs that link to the post and are dinamically generated and cached by this plug-in.
• WP-SWFObject , by Jim Penaloza Calixto
  Easily and quickly embeds .swf objects and youtube videos using SWFObject library.

If you want to know more about lava lamps in the photo you can watch them closely and even buy them at Google Store.

We recommend reading: NORMAN, Donald, A. “The Invisible Computer” (look inside link)

From this informative and research blog we are not qualified to technically evaluate which is the best solutions (but this is the least important). The question is that this technology is about to come and it will rock.

Nowadays the are two main players:

* QR-Code - Densowave - JIS / ISO
* Datamatrix - Siemens AG - ISO

Behind them, there some other players with more commercial purposes on the short-term (Ex. Shotcode). There is another critical aspect: the patents. We are plannig to work on a post about it.

THe MC2 Mobile Consortium is gathering companys from communication, software, telecommunications, etc….and set standards regarding de codes and its contents.

An interesting Publics study insisits on this need of standarization in order to launch this tecnology properly.

¿Does anyone know or has any idea about the situation right now?