Oliver from Adtagg / Transformer just pinged me about the new CD by Inish:



And here is the QR Code:

Image: Pixelpark/Penkov

Bernadett Penkov and Pixelpark present a case study for QR Codes (2D-Barcodes)
See also:
German Press Release (pdf, 20,04 KB)
High-Res Pics (zip, 9,11 MB)


Image: Pixelpark / Penkov

The QR Codes will follow...

Joel compares CueCat to QR Codes which is a big mistake, IMHO. He writes:

Some things are still the same: typing URLs is not hard, this is a monumental chicken and egg problem, and this doesn't provide any value to the consumers who are expected to install new software on their phones to go along with this ridonculous scheme.

Sometimes when the elders say to the youngsters, "don't do that, we tried that, it failed," it's just because they're failing to notice that the world has changed. But sometimes the elders are right, and the youngsters really are too young to know the history of the idea they think that they've just invented.

• Joel, please type the following: http://www.google.com/m/download/youtube/download?sign=1&make=Nokia&model=N95&ver=v1.0 in your normal mobile phone;) - for the easier solution, see here - scan it with your N95 which comes with a preinstalled QR Code Reader or download once a QR Code Reader
• And by the way, even on the computer there is a high percentage of the population rather using the Google search field with one or two keywords than typing the full URL. Or they just get the URL via an RSS Reader, email or another web page link. Typing longer URL's is a pain for all the people who are not programmers nor engineers like you. And it's far worse on a phone. To understand it, just type three times the above URL;)
• And yes there is a chicken and egg problem, but so it was with the internet, so it was with the mobile phone, so it was with the automobile: there is always at first a chicken and egg problem.
• QR Code Readers come preinstalled on 70-80% of all japanese phones, ASUS phones and now also on some Nokia Nseries phones. Android will probably ship with the preinstalled ZXing Reader too.
• OMA, GSMA, MC2, major telcos, Nokia, Google all working in the same direction - getting QR Code Readers preinstalled on your mobile phone. Meanwhile you have to download it on phones which do not have yet a preinstalled QR Code reader.
• QR Codes didn't fail, they are a big success in Japan. QR Codes are the first way to access the mobile web in Japan and this took no longer than 2 years to be accomplished (compare this to the 30 years that we needed for the EAN barcode). And people love it as they can make their own QR Codes (big difference with CueCat).
• Last but not least: elders who take an apple for an orange should sometimes take a second look. I hope you do;)

At Mobile Services 2008*, which takes place on May 15 at Technopark Zurich, there will be two presentations where QR Codes play a role:

14.15
Mobiler Medienkonsum

• Mobiles Internet als zweite Chance
• QR-Codes. Der Link für die Zeitung

Frank Schmiechen, Stv. Chefredaktor und verantwortlich
für WELT KOMPAKT, Axel Springer (D)

15.45
Mobile Tagging als Wegbereiter für Mobile 2.0

• Konvergierender Markt von Telekom, Internet und Print
• Mobile Tagging bzw. QR-Codes
• Mobile 2.0 = Business 2.0?

Roger Fischer, CEO, Kaywa

* Conference Programme (in german):
Mobile Services 2008 (PDF, 160 KB)

***

See also:


Image: Print Ads TGIAF with QR Code at Hemisphere (Google’s NYC cafeteria) 1/31/08

The Advertising Club Meetup January 28th 2008 at Google

Print Ads—Tiffany Shen Miller

• “We are going to make newspapers sexier”
• Efficiency and Scale
• Single web interface to research across multiple papers etc.
• Not an auction. Bid to publisher directly through the tool
• This year the goal is to incorporate Google Analytics

2D Bar Code—QR Codes

• Marrying print and mobile
• This is making offline trackable

See also:
Silicon Alley Insider: Google's Newspaper Ads: Big Hopes For Small Barcodes
Update (31.1.08): Google Print Ads Using 2D Bar Codes

Fred Vogelstein's The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry recounts Apple's journey to the iPhone. Some bits are also more general in interest and speak for the whole mobile industry. I want to quote some of them:

For decades, wireless carriers have treated manufacturers like serfs, using access to their networks as leverage to dictate what phones will get made, how much they will cost, and what features will be available on them. Handsets were viewed largely as cheap, disposable lures, massively subsidized to snare subscribers and lock them into using the carriers' proprietary services. But the iPhone upsets that balance of power. Carriers are learning that the right phone — even a pricey one — can win customers and bring in revenue. Now, in the pursuit of an Apple-like contract, every manufacturer is racing to create a phone that consumers will love, instead of one that the carriers approve of. "The iPhone is already changing the way carriers and manufacturers behave," says Michael Olson, a securities analyst at Piper Jaffray.

[...] Jobs unveiled the ROKR in September 2005 with his characteristic aplomb, describing it as "an iPod shuffle on your phone." But Jobs likely knew he had a dud on his hands; consumers, for their part, hated it. The ROKR — which couldn't download music directly and held only 100 songs — quickly came to represent everything that was wrong with the US wireless industry, the spawn of a mess of conflicting interests for whom the consumer was an afterthought.

[...] It may appear that the carriers' nightmares have been realized, that the iPhone has given all the power to consumers, developers, and manufacturers, while turning wireless networks into dumb pipes. But by fostering more innovation, carriers' networks could get more valuable, not less.

See also:
The old model will work for the next two, three years, but then it's over
Addendum: Media vs Operators
and
0 $ Phones and René Obermann's "drop subsidy of phones and we can cut tariffs"

libqrencode by FUKUCHI Kentaro has recently been updated.

Libqrencode is a C library for encoding data in a QR Code symbol, a kind of 2D symbology that can be scanned by handy terminals such as a mobile phone with CCD. The capacity of QR Code is up to 7000 digits or 4000 characters, and is highly robust.

From Toni

Nokia has just released its quarterly data. They've achieved 40% market share in a total market that shipped 1.14 B phones last year. Nokia also said it sold 11 M phones of the N-series in the last quarter and 2 M of the E-series in the quarter.

The financial performance (of the handset units) is quite impressive as well. As handset shipments grew, and revenues grew, so did profits. Nokia handset business reported 23.4% profits, compared to 11%-14% of SonyEricsson and Samsung.


Meanwhile Motorola slipped to third place (yeah, did it last quarter already) but also Motorola while losing market share, its handset unit slipped into losses the last quarter of 2007.

See also:
First glimpse inside Nokia S60 Touch. Going beyond Multi-Touch
Nokia's Patent Application to USPTO, June 28, 2006

YouTube for Mobile (beta)*
How to install video:



Download the app via QR Code:
Available for Nokia's N73, N95, E65, 6110, 6120 and SonyEricsson k800 and w880.




Via Jurjen from Mobile Telecommunication and gadgets

Tabulate brings the convenience of 'open in new tab' to Safari on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Because it's a bookmarklet, you don't have to hack your precious Apple device to make it work – just follow the installation instructions in the sidebar. Then, when you're browsing a page with lots of interesting links on it, simply invoke Tabulate from your list of bookmarks.

Sounds neat. Has anyone already tried it out?

Web on the Move - Landscapes of Mobile Social Media by Santtu Toivonen of VTT (PDF) (Technical Research Centre of Finland).

This report aims at providing a glance on how mobility, and along with it the important notion of context-awareness, has impact on social media. Moreover, the report seeks to analyze the potential business opportunities for mobile social media. The research was conducted in the form of expert interviews."

Via Forum Virium Naked

※ Local Copy of Web on the Move