It takes a lot of imagination to turn the concept of barcodes into something sexy. Yet they are the nearest thing on the Internet to a revolution that hasn’t happened. We are so used to thinking of those ubiquitous static barcodes that appear on everything from your favorite newspaper to a can of baked beans that we haven’t cottoned on to the potential of the new generation of two-dimensional (2D) “dynamic” codes.
They can turn any space on which they appear — a tree, an advertisement or photo in a magazine — into a direct link to the Web. Once the software is loaded on to your cellphone, the phone can read the 3,000 or so squares on the barcode and take you straight to a Web site. The quickest way to grasp this is to type a URL into a free barcode generator such as quikqr.com or snappr.net. You can put your own photo in the code if you want — they are reckoned to have 30 percent to 40 percent design flexibility so can be played around with a bit. The barcode created can then be placed on anything from a business card to an advertisement to provide a direct link to a Web site.
While businesses have been slow to move into this fascinating space, creative people have been showing the way. Artist Scott Blake has used Photoshop for nearly a decade to make innovative barcode art. Flickr.com has hundreds of examples and there is a street game in Spain where participants drop out when a rival snaps the barcode on their T-shirts. For other uses see bit.ly/barcode3.
As part of Audi’s centenary celebrations, some bright spark gathered 130 staff from its Japanese subsidiary, each with a placard, to produce a QR (quick response) code (the standard that has gone ballistic in Japan) of 159m², claimed to be the biggest in the world. Once soccer fans cotton on to this we may see them producing giant barcodes in the stands that can be read by phones at home.
Why have barcodes taken off in Japan? It is partly the fax machine syndrome. One is useless; ubiquity is nirvana. Japan had everything going for it — they were early adopters of high-quality smartphones with Web access and they agreed on a freely available standard, QR. And the software was mainly pre-loaded into the phones so there was no need for any downloading.
Could it happen here? There are definite signs of change, particularly in Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, even though Nokia, the world’s biggest phone manufacturer, seems curiously to be backing away from pre-loading the software in its phones. It is not in the new N86, Nokia’s most powerful cameraphone.
Once again the iPhone is leading the way by making it easy to access the Web from a cellphone, especially through its treasure trove of apps (that hardly anyone mentioned when it launched). There are various downloadable barcode apps on the iPhone for consumers. But developers may find that barcodes left in public places (from posters to T-shirts) could provide a direct route to selling their apps rather than being lost among the thousands of others in the App Store.
Barcodes are something of a marketer’s dream. This is not only because cellphones, unlike the Web, are a mecca for micropayments, but also because, as Michael Bhaskar, co-founder of Quik Communications, has pointed out, this is “pull” marketing that gets people to come to you directly, rather than “push” — using a scattergun and hoping something will stick.
In Japan there are newspapers and books consisting almost entirely of barcodes. There is huge scope for tourism, paperless ticketing, identification, self-branding, affiliate marketing and numerous applications as yet unknown.
Is it too much to ask that our operators and manufacturers do two things: first, agree on a barcode standard and, second, preload the software into all smartphones? If that happened, barcodes could play a major creative role in the era of mobile Web browsing that is only just beginning.
There is much evidence that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is sending soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and is learning lessons for a future war against Taiwan. Until now, the CCP has claimed that they have not sent PLA personnel to support Russian aggression. On 18 April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskiy announced that the CCP is supplying war supplies such as gunpowder, artillery, and weapons subcomponents to Russia. When Zelinskiy announced on 9 April that the Ukrainian Army had captured two Chinese nationals fighting with Russians on the front line with details
On a quiet lane in Taipei’s central Daan District (大安), an otherwise unremarkable high-rise is marked by a police guard and a tawdry A4 printout from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicating an “embassy area.” Keen observers would see the emblem of the Holy See, one of Taiwan’s 12 so-called “diplomatic allies.” Unlike Taipei’s other embassies and quasi-consulates, no national flag flies there, nor is there a plaque indicating what country’s embassy this is. Visitors hoping to sign a condolence book for the late Pope Francis would instead have to visit the Italian Trade Office, adjacent to Taipei 101. The death of
By now, most of Taiwan has heard Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an’s (蔣萬安) threats to initiate a vote of no confidence against the Cabinet. His rationale is that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-led government’s investigation into alleged signature forgery in the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) recall campaign constitutes “political persecution.” I sincerely hope he goes through with it. The opposition currently holds a majority in the Legislative Yuan, so the initiation of a no-confidence motion and its passage should be entirely within reach. If Chiang truly believes that the government is overreaching, abusing its power and targeting political opponents — then
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), joined by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), held a protest on Saturday on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei. They were essentially standing for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is anxious about the mass recall campaign against KMT legislators. President William Lai (賴清德) said that if the opposition parties truly wanted to fight dictatorship, they should do so in Tiananmen Square — and at the very least, refrain from groveling to Chinese officials during their visits to China, alluding to meetings between KMT members and Chinese authorities. Now that China has been defined as a foreign hostile force,