Tonethephone

Mobile barcodes explained at OMA World bar

A chance encounter at the OMA World cocktail party last night has helped me enormously in trying to fathom exactly was is going on the UK – as opposed to Japan – with 2D and 3D barcodes.

I ran into Dr Frank Muller from Gavitec who then introduced me to Torulf Jernstrom from Nokia. Both are experts on this subject.
The barcode's potential is self-evident. For example, a barcode can contain a complex mobile internet URL that can easily be read with a cameraphone. And, voilà, you have thousands of mobile phones surfing to the same site.

Mobile barcodes explained @ OMA World Part II

As I mentioned previously, the whole mobile barcode sector is riddled with incompatibilities. So what's the industry's typical reaction? You've got it, somebody founds yet another specialist technical forum.

In this case it has turned out to be the Mobile Codes Consortium – which somehow gets abbreviated to MC². Anyway, the conspirators have put together a web site here which aims to encourage others to join in.

But what's really missing is an industry accepted standard. Which is exactly what the OMA is capable of producing.