phil herborn

Further to my friday night ramble on the question of QR codes and will they reach tipping point in Australia. Here are a couple of things that I have noticed since.

Telstra is going to trial the technology, this is great, they have a massive influence in the Australian market and can drive forward a new technology like this. They can educate the masses, promote it, and pre-install it on all new handsets. The trial looks like it is a going to be a joint trial between Telstra and KFC and Telstra and Pizza Hut and who else? Anyway thats great news… even if its old news, lets hope that trial goes ahead this year.

I reckon we need a standard barcode/ qrcode format rather than lots of different options. Geekant mentioned it here, a couple of colleagues have mentioned it and after watching a demo of another proprietary 2d barcode offering at mobile mondays  this week to me it is clear that to make this technology take off, keeping it simple for the end consumer is key. Consumers don’t want to have to download a new barcode reader for each new barcode format introduced, they don’t want to have to pay to download another reader if they don’t have to, and they don’t want to point their barcode reader/camera at a barcode and have it not work because it’s the wrong type of barcode for their reader.

SO…. I reckon the ISO standard 2d barcode format “QR Code” that has been around for years and years should be allowed to reign supreme rather than a swathe of proprietary offerings that may create consumer confusion and annoyance and possibly kill the idea before it takes off.

What do you think?

Phil