QR Codes - Internet to Cell Phone via Camera

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."

Comments

Re:"wants to"?

[Asmodai]

That's merely due to market penetration.

In Japan these things are printed all over the place. Posters in/at subways, papers at restaurants, magazines, et cetera.
Then it makes a lot of sense of being able to use your mobile phone to snap the QR and access whatever site it references.

Already on handsets - needs to be in "meatspace"

[Tryfen]

Most Nokia devices in Europe already come with a bar code reader. The N95 comes with a reasonable one, but there are plenty of 3rd party apps, especially for Symbian devices.

I favour Quickmark from http://www.quickmark.com.tw/, although i-nigma from http://i-nigma.mobi/ is fairly good.

Here's a good generator of QR codes, available in PHP or Perl
http://www.swetake.com/qr/index-e.html

QR codes are great for pushing complex information into your phone, forget scanning in a business card - just snap the QR code and have a vcard on your device instantly.

With Google pushing them on print ads, everyone and his mother having a camera phone, phones with good mobile browsers, I think the time is right for these to take off in a big way.