What is Digg?Sponsored by Dragon Age: Origins
Can't get enough Dragon Age: Origins? Play the flash game. view!
DragonAgeJourneys.com - Play the free companion flash game to Dragon Age: Origins.
54 Comments
- d00by, on 10/12/2007, -0/+21This reminds me a of a thing called the CueCat that came out a while ago that failed misrably
- VeganG, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Hooray, more ways for marketing to weasel its way into everyday life.
- netnifty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9A regular barcode is one dimensional in that only the X axis is taken into account when being scanned, if you were to extend the lines of the barcode (or shrink them) vertically the same information would be represented by it. A 2d barcode is more difficult to implement and takes into account both the X and Y axis, which usually ends up with it looking more like a crossword than what you might expect for a bar code.
- makenai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Never heard of this before. Of course, QR codes are _everywhere_ in Japan. On websites, billboards, product boxes etc: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code
Besides that, Smartpox is a really stupid name. It sounds like a genetically engineered disease for biological warfare. Whoever the marketting guy is that came up with that... - endtwist, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9What ever happened to just using good ol' URLs?!
- Grimdotdotdot, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11"A 2-dimensional barcode"
Shame, I miss those 3-dimensional barcodes. - Iceduck, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Smartpox sounds like a disease...
- digjedi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I got an idea, instead of simply putting in URLs in an ad, we'll make users have to install software and use a camera to decode. All the kids will think it's cool... or they just won't gave a rats ass and no one will use it... uummm... I give you just one guess which one.
- Meka181, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9
To my understanding this is old in Japan. The Japanese has been using this for years now. - liquidizer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5That's it! It was bugging me that I couldn't remember what it was called. The great thing about Cuecat is that it worked with existing barcodes. Scan a can of beans and it takes you to Heinz and so on.
- rcomegys, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Yeah, they're called QR codes, and can be found just about anywhere. I was at a fancy restaurant the other night and there was a QR code pasted on the toilet, which, when you snap it with your cell phone, will take you directly to the website for that restaurant.
- Ambassadeur, on 10/12/2007, -7/+11Most barcodes are in 1D
- RickySan65, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8Isn't a barcode always 2d?
- RobFrosty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yeah, agreeing with the people who have said it already, this is way old in Japan. I think it works well here for three reasons: (1)Pretty much every single phone can read these barcodes and then take you to a full webpage, give you a message, etc: all on the phone. (2)Personally, whenever I see one of these (on a wall or in a magazine or whatever), I scan it out of sheer curiosity. I think this curiosity factor works well with these things. (3) The ability to make your own barcode is awesome. I've had people make them with stupid messages and print them out. Totally sweet.
I'll be interested to see if it works in the states. I think were a little ways away in that most phones (I actually cant even think of one) don't have barcode scanning capabilities. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4> CueCat [...] that failed misrably
Yes, well the difference is that the Japanese don't lug their laptops out when they want to read mail, browse the "web", IM or even talk. They simply use their cell phone (and, in fact, you would be hard pressed to find a cell phone *WITHOUT* a camera these days).
Think of it as the success that blackberry never had in Japan.
...and yes, these are *EVERYWHERE* in Japan. - simd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"I think this curiosity factor works well with these things. "
You're right. How sweet would it be to be able to walk down the street, see a poster for a new local band and be able to hear how they sound right there and then... It's great marketing and actually gives something extra to the consumer (but only if they want it).
Much less intrusive than audio or bluetooth posters. - noGoodNamesLeft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3As opposed to the traditional one-dimensional barcode. Yeah, they have height and width, but you know full well what I mean.
- RobFrosty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Oh pachinko. Also known as "the nearest hole that I can dump all my cash into while simultaneously smoking and drinking my face off". The Great Japanese Pastime.
- simd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Of course it's useful. How much easier is it to point your mobile at a band's poster, press a button and immediately hear one of their music tracks than to have to fire up your mobile browser and type in a crappy long URL?
- charlietuna, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Printable postage stamps use 2-D "barcodes".
- hangtown, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Hate the name, can't see the use for it. Just because the Japanese buy into it doesn't make it useful. I lived there for 8 years and they'll accept almost anything tech related. They think pachinko is a great use of their time, for crying out loud.
- liquidizer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Yes, but the great thing is that this marketing is only intelligible to machines. Having black and white boxes is much less intrusive than having URLs and phone numbers in your face. Which is why, ultimately, this won't be adopted as anything but a novelty.
People can photograph a URL as easily, and use it much more easily than a barcode. - noGoodNamesLeft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2First thing I thought when I read this was "tinyurl.com"; that mitigates the traditional problem of long URLs.
And yeah, you can use a cameraphone to read barcodes, but how hard would it be these days to get the phone to do some simple OCR? Even if the phone's not capable of it, you have it automatically send the picture to the network, let *them* OCR it, and return the URL. (Since this specialised use of picture-messaging/data-transfer wouldn't encroach upon normal use of their expensive picture-messaging system, and since the wholesale cost of that service must be pretty negligible, they could afford to do it for very little).
This has the advantage that you get both a short-and-catchy URL for normal use, and a phone-readable system too. Whilst the OCR requirements would restrict the use of more exotic and/or decorative fonts, this is still less restrictive than having to encode your address/info as a 2-dimensional grid of black and white squares. - Orbatos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I don't understand why this simplifies anything other than purchasing out of magazines billboards. As has been noted, people can more readily deal with a legible url for most purposes anyway and if anything it adds an unnessesary level of complexity.
The other issue is the gateway service, why must a barcode like this contain proprietary data as opposed to simply encoding the url itself? The requirement that a certain business hold all of the keys is an obvious business model but it benefits no one.
Also, QR code could be used as it already exists, has a good data capacity for reasonable length urls and posseses fairly good image distortion handling. - futaris, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1For Windows Smartphone too:
http://www.modaco.com/index.php?showtopic=243287 - billbest, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1this has been around for a while: http://semacode.org/
there's a really cool application of it here: http://www.semapedia.org/ - twistymcgee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I would rather snap a picture and be taken to a website than having to type out a URL on a phone. Of course I'd also like to be able to tell where it's taking me.
- NiX0n, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah... I remember the cue cat. I've still got 3 of them (hey, you can't beat free hardware). They were supposed to be the next step in "Digital Convergance." Well, that train has sailed, everyone hax0rzd it, http://www.fragfest.cx/pages/messageboard/viewtopic.php?p=4941#4941
- vibri2001, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1For anyone who still has a cuecat, catnip is a very useful app. http://www.cedmagic.com/cuecat/cuecat.html
It allows you to use the cuecat as a normal bar code scanner. I've found it useful when listing items on Amazon or Half.com - jpfed, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Of course all barcodes are physically 3d. That fact does not carry information, because every physical object is 3d. The expression "2d barcode" or "1d barcode" refers to how many dimensions of meaningful variation there are printed on that barcode. On a typical UPC barcode, for example, there is a series of parallel lines. Any given line has a constant width/intensity along its length- so the dimension that runs along the length of the parallel lines does not carry information. Also, note that there is no information carried by the thickness of the ink on the surface that it is printed on- so the depth dimension is not meaningful. The only dimension along which information is carried is an axis that crosses the parallel lines that make up the UPC. If you want to know whether a particular piece of 1d barcode is black or white, all you need is one number- the position along that axis.
A 2d barcode does not restrict itself to parallel lines. Their arbitrary patterns of dots/ rectangles on a plane mean that there are 2 dimensions along which distinctions are made and information is carried. If you want to know whether a particular piece of 2d barcode is black or white, you need two numbers- the position along the horizontal and the position along the vertical.
(looks like netnifty beat me to it) - cybernezumi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yep, QR codes are extremely useful for avoiding entering long urls into your cell phone, and as many have said, are all over the place in Japan. You can encode more than just urls, though. Names, phone numbers and email addresses are also common -- not just the raw info, but in the phone's address book format. I have mine printed on my business card, when you scan it all you have to do is hit "add to address book" and all my details in there with no effort.
- camiller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wasn't just ratshack though. They were mailed out with an issue of Wired magazine and a couple of local papers/mags in Texas IIRC. Also you could get a USB version from IBM and for awhile some of their paper catalogs had the CueCat bar codes in them. I have a couple of the IBM USB versions and half a dozen of the keyboard port version. And I use one frequently with DVDProfiler to keep my inventory of DVDs up to date.
- argash, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Sadly no support for the RAZR or any other motorola phones leaves it sufficiantly useless to me
- keesj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1How to decode without installing some stupid software? Isn't there an online decoder or something?
- russryba, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1CueCats are neat. I've still got boxes of them unopened.
BTW, this website just generates 2D Data Matrix barcodes which is public domain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix
There are several libraries out there that can do this for you in most of the common languages. Search for "DataMatrix barcode library" - clickwir, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Nice idea if it didn't require you to signup, provide personal info, email, cell phone and just generally take a simple service and make it overly complex and in the end useless to millions of people.
Get rid of all the red tape and useless cell phone integration and you've got something cool. - JesusDeluxe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1they are probably named smartpox in hopes they will pop up everywhere like a disease. the future marketing writes itself
- dig19975, on 04/01/2008, -0/+0Here is a cool online barcode generator tool that I found. It's Free!
http://www.waspbarcode.com/Barcode_Maker/generator ... - stou, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Yea I it's pretty common in Japan, I saw one that was about 10m x 10m on the side of a building.
- cyberdash, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Looks like a good idea. Call me ignorant, but I have never seen or heard anything like this. Seems like a good idea though, whoever first made it.
And barcodes are one dimensional, since they are a series of lines (1D) not true 1D, but sorta 1D - PhilH, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1QR codes are far more established than the type mentioned in the article, and readers for those are also available for smartphones from modaco.com
- bdpf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I wonder how secure it is the the new nastiness floating around for cell phone users??
Don't own a cell phone so I don't have to worry.
bdpf Cool thou.... - wthulhu, on 08/29/2009, -2/+2anybody else remember Radioshacks :CueCat?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat - danknauff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This isn't exactly smartpox, but you can download software from here that works for qr-codes and data matrix... and you don't need a phone!
http://www.intelcom.ru/2d/english/demo.php - dhughes, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1 Well they did mention viral marketing *groan*.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Useless" cell phone integration? Cell phone integration is the *only* thing that makes such technology potentially useful, at least on the consumer level.
- Alex.w, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I take it you're from the US?
Its not just .jp that have IM and Email on their phones you know.. Its pretty much every where "1st world" bar the US for some reason. There must just be too much land to cover in 3G I guess. - VeganG, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"The ability to make your own barcode is awesome."
Anyone can make traditional barcodes if they have the right font. That's all barcodes are. And the scanners are just keyboard substitutes. - scottjl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1no support for motorola phones. if you have a moto, don't bother signing up.
- RobFrosty, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Ok. I had a friend who made barcodes in college. This is not the same thing. And if is, the Japanese made it way freaking cooler. All I ever got when I scanned his barcodes where massive strings of numbers that I could have just as easily typed. whack. Not to mentioned it required a laser scanner deally and an LED readout. I'll take the cell over that anyday.
-
Show 51 - 54 of 54 discussions
Browsing Digg on your phone just got easier with our enhancements to the 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is