Orange Chooses Mobile Barcodes Over Bluetooth

Orange Chooses Barcodes Over BlueTooth For Mobile Ads

Orange’s French operation has announced it is abandoning its Bluetooth localised advertising trials in favour of allowing mobile phone users to choose the ads they want by scanning in a barcode.

The trials, which essentially allow Orange to beam local adverts via Bluetooth to mobile phone users when within range of a billboard or in a store, have reportedly gone down well, but have had only limited success as they require users to opt into the program.

Orange is now testing a new program which is less invasive for its mobile phone users across France - when they see an ad that interests them, users simply scan in a quick response bar code, known as 2D, using their cameraphone.

28 Weeks Later Uses QR Codes For DVD Release

From Guardian Camera phones to decode new ad widget

Next week's DVD release of the zombie-flick 28 Weeks Later will bring a revolutionary marketing widget, widely used in Japan, to the UK for the first time.

The film poster contains a square box full of black and white dots known as a QR - quick response - code. It contains information that can be decoded by the camera on a mobile phone with the right software installed. A huge poster showing nothing but a QR code has already gone up in London's Shoreditch to advertise the DVD.

These "bar codes" are widely used in Japan to store everything from web addresses and phone numbers to product details. Rather than laboriously typing in a person's phone number or an internet address into a phone, these codes give one-touch access to a wealth of information that can then be stored on a phone.

North America Wireless Needs Physical World Connection

Russell Shaw discusses the latest Forrester Research report entitled "How Japanes Companies Guide Their Customers to Mobile Internet Experience"


From ZDNet North American wireless needs this Japanese innovation

The authors refer to these services as "Using bar codes to link users to contextual support," and "Using wireless tags to push content directly from the urban environment."

The "bar code" solution is best for cell.

"Most camera phones in Japan include software that scans two-dimensional bar codes, known as QR (quick response) codes, which can contain data such as a Web site URL," the authors write. "Tokyo's metropolitan transportation bureau posts unique codes at hundreds of bus stops around the city that link commuters to journey planning tools, timetables, bus locations, and estimated wait times for each specific location."

As shown in the image at the top of this post, your cellphone's built-in bar code reader would scan the bar code at a specific transit stop. The scan would direct your cellphone's wireless broadband Web browser to a landing page where further, and quite specific info about the route that stops where you are would be available.

Nokia Mobile Codes In Beta....What's Next?

Physical World Connection gets a big boost.

Nokia starts offering the ability to create and read Mobile Codes. Microsoft offers the ability to create your own 2d codes too. Recently the largest consumer good packaging company in the world announced they would be placing them on packaging.

I think the chicken and egg are pretty much covered here. To complete the loop, a social network site should starting offering the ability to create and scan 2d codes too. Let the targeted demographic determine the creative applications for these codes.

The quicker consumers and corporations can create their own 2d codes (physical world hyperlinks) through a universal platform, the quicker PWC gets adopted.

On Nokia's Beta Site , they are offering the ability to create a 2d code (Mobile Code), and several software applications (downloadable), that allow you to scan the Mobile Codes with a Nokia camera phone. If you have a Nokia N93, N93i, N95 or E90, you will find the Nokia barcode reader preinstalled on your device, ready to scan mobile codes around you.


If the carriers that work with the compatible Nokia phones were smart, they would start offering the ability to create Mobile Codes (physical world hyperlinks) on their site.

If I am Nokia, I would be looking for sites that allow individuals to continuously generate content. Know which ones I would target first?

Can you see how Google could incorporate 2d code creating ability into their advertising mix?

What are 2D codes?
'Mobile codes' are in fact 2D codes, two-dimensional codes that can hold much more data than ordinary barcodes - linear 1D codes - due to their matrix structure.


The Mobile Code for The Pondering Primate.


In what format are the mobile codes I have created?
We like open standards: the two currently available open-standard formats for 2D codes are Datamatrix (DM) and Quick Response (QR). Our site uses currently the Datamatrix standard. Some of the readers proposed on this site can read QR codes as well, including the Nokia barcode reader

Learn more about Nokia's Mobile Code project

Out With The Old, In With The New

I thought of cute lines that include Verizon, "remember when?" and a couple others.

Sometimes a picture does a better job of telling a story.




Look closely below the handset.

3GVision Bringing Mobile Barcode Scanning To The West

3GVision Inc brings Japanese 2D barcode phenomenon to the West.

With its i-nigma™ reader already inside the 2D Barcode revolution in Japan, 3GVision is now taking its market-leading direct-to-mobile-web barcode solution worldwide.

Dover, DE - March 29, 2007 –3GVision, a leading provider of advanced cellular imaging solutions for mobile devices, announced today the availability of its i-nigma™ 2D barcode scanning system, world-wide – for JAVA, BREW, Symbian and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

3GVision - which has empowered more than two-thirds of the handsets in Japan - is bringing the code revolution to the global market. 3GVision is offering its market-proven inigma ™ reader as part of a full service solution, tailored to the needs of key stakeholders in the mobile code ecosystem: wireless operators, handset manufacturers, media companies, advertisers and their agencies, mobile content and service providers.

By using a mobile handset’s camera to scan a two-dimensional barcode - either the Japanese style QR codes or the Data Matrix codes already in use in the US and Europe for logistics - i-nigma™ instantly links to the desired web content, eliminating the need to write long URL's using the keypad – one of the major consumer barriers to accessing the Internet from mobile devices.

Teaming up with NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone, 3GVision introduced their first mobile phone code readers in Japan in 2003. 3GVision's technology is already embedded in over 50 million handsets in Japanese handsets and over 100 handset models, and is established as the defacto industry standard for Japanese operators and handset vendors.