Jacek Wojciechowski's Forum Nokia Blog

Thoughts on new mobile technologies and development areas.

P.S.
Use Nokia barcode reader to read the code ;-)

Barcodes in action - worldwide working examples

jack44 | 07 November, 2007 13:48

Last time I wrote about barcodes that were accepted by airlines, but there're other interesting initiatives. One of such is Pet Shop Boys 'integral' project.
The band released their new video for "Integral" which includes embedded QR codes linking viewers directly to on-line content about issues of civil liberties. The video is a critique of the Big Brother surveillance state with the slogan "if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear" (honestly, I haven't seen this as a problem so far). The video can be seen here. All QR codes are available as downloads and people are asked to use them in their own videos, and upload them to a dedicated YouTube group. It's great to see that music industry also likes barcodes. This project reminded me about related projects like Semapedia, where people create Semapedia-Tags which are in fact cellphone-readable (2D barcodes) physical hyperlinks - once created and put at physical location, they give people possibility to 'click' the tag to access the information related to that place. With Semapedia you can "hyperlink your physical world with knowledge that matters" (click here to learn more about this project).

Finally, a tip for Firefox browser users - there's a plugin called Mobile Barcoder that generates QR codes of the URL of the current page that is being viewed in the browser. Users can then use their QR Code enabled camera phone to easily capture the QR Code from the screen and have the URL copied to their phone.

If you know of other interesting initiatives in barcodes domain around the world, just leave a comment ;-)