NTT DoCoMo Report about QR Codes (PDF, Japanese, Date: 31.3.2006)

Via Wireless Report Japan

See also:
NTT DoCoMo's short explanation of the Barcode Reader
Bar Code description by NTT DoCoMo
Interesting detail: contrast should be 55% or higher.

The campaign from Northwest Airlines with 100 square meter QR Codes (the PDF below shows some photos):

Summing up the campaign, Ogilvy & Mather account executive, Yusuke Mitsumoto, says, “It is like having a new toy. People are stopping to photograph the ads. It is a treat for the tech-curious and for the poet in all of us.”

By looking at Tokyo, we can get a glimpse of what is in store for other early-adopting cities around the world. The clear trend is that almost any object, machine or advertising space can be reacted to and be a prompt to the consumer. This is the promise of the wireless digital revolution.

From Billboards That Talk to Phones (PDF)

Seron has again a very telling statistic about IT buzzwords and the general population in Japan. Blog, Affiliate and QR have made it to the top. It would be very interesting to do a similar study here.

japan.internet.com recently published the results of research by goo Research into how well IT buzzwords are understood. At the start of July they interviewed 1,033 members of their internet monitor group. 42.6% of the sample was male, 1.8% in their teens, 20.3% in their twenties, 41.9% in their thirties, 23.2% in their forties, 10.4% in their fifties, and 2.2% in their sixties.

Q3: Please pick all the technical terms you know in outline at least. (Sample size=1,033, mutliple answer)

Technical term	18 to 29 years old	30 to 49 years old	50 to 69 years old
Blog	213	581	98
Affiliate	164	431	64
QR Code	144	385	43
iTunes	151	310	44
Wikipedia	130	275	28
Windows Vista	78	262	52
Bluetooth	82	234	39
SNS	109	205	34
RSS	84	202	35
Podcasting	78	179	25
Web 2.0	42	130	19
SEM	13	43	3
None of them	0	44	23

See also:
The Digital Demographic Revolution

Image: lariviereauxcanards

MacDo Japon: un code barre (QR code) sur mon Cheese Burger !

Le code barre MacDo nous redirige donc sur une page dédiée au cheese burger (dans mon cas) pour nous informer du nombre de calories, des ingrédients, vitamines, allergies probables, etc...

(Translation will follow)

Here is the code:


I made the QR Code a bit bigger so that everyone can read it. With the Kaywa Reader I just got back some text with japanese characters which I cannot see with my Nokia 6670. But maybe someone in Japan can help me. Anyway, it doesn't go to the web address indicated on the picture: http://mdq.jp/cb.

Mc Donald's Japan has it's own QR Code page which you can find here and here.


PS: If you want to know what I personally think of Mc Donald's, you gotta read Chew on this first.

Update:
Mc Donald's gets more responsible. This is a good.

QR Code Stamp SS-30
Price: ￥2,490 (= CHF 26.50)

Note: As you can see I am a bit obsessed by these QR Code Stamps.


See also:
Stamkey
My stamped Blog QR Code (de)

A study about the adoption of mobile applications for work environments, conducted by research house Saffron Hill for Nokia, covered 300 firms each with at least 50 staff and an annual revenue of more than US$2 million in the cities of Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, New Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai.

The findings showed 86% of the companies surveyed in Bangkok have adopted at least two mobile applications for work, including mobile e-mail and mobile calender, followed by Bangalore at 68% and Singapore at 60%.

Mathia Nappappan, the vice-president of enterprise solutions at Nokia:
''One of the biggest things that we have learned from this survey was clearly the attitude of companies seeking to have a highly productive workforce and ensuring employees get a better work-life balance. Asia has always been at the forefront of the mobile revolution,'' she noted.

Source: Bangkok post: Bangkok, Singapore rank tops for mobile work applications

I wrote about mobile manga earlier, now the article MANGA ON THE MOVE, Cellphone Comics Are Latest Commuter Pastime (May 30, 2006), offers some of the secrets of success:

Apart from the ever-increasing range of titles, two main factors appear to be behind the comics' success. One is their low prices of around ¥40 to ¥60 (40¢ to 60¢) per story, which makes them quite a bargain. The other is convenience. Readers can download only those comics that they want to read, as opposed to paying for a whole magazine with numerous comic strips in it. Not only that, but readers of electronic comics need not deal with the burden of carrying around bulky magazines.

When the comics were first offered, most were aimed at men, particularly office workers who commute on public transportation. But the number of female readers has since grown rapidly, now that reading from mobile phones is considered cool. In response, publishers are working on providing female-oriented comics for mobile-phone subscribers. This development may provide an additional boost to the market - from men who are fans of girls' comics but would be embarrassed to be seen buying such magazines in stores.

See also:
Quicktime Movie from 2005 about Mobile Manga
Quicktime Movie from 2004 about Mobile Manga

Connect to Art by Nokia
New Mobile Artworks from chinese artists Xu Bing, Feng Mengbo, Ai Weiwei.
See report from Shanghaiist

Connecting to mobile site (the third and easy way;)



PS: Get the Kaywa Reader to read this QR Code.
And encode your URLs yourself.

Via Emily

It's always nice to see someone* pick up what you are doing, it's even nicer if you find a good post just around the corner.

Two quotes from The Growing Mobile Internet

This notion of 'action' fits in too with Charlie Schick at Nokia, who wrote recently that it's not about browsing the full web from our mobiles, but rather about using services that are there to connect to our friends, and use services and 'do' things so that we can 'interact'.

[...] In the meantime, look at these numbers from Russell Beattie about mobile internet users around the world, and you'll see that this is not just an issue for a few people who use the internet on their mobile, but rather that the example in Japan is not far from spreading to other countries too.

Btw: You can use your personal QR Code (top right) on the ID and connect from there to your hopefully mobile blog. More will follow.

Thanks also to Pete, Scott, Mike, Nicolas, all others, friends and last but not least the partners and the Kaywa team itself.

iPod in Education
iPod in Education - A site dedicated to the use of iPod and iTunes in Education.

See also (found on the site):
MicroMemo's High-Fidelity Digital Audio Recorder for iPod with video