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Microsoft Finds a Home For Barcode
MicroBarcode writes in about the color barcode technology that Microsoft developed but shelved two years back because nobody adopted it. The technology promised a way to link packaging to Web sites — and once cell phone cameras get good enough, Microsoft hoped lots of people would use it. It seems the technology has finally found a home: the ISAN International Agency has inked a deal with Microsoft. The color barcodes, consisting of red, green, yellow, and black triangles, will appear on XBox 360 games and other products beginning later this year.
Once the group starts issuing the barcodes, studios and producers will be able to link their Web sites to that database. One day, consumers might use a digital camera to "scan" barcodes on DVD cases, in advertisements and on billboards, then be transported to a Web page to watch trailers or buy products.
So, what you're telling us is that this is nothing but a pointless technology and that it would be much easier just to post a URL?
I have a to take a picture, possibly be charged depending on my mobile plan and if I choose that route, and then be tracked by Microsoft and the end company and then go to a website that would have been easier to just type in?
Right. Dumb.
I'd hate for random imagery to infringe... and a great Photoshop competition was born.
Bonus points if your entry features Steve Ballmer and an Aeron.
It was called the "CueCat".
Didn't someone already try this type of marketing? The cuecat comes to mind. People did a to of things with them... everything but use them for their intended purpose.
Sounds exactly like the CueCat.
Which, of course, sucked. One article about it from several years ago said something like:
"It fails to solve a problem that doesn't exist."
Only place where I see this applicable is: - take picture of a movie box in shop - upload tag to torrent search site - download results - profit! No need for ... even.
The CueCat was a piece of free hardware that was hacked. This wouldn't require the passing out of any hardware that could be taken advantage of.
Microsoft may have invented the Internet and the computer, but sometimes they do some really stupid shit.
They already have this in Japan. Just take a picture of the QR code with your cell phone camera and you'll get all sorts of info about the product. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code
-- dbg
A better implementation exists, one that is not controlled by a convicted illegal monopolist: Semacode.
It uses Datamatrix 2-D (monochrome) barcodes to encode URLs on paper billboards and flyers, and has scanner implementations for many cellphones w/ built-in cameras.
In a prototypical application, a typical college student sees an advertisement attached to a bulletin board, for a local concert of Local Rock Band XYZ. There is a semacode symbol on the poster. He or she, uses cell phone to take a picture of the link, which automatically launches the cell's built in web browser to that URL (saving much tedious thumb-typing), and purchases concert tickets instantaneously.
http://semacode.org/
I can throw as many stones as I wish; my house is made of transparent aluminum.
How exactly is this a barcode if it's not made up of bars?
-- nolesrule
I'm no fan of Microsoft, but this actually sounds fairly cool and useful, assuming they don't destroy it with licensing and royalties. The standard barcode system has been around for a long time and some improvements could be made. I am more comfortable with barcodes with denser information than RFID tags. This could be particularly useful for libraries, most of which depend on standard barcodes for cataloging books--more information could be stored actually on the book's barcode rather than relying on big databases.
Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
Yes. But the problem (for CueCat) wasn't that it was hacked. It was that nobody wanted to use it for the intended purpose. If they had then the fact that they were also using it for other purposes wouldn't have been an issue. The whole concept was a stunningly bad idea.
I don't think there's even a name for the mental disease that someone would have to be suffering from in order to want to use this. And the reason there's no name for that disease is that nobody has ever had it.
Sure, we all say Bill Gates is the Antichrist, but I never thought it was true until now!
I won't succeed simply because they look like shit. Maybe if they used blue instead of puke yellow then the symbol would look more nifty. Now those monochrome semacodes discussed above, I've seen those on packages before, and those have style!
You're anti-MS zealotry is clouding your mind.
Look. It's just like the QR Codes in Japan. What makes them so special is that you can encode much, much more data into them than a typical barcode (the blac&white QR codes can hold about 3KB, I assume this color version can do better). This lets you encode a ton more data about a product than w/ a typical barcode.
Basically it holds all of the promise of RFID with none of the scary privacy issues. But this is slashdot, so I realize I must spin this as evil. DIE MICROSOFT DIE! There, happy?
A hockey stick maker doesn't care if you burn their hockey sticks to heat your house instead of using them for their intended purpose. Getting people to use your product for its intended purpose is only important if:
1. you are selling your product at a loss, and
2. you make money only if people use it for its intended purpose.
As far as I can tell this is not the case here. Microsoft is just licensing its technology to companies.
And it's pretty decent. It is basically an enhanced barcode with more possibilities so that more data can be encoded. Any color scanner could be useful to read it. I am reminded of the scatterbox UPS block barcodes that do something similar but in a different way.
Don't crap all over Microsoft for inventing something cool, this could replace traditional barcodes at some point.
http://www.delicious-monster.com/
It uses the webcam build into new Macs, or a third-party firewire camera, to scan barcodes and index books and DVDs and such. It pulls the data from Amazon or another web source.
No laser scanner needed, no special barcodes required.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
While there are markers so that the orientation can be determined by scanners, there's no way to extend this encoding along the length of a package in any relatively inconspicuous manner the way that ISO/IEC 15416 codes do. This is the same problem which has prevented mass adoption of the Datamatrix 2D code outside of specific areas such as postage and shipping which simply needed to include the additional data required.
This is an interesting system and even more capable than Datamatrix and ShotCode of encoding a lot of information in a limited area. Unfortunately it suffers not only from requiring higher printing specs for those who use it (reflectance is of utmost importance; see here) but also from a return to a less usable system in key areas. This is for retail packaging but it will slow (or prevent speeding up of) standard, real-life usage.
Yes, it would be possible to place multiple copies of the code along the length of some item, but the colour factor as well as the required resolution don't allow for interruptions and additional area uses that the current lengthwise 1D barcodes do.
http://www.johnlewis.com/jl_assets/product/230153
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Not unless by "a ton" you mean twice as much, it's four colors instead of two. At the cost of a totally incompatible system.
We have had labels with two-dimensional scan codes for years. These can be printed in any laser printer and scanned in a monochrome scanner. Software for those is everywhere it's needed, inventory systems have it, point-of-sale systems have it.
Why replace something that has been working fine? It's that old Microsoft tactic of inventing a new "standard" way of doing things and pushing its monopolistic muscle to squeeze other companies out of the business.
I, for one, don't welcome our new color-coded overlords.
But I would welcome a law that mandates that the first link for each scan be non-commercial in nature (a Wiki article on the subject, a Consumer Reports (or Which?) article on it, etc.).
I for one hope they don't adopt MS's color-coded triangles. I don't care how much more data it can encode. It'll still be worthless to me since those of us that are color-blind can't read it.
There's also an article about this over on BBC News with more information: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6570871.stm It appears it's not an attempt to replace the traditional UPC barcode.
/. we should all assume that the new barcode is just another phase of Microsoft's Plan of World Domination, right?
From the article:
Gavin Jancke, the Microsoft Research engineering director who developed the so-called High Capacity Color Barcode (HCCB), said the aim was not to replace the current barcode system, called UPC. "It's more of a 'partner' barcode," he said. "The UPC barcodes will always be there. Ours is more of a niche barcode where you want to put a lot of information in a small space."
Of course, since this is
1. Create picture with a barcode URL to a malware site .........
2. Post on flickr, youtube, et al
3. Wait for someone wearing glasses to visit the image
4. Let MS's automagical software see the barcode in the reflection in the user's glasses via the PC's
5.
6. Profit.
This is the visual equivalent of the exploit that uses an audiofile to tell the voice recognition software to do things.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I'm not sure what they're talking about in relation to cell phone camera resolution being insufficient currently. I just took a picture from one of the links provided and it was more 'readable' on my cell phone than the black and white 2d matrix. Especially at 320x240.
Perhaps it's the processors that are still lacking.
I take pictures of the "now playing" line on our music server for future reference. It's not really any different than that.
Entering text on a cell phone is a real pain in the ass and it's often the only device I have around me capable of recording data while 'out on the town'
Take for instance google maps. I'll often take a photo of a google map before driving just so that I can look at it later on my cell phone. Much cheaper than GPS. Imagine if you will if Google Maps could encode all of your driving directions into a little 2"x2" square barcode on your screen. Then you just snap a picture with your cell phone. The Cell Phone includes a text decoder which then decodes the driving directions for when you need them later.
Let's say you're in frys and you see a new 500 GB HDD for $220. Now you start thinking to yourself... "Is this a good deal?" but you can't remember what the going rate is. No problem you snap a photo of the barcode and you've already set up an association with product names and your favorite price grabber search engine and presto there it is on New Egg for $180 shipped.
Let's say you're in a big city and you're lost. No problem! Just snap a photo of the nearest street sign's colorful barcode and presto google maps (your chosen default map service) locates where you are. You already while at home scanned the barcode for the address of your hotel and google gives you new directions from where you are.
The problem with cuecat was that all it did was awkwardly enter URLs onto your PC. When you're on your PC there is no need for barcode scanners you already have an amazing data entry tool... your keyboard! Cellphones have no easy way to enter in a lot of information.
I doubt microsoft's lone solution will be the only survivor, but who cares! With a camera based system, you can have hundreds of competing formats on your cell phone. But the better compressed the data, the more likely it is to catch on because the more information it can convey.
I for one welcome our new barcode speaking overloads.
Um, Having 4 colors instead of 2 doesn't mean just "double" the storage.
If you were to make 5 old-style two-color lines, you have a possible of 2^5 = 32 possible combinations.
If you were to make 5 new-style four-color lines, you have a possible of 4^5 = 1024 possible combinations.
So...I'm sorry, try again.
Not unless by "a ton" you mean twice as much, it's four colors instead of two.
Wow. I am going to be nice and assume that fundamental ignorance (rather than a rabid
MS-bashing tendency) has led to this laughably absurd conclusion. Time to brush up on
combinatorics.
Given an alphabet-set of size n, there are n^k possible words of length k that can
be made comprising of letters from the alphabet-set. Try it.
Also, observe that adding a new color increases your alphabet size by another n.
Finally, note that (4n)^k is rarely "twice as much" as (2n)^k.
Ok, so you went from 5 bits of storage to 10. Explain again how that's not double the information content?
Program Intellivision!
If you were to make 10 old-style two-color lines, you have a possible of 2^10 = 1024 possible combinations.
If you were to make 5 new-style four-color lines, you have a possible of 4^5 = 1024 possible combinations.
There, 5 * 2 = 10, to have the same amount of data stored you need twice as many dots with black and white as you need with color. Is that clear now?
Microsoft can do all the printing they want, but the retailers point-of-sale and logistics systems actually would need to adopt this.
In the POS software market, that smells like a current-version-+1 feature
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Comment removed based on user account deletion
DataGlyph is specifically designed to be both machine readable and look good to people.
You are correct on a single dimensional array. However in this case it is a 2 dimensional array. Therefore both the length and the height must be doubled. which results in 1/4 of a monochromatic array.
if they could use color bar codes to store actual HTML code. You could scan it into your cellphone or other device and it would create a webpage from the bar code without connecting to the internet.
Then, of course, you'd have to worry about viruses. Hackers could go into stores and stick a custom-made bar code on top of the original so Grandmas would unknowingly get their phone zombified and connected to a global cellphone bot-net and their phones will start making random calls to random phones on the other side of the world...
never mind.
I have already answered to the poster above who had some trouble in understanding that doubling the number of bits doubles the amount of information.
However, since you are so honest in confessing your fundamental ignorance, I will give you a link to a paper published by Claude Shannon in 1948 which can make it clearer for you.
Shannon argues that the true measure of information should be done in logarithms, because "It is practically more useful. Parameters of engineering importance such as time, bandwidth, number of relays, etc., tend to vary linearly with the logarithm of the number of possibilities. For example, adding one relay to a group doubles the number of possible states of the relays. It adds 1 to the base 2 logarithm of this number. Doubling the time roughly squares the number of possible messages, or doubles the logarithm, etc."
And you can be thankful that engineers use logarithms. If your phone company used "combinatorics" they would charge you four times as much for having two phones installed at your home than what they charge for a single phone.
Space is hardly a issue on DVD boxes.
What benefit does this have to anyone other than Microsoft's avoiding yet more royalty payments?
None.
If you double both the height and the length of an array you get four times as many dots. To double the size of an array you double either the length or the height, not both at the same time.
The BBC article reports that the colour barcodes can encode up to "3500 characters" worth of information. They also include a screenshot. The screenshot has 11 rows of 24 triangles. Each triangle is one of four colours. So that gives you 2 bits per triangle, 264 triangles, for 528 bits of information in total.
Anyone know where the BBC got the "3500 characters" line from?
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
to take an existing technology that worked perfectly well, and release it's own propritary version which is complicated and no one wants or needs.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Can anyone explain to me what benefits this has over QR codes, which are already widely deployed in Japan and free for anyone to use (the patent on them is for public use by the holder) ??
Cellphone: check
Cell carrier that cares little for privacy: check
Barcode by Microsoft: check
Connects to a website: check
'nuff said?
this is largely similar to zapcode that singapore's largest media holding company, singapore press holdings (SPH) is trying to roll out recently. there have been lures of prizes and pictures of rather scantily clad celebrities dangled to get people to install the zapcode software on their mobilephones.
basically, what happens is that using a camera phone, a user will take a picture of the code via the the installed zapcode software, which will upload this picture to a server via GPRS or 3G. the server will then respond with the (url of the) page that is encoded in the picture..
it's a method of putting hyperlinks into offline media such as print, or even ads that you find in the streets. sounds like a great proposition, but no one i know is really sold on the idea as of now (the SPH campaign has been running for what... 2 months now?)
MS managed to get themselves to use the barcode they created.
Well done.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Only old people watch TV. Most young consumers are able to click on a link they find online.
...is why Microsoft wants a better barcode to put more data on DVDs. Doesn't DVDs already have space for 4.7GB? If so, I'm sure they could store some data on the disk itself, without inventing a new form of barcodes.
I see what you are saying, you are right. I was misunderstanding bar codes to be representing a single number...and thus this change would be increasing the range of numbers possible by an exponentially increasing amount.
So the idea is that you use a piece of legacy technology (the barcode) to tag another piece of legacy tech (optical disks) in order to encode information in a manner that, unlike a website, can't be changed... Explain just how this is better than a URI and a camera with text-recognition ? Furthermore, why would it replace the original barcode? You already have a perfectly good product-ID right there in the good old fashioned one. You have a phone connected to the web...
Hey, I have an idea. Why don't we punch a string of holes at the edge of the packaging to encode a demo of the software sold? Yea, that would be great...
This is a good piece of technology, and the improvements over a barcode are clear. But the problem is there just isn't a need for it. Anyone who uses ordinary barcodes is already equipped and setup to handle everything based on just a unique ID number. This can easily be sent to a central database, and considerably more data can be added. As a replacement, it's worthless.
So the idea is that we'll scan it using our digital cameras. Well, it might work. I can't really see how this is more convenient than Google if you want to go to the website.
And marketting people really need to learnt that theinternet is not television. You need to give people a reason to go to your website. They're not likely to just to download what amounts to the latest ads.
The DOT-COM era had this already, Cue Cat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat. It used a black and white bar code technology. Customers were supposed to scan ADs in newspapers to their PCs. It failed, because it gave only the company's advertising site.
This MS version is just as bad! I don't see how color barcodes make it any easier. The color will reduce the places it can be printed, and increase costs. MS royalties add even more costs.
The original Bar code patent is something like 60 years old. It appears on products to scan at the cash register. As consumers, why don't we want to scan the EAN or UPC code? Then, we can find and buy a product on *any* Internet site (Not just the AD site)? Have them link their Ads to the EAN or UPC!
According to TFA current generation camera phones are too poor a quality to read this barcode.
Also they imply that the entire code system is vendor locked to a central database.
I expect they even charge royalties on it via their patent.
where as qr-code contains just a url (no vendor lock in) is royalty free (and an ISO standard) and has worked on phones and pdas with cameras for a number of years now.
way to go microsoft, always pushing the boundaries (not)
There is one possible useful thing to come of this, perhaps now more western countries will realise this stuff exists and start using it, camera phones have become ubiquitous across europe and are just crying out for this kind of practical use.
Simple. 5 bits can hold 32 values, 0-31. 10 bits can hold 1024 values, 0-1023. 10 bits has 32 times as much information as 5 bits. Think of the difference between 5 numberes values (0-99999) and 10 numbered values (0-9999999999).
Begging for modpoints since '03
You should work for hard drive manufacturers' marketing department. You'd do wonders for their capacity ratings.
If you go from 5 digits to 10 digits, you've still only doubled the capacity. Sure, you've exponentially increased the number of states that can be in, information content is not linearly proportional to the number of states. It's logarithmically proportional.
Maybe we need a different analogy. Suppose you have 5 quarters in a stack. Those can be in 32 states of "head vs. tails". Suppose I have 10 quarters. Sure, they can be in 1024 different states. Do I have twice as much money as you, or 32 times as much money as you?
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
Nobody can use an apparat that reads the color bar codes because it's pattenttedd by MikroSoTf!
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Nobody can scan the XBOX360 games without the expensive propietary M$'s scanner.
Nobody can fabricate a scanner of color bar codes because it's patented.
Nobody can pirate the XBOX360 games because their cloned games aren't 100% exact because they've not the bar codes scanner hardly to be found in no any market than M$.
The patterns of Crominancy and Luminancy are values used as a certification of the X360 games
This trap does that MikroSotf dominates the world foerever!!!
The lamb of the Devil.
Die Schnur des Teufels.
La corde du diable.
Il cavo del diavolo.
El cordero del Diablo.
O cabo do diabo.
"You see, most barcodes will be playing at 10. You're on 10, all the way up, all the way up...Where can you go from there? Nowhere. What we do, is if we need that extra push over the cliff...Eleven. One more character."
I realize that I'm a bit out of the loop with the current "in" fads as I near 30, but I've noticed more and more kids making their cellphones/PDAs the center of their worlds. From customized ringtones, to custom backgrounds, to Podcasts, to music on the device... the device itself has begun to center itself in the "look what I have" market that so many kids seem to covet. At this point it isn't a big enough deal to just have an electronic device. These days the device actually needs to do things that other people's devices don't do. This barcode technology offers that gee-whiz factor. For example: Imagine that every promotional movie and album poster out there at bus stops, on campuses, hell, even in the theaters will have a new barcode on it. Anybody with a camera that supports the proper OCR software to decode the barcode can take a picture of it and then watch a trailer for the movie, or hear a sample of the album right there. With the "sharing" technology that Microsoft put out in the Zune, it doesn't seem all that far fetched that after hearing the sample, you could then share it with your friends. Maybe you could even use the sample as a ring tone. (I should get paid for brain storming like this). I'm sure it's only a matter of time before somebody scans a porn poster and gets hit with the first mobile spyware that redirects their mobile browser to www.onyourmom.com or whatever. =)