Cell Phone Bar Codes
Posted on May 30, 2008
Filed Under: Mobile and hand-held web.
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The pattern of squares to the right is a bar code— a (sort of) new technique to allow marketers to reach consumers via their cell phones.
Refered to by several names (QCodes, ActiveCodes, SemaCodes—and in Japan—QR Codes), these series of squares encode data using the Data Matrix specification as given by the ISO/IEC 16022 (or JIS X 0510 for the QR Codes used in Japan). The data could be anything within a certain number of characters, but most often is a web site address and a short title.
Potential Uses? Billboards, fliers, posters, etc...
How about a quick video to drive the point home (in Japanese nonetheless... but you won't need to understand the speech to get the point)
A Cell Phone Bar Code: it is a simple concept, but it highlights the fact that the mobile web is fundamentally different from the web on a PC or set top box:
-- The "Full browser support" in most cell phones is a somewhat misleading description. Flash support is almost non-existent as Flash support is currently absent from the all-mighty IPhone and several other smart phones, and the Flash Lite standard is a year or two behind the full Flash player in capabilities. Other issues from character set support to Javascript compliance have to be addressed. All of this ignores that smart phones with full browsers still represent a small percentage of cell phones with data services.
-- Data speeds even on the AT&T network currently lag typical broadband speeds users enjoy at home. The IPhone isn't even 3G (at least, most likely until June 9th) and even phones with 3.5G service often see less than max available speeds based on reception. Most other carriers are behind AT&T at rolling out high speed networks. Your web page that might be quite speedy on a 5 or 10 Mbps broadband might not be as responsive when a customer is trying to look up your product information with a much lower effective bandwidth on aisle 14 of a Target.
-- And what is most likely the most important difference, the user experience of trying to find what is playing at the local theater while strolling down main street on 2.6 inch LCD screen is completely different from researching the mating habits of a Teste Fly from a comfy office chair on Wikipedia via a 20 inch monitor.
Techniques like SemaCodes capitalize on the immediacy and portability offered by cell phones while recognizing the unique requirements of the user experience.