Barcodes: connecting the real-world to the virtual

Barcodes are becoming vastly more interesting in recent times, with 2D barcodes allowing you to represent anything from URLs to invoices, which in turn allows us to connect physical images to applications in all kinds of interesting ways. In this article Brian Suda discusses the history of barcodes, what’s available today for creating and reading barcodes, and real-world use cases.

( Read the article )

Do you have an example of a QR vCard? It sounds awesome...

I have recently written an essay on the history and use of barcodes in merchandise, but I'm truly amazed to see that it has such a potential for possible applications throughout the web. With such great and easy-to-use tools for barcode creation and reading this may really contribute to so many areas in future web integration technologies. Can't wait to see my mobile read a barcode of a product and find reviews and price comparisons on the web.

I'm sorry that, I have a questiion about the forums, I'm a fresh here. I want to known how to start a new topic? Thanks

This really seems to be a possible leap forward in the field of integration between portable devices with internet connection and a wide range of everyday products and services. We just have to wait for a new generation of barcodes to be widely adopted in Europe and US.

This is very similar to an article I wrote about 5 months ago

http://www.qrme.co.uk/qr-codes-explained.html

jeremyhudson,

http://www.scanbuyshopper.com/ShopperConsole/index.htm have a mobile phone based price comparison software.

Regards
Ian

@mikesten,

I mentioned vCards being encoded into QR codes in the article. It is possible, but i didn't want to start going down that road. What info should you put in your vCard? the more you add the larger the QR code gets, and the harder it is for older cameras, (or new ones like the iPhone) to focus on the large area and decode it. Then between different decoding software it sometimes recognizes it as a contact and allows importing, sometimes it just thinks it is a string of text. Sadly, there is still along way to go before this can be completely reliable.

If you have the Kaywa QR code reader, it does an excellent job decoding it as a contact and allows for quick import into your address book. I have made one here for you to test. Obviously, the more verbose the info, you begin to lose more phones - that is a whole nother article about best-practices (how big, how much data, WHAT data? are people expecting a vCard, or a phone number, or a URL when they scan your business card? And what about the ability to track "clicks" from qr code links? I think there is a whole book on this topic, but maybe not an audience - yet.)

Since I can't embed a picture, this is a link to a vCard in a QR Code.
vCard in a QR Code

mikesten,

The QRMe website allows you to track qr codes. You can see where your QR code has been scanned on a google map.

Please see :-
http://www.qrme.co.uk/qrme-dynamic-qr-codes.html

Register then click on the 'My live GeoMap' to see some live scans.

Regards
Ian

Thanks, very interesting article!
But do you think it is possible to encode audio files using QRcodes?
With 500 symbols it is quite large already, but probably is not enough to encode even the short audio?