Thursday, July 31, 2008

Taking QR Codes to the Streets

At the Medical Library Association Conference this year I included QR Codes as a Tech Trend. The only place QR Codes are actually useful is still in Japan, where they are becoming ubiquitous. In the States, online guides Citysearch and Antenna Audio piloted QR Codes, in San Francisco back in the Spring. The are readers available for just about every mobile platform, including iPhone.

The latest product on the market are QR Code patches, which point to a proxy server which then redirects a phone browser to the URL encoded in the code. So, when someone takes a photo of your jacket, backpack, or wherever the patch is attached they can go to your online presence.

It also means that when someone takes a photo of you and posts it to Flickr, then someone can take a photo of that photo and be linked to the URL . Sphere: Related Content

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So do you predict books in libraries and book stores will have QRCodes so that people can connect to book reviews without actually touching the book?
Can publishers use QRCodes to connect human readers to the online updates of their books?

Eric Schnell said...

Yes and Yes.

The codes can be used to redirect customers to live / up-to-date content that can not only supplement books, but library realia.

For example, I can foresee putting a QR Code on one of anatomical models. Students can scan it and be redirected to online course materials related to that particular model.