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QR Codes - Internet to Cell Phone via Camera

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the want-to-be-able-to-buy-a-soda-with-my-cell dept.

An anonymous reader writes "From ITWorldCanada comes an article about a technology that might change the way people use their cell phones in North America: 'A Toronto-based software developer wants to bring Quick Response (QR) codes to Canada, and an industry analyst says this may appeal to companies offering products and services to youth.' McDonald's restaurants in Japan having been using the codes for over a year to present nutritional information on the cell phones of their customers. QR codes were originally developed by Tokyo-based Denso Wave Inc. and are common in Japan. When published in print form — on billboards, transit ads, vehicles or other media — consumers can then take pictures of the images and have them converted to links, phone numbers or other advertising messages."

4 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. "wants to"? by m2943 · · Score: 4, Informative

    My cell phone shipped with a QR barcode reader application. Some magazines and newspapers have started printing them. There is an open source community at http://semacode.org/

    This stuff is already being used. For the time being, it's more of a novelty, though: typing in a phone number or URL is still faster and more reliable.

  2. Nokia (thus most of Symbian) has access to this by SpzToid · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://mobilecodes.nokia.com/scan.htm

    "Point and shoot your camera phone at a mobile code to connect directly to a website, view a message or get a phone number ready for dialing." --from the site.

    --
    You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
    1. Re:Nokia (thus most of Symbian) has access to this by mutende · · Score: 2, Informative

      http://mobilecodes.nokia.com/scan.htm

      There are several readers available, not only covering Nokia and Symbian phones:

      There are also several other 2D "bar" codes in use besides QR-code: quickMark, trillCode, mCode, shotCode, semaCode, beeTagg, ... You name it!

      --
      Unselfish actions pay back better
  3. It does run on Symbian by Captain_Chaos · · Score: 2, Informative

    If this canadian company had any smarts they would at least get it to run on Symbian (the majority OS) and preferably do it so that it simply runs on anything that has a camera.

    It already does run on Symbian. I can scan any random QR code with my Nokia N93 and it will decode it and then let me open the web page, call the number, or do whatever the code points to.