QRCodes
Latest
Weather Channel distributes Android app via on-screen QR code
Google's been doing some pretty slick stuff with QR codes lately, and now it looks like The Weather Channel's getting in on the fun -- it's running a little on-screen graphic prompting Android owners to download their app by scanning their TV screens. Sure, it's not the craziest thing in the world -- it just takes you to the Android market listing -- but it's certainly fun, and one of the more mainstream uses of QR codes we've seen in a while. Check the video after the break. Update: We originally said it takes you to the webpage; in actuality, it takes you to the Android market. (Thanks, Caleb!)
Google Goggles brings visual search to Android; Favorite Places brings QR codes to restaurant reviews
Looks like Google's been busy on the camera tip lately -- not only is it launching a new QR code-based Favorite Places mobile search product today, it's also demoing Google Goggles, a visual search app that generates local results from analyzing mobile phone images. Favorite Places isn't super-complicated, but it sounds like it'll be pretty useful: Google's sent QR code window decals to the 100,000 most researched local businesses on Google and Google Maps, and scanning the code with your phone will bring up reviews, coupons, and offer the ability to star the location for later. (It's not implemented yet, but you'll be able to leave your own reviews in the future.) Google hasn't built this into the Google Mobile app yet, so you'll need something to read QR codes with -- Android devices can use the free Barcode Scanner, and Google and QuickMark are offering 40,000 free downloads of QuickMark for the iPhone today. We just tried it out using QuickMark and it works pretty well -- although we'll wait to see how many QR codes we see in the wild before we call this one totally useful. Google Goggles is a little more interesting from a technology standpoint: it's an Android app that takes photos, tries to recognize what in them, and then generates search results about them. Goggles can recognize landmarks, books, contact info, artwork, places, wine, and logos at the moment, and Google says it's working on adding other types of objects, like plants. Pretty neat stuff -- but how about linking these two services together at some point, guys? Check some videos after the break.
Blinking LEDs to give QR codes a run for their (ad) money
We're still waiting for this so-called QR code revolution to hit North America, but our contemporaries across the Pacific are already looking to develop the next big thing. Reportedly, a smattering of mega-corps (including the likes of Toshiba and NEC) are joining hands in order to concoct a rivaling technology that requires even less effort to get content from billboards, books and posters to one's mobile. The heretofore unnamed system utilizes blinking LEDs to send data to phones, and so long as an ad has enough room for a minuscule light, consumers can come within five meters of it and receive the associated information by simply pointing their handset in the direction of the light. If all goes well, the technology will be ready for commercialization by 2013, or just after phase one of the Robot Apocalypse.
Esquire hopes augmented reality will trick people into reading
Remember that time last year when Esquire embedded an E Ink display in its front cover and everyone you know rushed out to buy one, and how the scheme saved the once-doomed print magazine market? Well, it appears that the periodical (and the industry as a whole) are again in need of a dramatic technological sales boost -- this time in the form of augmented reality. When the mag hits the newsstand on November 7, readers (and their webcams) will be have a chance to scan some QR codes fiduciary markers and partake in the technology that's been known to teach children about architecture and help jaded club kids party underwater -- except this time the unsuspecting public can look forward to seeing Robert Downey Jr. emerge from the front cover to spew what the AP calls "half-improvised shtick on Esquire's latest high-tech experiment for keeping print magazines relevant amid the digital onslaught." With that kind of content -- alongside a computer-animated snowstorm and a dirty joke or two from Gillian Jacobs -- can anybody doubt that traditional media will soon be back on its feet?
Takashi Murakami and Louis Vuitton make QR codes fun again
Bland, black and white QR codes got you down? Well leave it to artist Takashi Murakami to shake things up. Creative agency SET has laced the psychedelic-anime expert's playful, colorful imagery into versions of the machine-readable code for Louis Vuitton that -- amazingly -- still work. The company has also done similar work for Coca-Cola, though nothing quite as luxuriously squeezable as this multi-colored panda. Now, if someone could just dress up those drab bar codes... [Via DVICE]
The Pet Shop Boys embed QR codes in latest Orwellian video
Like synth pop and personal freedom? Good, 'cause the Pet Shop Boys have a new video which combines the two with the obvious appeal of personal gadgetry. Their new video for "Integral," a critique of the Big Brother surveillance state which rides the slogan "if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear," embeds QR codes linking viewers directly to on-line content about issues of civil liberties. Perfect for the dozen or so civil libertarians with QR-enabled cellphones living outside of Japan. The PSBs have made all 2,408 stop-frame QRs available for download so that you can embed them in your own YouTube dystopian rant against the erosion of Britney's freedoms.[Thanks, ZSW]Read -- Integral videoRead -- About QR codes
Rakuten exploits cameraphone craze for advertising purposes
Although this certainly won't go down as the first attempt to integrate cellphones into discrete marketing, Japan's largest online shopping mall operator is apparently taking advantage of the country's oh-so-superior handsets and offering up tantalizing "promotional videos" for consumers who snap pictures of ads. Rakuten is reportedly set to hand out thousands of pilot issues of a magazine, Zero90, in hopes that mobile-wielding readers will snap photos of certain articles in exchange for a free commercial intellectually stimulating media clip. While this sounds an awful lot like QR codes, the actual technology used in the pages isn't mentioned, but we do know that Japan-based Clementec is behind it -- and you thought print media had too many plugs as is.[Via Physorg]
NYT goes to Japan, discovers QR codes
Don't get us wrong, we have a special place in our robo-hearts for the Grey Lady, but you know we're gonna get a little chuckle about today's billowy two-pager on this totally new thing called QR codes that the Japanese have been using for, um, years. (And that we've been writing about for some time as well.) Still, we're not exactly balking since we do love QR so very, very much, and anything that could be done (including New York Times exposure) to faster integrate it into connected lives is something you know we're down with. Next up from the NYT's Japanese dispatches: a new phenomena sweeping the nation, an adorable character named "Hello Kitty".
McDonald's Japan provides cellphone-readable "nutrition" information
QR codes may be slow to catch on here in North America but they are, like so much other cellphone-based goodness, big in Japan. The latest to get in on the action is none other than McDonald's, which is now printing the newfangled barcode patterns on all its food packaging so you'll know exactly what you're eating (if you want to know, that is). To read the info, you simply scan the QR code with your cellphone camera, which should automagically recognize it and direct you to a mobile website with the lowdown on the contents of your McFood, including any potential allergy warnings. For the two people in Japan that don't have a camera-equipped cellphone, McDonald's is also printing conveniently short URLs for the corresponding mobile website. Of course, all this info only is really more of a curiosity, since you've likely already bought the food by the time you're snapping pics of it with your cameraphone.
