17.5% UNITED KINGDOM
13.8% UNITED STATES
8.4% GERMANY
6.8% BRAZIL
6.2% AUSTRALIA
4.2% SPAIN
3.6% POLAND
3.2% NETHERLANDS
2.6% ITALY
2.3% FRANCE
2.2% CZECH REPUBLIC
2% HUNGARY

Regards
Ian

If they are harvesting the data and sending it along to the journalists to help them see which stories have traction, then it’s smart.

If they don’t harvest the data, then it’s just as you say.

Re QR codes v tinyurls. Today there is little difference. Going forward QR codes, using a technology called Code Z invented by CODI in Canada can embed customer information in the code. When the click is made, the interaction is linked to the information about the person who made the click. If that becomes mainstream it could be a game changer.

Meanwhile yesterday Apple announced that G3 iPhone is going to sell for $99 and every telecom on the planet is rushing to build 4G networks.

Sometimes the difference between appearing innovative and being innovative depends on your point of view.

It’s interesting to note that The National Post in Canada has begun to use these, and they include the condensed URL right beside the 2D barcode. It highlights even further for me that this is pointless the way it has been adopted. They’re just taking space away from the story with no tangible benefit other than to appear ‘innovative’.

Thanks for the observations. It’s something that never occurred to me. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in Euro Language countries.

the question posted regarding QRcode’s popularity in Asian countries such as Japan and Korea may partly rest in the different systems of language.

navigating to a url, even a shortened url would require the use of the Western alphabet/keyboard; this is very different from the symbol based system that Asian language is based on.(As a North American person of Asian descent, and having used an Asian keyboard for simple tasks, it can feel very trying unless it is a fully integrated part of one’s lifestyle.)

with this in mind, Asian countries have adapted to certain Western standards in order to navigate the internet like the rest of us, however with the option of a symbol based ‘snap-and-go’ system this frees the user from typing in alphanumeric characters into a web browser field.

i think it is this key difference that leads North American markets (very slow to change) and some European markets to believe that the learning curve and the extra software required to use QRcode is more work than necessary for a system that already functions well (for Western markets especially).

No doubt there is also a specific history and culture that helps explain the broad adoption. It might well be that the major electronics gadget companies are based in Japan.

Both Android and the iPhone have QR reader software available now. As Android moves to become the operating system of more and more cell phones, I can’t see what stops this from becoming commonplace.

The Walkman grew and developed in Japan. Only when it was debugged and tested in place did it scale to what I like to think of as Euromerica.

I’ve wondered about the ubiquity of QR Code in Asia myself — and don’t have an answer unfortunately. It hasn’t taken off in Europe either, a hotbed of mobile computing. A similar question is why vending machines in Asia allow you to pay via RFID and Bluetooth, but I’ve not seen one such vending machine in North America outside of a few test markets.

Is it because of a tech-centric culture in Asia? Is it because Japanese mobile devices all have QR Code decoders built into the devices’ operating systems? Maybe if RIM’s BlackBerry and Apple’s iPhone had native QR Code support, we would see some interesting ideas in North America.

On your point re convenience, I couldn’t agree more. I guess we keep looking for opportunities to integrate QR Code, and keep close tabs on Microsoft’s TAG initiative. They have the marketing muscle to move this concept mainstream.

In general it would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of convenience. Framed differently convenience is at the heart of usability. In that sense the Mac GUI is much more convenient than Windows and print is a very convenient platform when it is connected to the web.

What I’m submitting is that the extra effort to have people install a QR Code reader isn’t justified to save them from simply typing in something as simple as ‘tr.im/LDNnews’ or a vanity URL to that effect. Now, QR Codes can store actual information in the code itself, not unlike any 2D barcode format such as is common on shipping labels. But what would you store in the code that you simply couldn’t display more effectively in a mobile web page?

Where I believe Snaptell will take us a place where you could take a picture of any ad — the ad itself, not the vanity URL — and it would be able to recognize the content and return a mobile web page of information. With Snaptell you could take pictures of print ads, billboards, even captures of TV screens with commercials playing, and the tool could return a mobile web page from said advertiser. A Snaptell-like tool should also be able to return such info as the prices of said products from local retailers based on the GPS data on the iPhone or BlackBerry.

A Snaptell-like tool could also allow a person to take a picture of a landmark, or a photo in a print article, or any number of other such applications, and take the user to editorial pages of information. What I’m suggesting is a more effective marrying of photo recognition technology with search technology. One which would have both advertising and editorial applications.

I’m not suggesting that QR Code is a pointless exercise. I’m just saying that I’ve given it a lot of thought and I can’t come up with anything that the QR Code adds other than a way to more efficiently type in a URL into a mobile web browser — nothing less, but nothing more. I think we need to look beyond that to a system that really solves a problem for mainstream consumers.

Just my 2 cents.

I can’t think of one possible application for QR Codes that you couldn’t address with a simple compressed vanity URL.

Snaptell for the iPhone (www.snaptell.com) is probably a better starting point for a possible solution. For example, take a picture of a building and the system recognizes it and retrieves articles from your web site related to that location.

Much of the buzz is about how do we get the younger generation to get involved with newspapers. Imagine a contest on the top of page 1 with a QR code. Take the picture, go to the site to see if and what you’ve won. Newspapers have been running contests for ever. It’s just a contest with a new tech.

My sense is that the mass, as opposed to the technorati and news junkies, of the younger generation is not a mass market for news of any type.

The advantage of using them for advertising seems fairly obvious – you can grab someone in real life and get them looking at another advert or buying something.

For news though younger people will be already getting it on their phones and older salaryman types probably won’t care.

They keep track of uses of QR codes around the world.

In any case, though I’m a business-side guy, I’m actually more interested in the journalistic applications here that can drive print readers to web content.

Also, just to speak cynically from an ad sales point of view, do we really want advertisers to get more clickthrough data to use against us? I mean, online ad prices have been driven down by a lot of things, but one factor is that the ability to track clickthroughs online has given advertisers evidence that very, very few readers were “interacting” with their ads. And that’s contributed to the downward pressure. If suddenly advertisers are given another data point that shows only 0.001% of their readers actually shoot the QR code with their phones and go to the special web site, isn’t that likely to bite us in the end?

Josh wrote “What’s wrong with good old fashioned links”; Dave wrote “URL shortening is good enough.”

That’s fine if you’re already on a web page. But in print, without QR, all you can do is print the URL, or its shortened version. Now you have to type that into your iPhone or other mobile device to view the web page. The idea of QR is that you can point, scan, and be on that page without the hassle of entering a URL. My understanding is that there are apps for iPhone and others that can do this.

Josh,
The counter example is that QR codes are ubiquitous in Japan are quickly moving to Australia and now Europe. I think we have to be careful of the “people like us” problem. I still have to figure out how to take a picture on a cell phone and email me to my son. Frankly, it’s not worth the effort to learn.

On the other hand he (37 years old) does it all the time so I can get photos of the granddaughter.

The real issue are the real time metrics that can be delivered back to advertisers. Once real time data can be delivered from print, the apparent insurmountable advantage of web advertising starts to ebb.

The real breakthrough, in my not so humble opinion, will be in K – 12 education. A single printed sheet can give the headlines with a QR code to take a student to a wiki or video adding to the student’s knowledge at just the moment that he is interested in it. I’ve seen high school kids with their cell phones, they would love it.

That said…geez, am I ever skeptical. Maybe I’m scarred from working at The Dallas Morning News at the height of the CueCat insanity, but this feels like a solution in search of a problem. I just can’t imagine a ton of people seeing great value in something like this. What’s wrong with good old fashioned links? They can accomplish everything this can, from an end user’s point of view, but they can also be human readable.