QR Code Affiliate Model

Betrend and Linkshare Japan started providing a new service that allows people to (possibly) earn money by including QR codes on their websites, distributing cards with printed QR codes, or printing QR codes on anything. Someone who takes a picture of one of these QR codes (using a camera phone) will be guided to a corresponding mobile commerce website.

Two mobile commerce websites will experimentally use this system: Girls Shopping (women's apparel) and LaCASTA (body care and aroma oil products).

The next step of this service is to use the same affiliate model for brick and mortar stores. So, it'd be like, I paste a QR code here and there, someone camphone-click one of my QR codes, go to a corresponding (physical) store, buy a corresponding sales item, and then I get a small percentage of that revenue. The companies expect that such a "real affiliate tool" can be used at car dealer shops, beauty and health shops, and restaurants.

See also:
Linkshare
Xavel
Betrend (Press Release).
Also interesting: Betrend's Mobile Sitebuilder and Keitai Picture Service

I am not a fan of the Design QR as you know, but I am quite interested to see some examples of the Movie QR code.
Movie QR code and kung fu high school girls

Hakuhodo DY Group i-Business Center and IT DeSign have developed “movie QR code,” a type of QR code that incorporates moving video into the design.

[...] Movie QR code works just like standard QR code — any user armed with a reader-equipped cellphone can scan it.

On May 21, the companies plan to launch a new type of advertising service built around the use of movie QR code. Details of the service will be announced soon.

Via Wireless Watch Japan

Video from Atelier Asie (BNP Parisbas. Read also the great articles which go with it.


Via imodOpen

PS:
And here is the QR Code to access their mobile site (asie.atelier.mobi):

I am currently giving presentations at A&F Seminar «Möglichkeiten nutzen – Chancen erkennen» in Sursee. Each day there are about 180 people attending. The first presentation was yesterday, today at 16:00 is the second one.

Howie and I are speaking about how to build brigdes from print to the (mobile) web through SMS and mobile tags (QR Codes).

We claim that with SMS and mobile tags, you can do things with print which you couldn't do before. You can offer now:

• up-to-date infos (ex. the lastest soccer match results)
• interaction with your clients (subscriptions/comments/polls etc.)
• multimedia, mainly video (ex. movie trailer, explanation of how to do something) and audio (ex. a song, a speech)
• measurement of your campaigns (you know exactly how many people were interested at which location, in what kind of media)

However, as Mark Evans writes in Advertisers Scared of New Ways to Reach Consumers, not everybody does seem to like audience measurement yet:

And this brings me to another point about advertising in the Old Media vs. New Media: audience measurement. In the Old Media, you guestimate now many people are seeing your TV, radio, newspaper, magazine ad. In the New Media, you can measure everything - impressions, click-throughs, purchases, etc. In theory, this should be the New Media’s most powerful weapon (along with growing audiences) when it comes to attracting advertising. Yet, the only online group really thriving from this performance-focused format is Google’s AdSense.

More presentations
Today at A+F Seminar, Sursee, 16:00
Handy-Commerce 07, Orbit-iEX, May 22, 2007, 11:15-12:45
Mobile Marketing Seminar at SMI: June 22, 10:00-16:30

PS: Crossposted as well at roger.kaywa.ch

MobileCampNYC

MobileCampNYC is bringing together mobile enthusiasts, explorers and professionals from the NYC metropolitan area to share the current state and their visions for the future direction of mobility. MobileCampNYC hopes to support the many voices helping to unlock the potential of a truly digital life. Topics may include – but are not limited to – mobile gaming, entrepreneurship, social mobility and presence, near field communication, physical hyperlinking, mobile storytelling, the importance of open standards, protocols, and platforms, linux based devices, and mobility on other continents.

via Smoothplanet

Image: Keitai Watch

RFID Bookmarking in Harajuku (see also NTTDoCoMo Page)

A system called "Town Pocket" will be deployed at 153 shops including 109 apparel stores, 14 cafes and restaurants, 10 hair salons, 13 accessory shops, and 7 shoes/sports shops. All these shops will install an RFID reader device (photo) to which customers show their wallet phones in order to "bookmark" stores. People who don't have wallet phones can also use QR codes (for camera phone users) or a special email address (if you send an empty email message to this address, you can bookmark the store).

Customers can easily access information about the bookmarked stores, including descriptions, phone numbers, hours, etc. The number of participating stores in the are is expected to increase to about 300 by September.

In November, stores will be able to distribute SMS newsletters and digital discount coupons to the customers who bookmarked them. The system may be eventually integrated with digital shopping services.

As one can see, RFID, QR Code and SMS play well together in Japan. Kaywa can't offer RFID yet, but can offer the other two.

My speech at MEX, The SW Transformer A Vision for a mobile OS

One way to think of this is to think of RSS in terms of comand. Each command or feature in the user experience is wrapped into a meta language of context. This language of context will drive the use cases and the rendering. We do not only separate funtion and presentation we make function and context interdependant.

With such an operating system we would tear down classic application boundaries: like calling, camera, idle, and calendar into a fluid dynamic environment. For example if the user is on a call and the lens cap is opened, one could immediately create an video link between the user and the remote party and enable the important ”see what I see” use case. The user experience needs to encourage the switching of modes in conversations. The devices need to support: See, Look, here, where, and touch types of tasks, typical in any real life conversation. It would become vitality rich.

I think this kind of device and system could be a massive hit in emerging markets where they choose a mobile before they buy a computer.

The Economist of last week had a 14-page special report on the coming wireless revolution. In the introductory article "When everything connects" they wrote something which also holds true for the current 2D space.

As is usual in the early days of a new industry, all kinds of proprietary systems abound, many of them built from scratch – rather as early computer fiddled with their Altairs in the mid-1970s. Until common standards and protocols emerge for machine-to-machine and wireless sensor communications, costs will be a problem.

That's why it is so important that clients make the right decisions. Only common standards will make the 2D Barcode field evolve as quickly as in Japan. And it's cool that Nokia is backing it.


See also:
Tomi T Ahonen: Regular readers of our blog know we believe 2D Barcodes will be very big

Nothing new here, but always good to remember: North American wireless broadband REALLY needs these two Japanese innovations.

Via WAP Review