Long live the bar code
Surfing some feeds I got in touch with QR codes, the 2D matrix code.
Having more information and less error prone makes it much better than the traditional bar codes.
You have here an example which you can “decypher“.
It was created online.
This start to be even more useful with a camera enabled mobile phone.
You can capture URL, phone numbers, addresses, you name it.
I used the QR code reader from Kaywa. I launched Opera Mini in my Sony Ericsson k750i and went to http://reader.kaywa.com/ to get the capture application. It didn’t work. Maybe Opera Mini doesn’t send the phone model as Kaywa is expecting. A messages appeared saying that my mobile wasn’t supported.
I didn’t surrender. Launched the default browser of the phone and it worked! The java application is quite simple and controls your camera just for snapshots. It takes a photo, analyses it and gives the result.
As a test, I used the online generator. All examples work well, url, phone, small sms, but text not as I was expecting. For a bunch of 60 characters it recognized very well. More than this it just couldn’t find any code on the image. Even with L and XL sizes.
But, even with this limitation, it works very well and I think we have here a versatile way of passing information between some media. I can just photo a code, meaning an address, in a brochure and get right away the text in my address book. To be explored better.
Category: Uncategorized 2 comments »
May 24th, 2007 at 20:46
You have a phone which needs Java and if it can only read 60 characters not the best one suited for the Kaywa Reader.
The differences between phones are quite big. The best are the Symbian phones, respectively Nokia Series 60 phones. There you don’t need to make a picture, you can livescan the QR Code.
You find some examples here:
http://mobile.kaywa.com/p491
http://mobile.kaywa.com/p492
http://de.sevenload.com/videos/3I5Wj1P/Kaywa-QR-Code-im-Bahnhof-Luzern
May 25th, 2007 at 00:52
Roger, that’s why I stated the model of my mobile. For more text, the builtin camera doesn’t focus well – I don’t know why. And I can’t use macro.
It worked very well for the possibilities of the phone.