Mobile Codes News

A fellow mobile enthusiast has pointed out that the Mobile Codes Consortium has recently annouced some new members. The addition of Nokia and O2 particularly give additional credibility to the group. This could be a big step forward for the technology.

The Mobile Codes Consortium is advocating creating standards for a technology for mobile phone barcodes that would allow for broad adoption. Mobile barcodes are a superior alternative to SMS shortcodes and could be major step in the development of the mobile web and an internet of things .

Mobile Codes Consortium Mission Statement Announced

I posted a couple of months ago about the work that was being done by Tim Kindberg at HP Labs in Bristol to promote a standardised approach to mobile barcodes.

One of the topics of conversation was a 'Mobile Codes Consortium' - a project to gain understanding and consensus across the different industries that are needed to make the technology work.

A reader has kindly pointed out that a mission statement for the consortium has been posted on the Active Print website.

If the consortium succeeds in creating enthusiasm within handset manufacturers and/or mobile networks I don't think there's any question that this technology could take off.

The media planners in the room in November were certainly excited about the technology. In the near future it could be very useful for a specific type of campaign that supports a strong brand and targets early adopters. In the medium to long term, direct response campaign planners will likely get excited about the opportunities as well.

I do think, however, that the technology has greater applications outside the conventional definition of advertising. There is a great deal of potential applications related to local search and mapping as well as dynamic packaging and in-store display.

There is still the considerable question of mass adoption of the technology on handsets. I have no doubt that this would be greeted with enthusiasm by media planners and that in some isolated ways we'll also be able to bring it about a little bit quicker.

Any thoughts?

Real World Wide Web

I was in a meeting with Tim Kindberg this week. He works for HP in research and development at the HP Labs in Bristol. One of his projects is physical hyperlinks. This is by no means a new technology - it's already been put to use by the BBC and won an award.

The idea is that physical objects could have a unique barcode printed on them that can be photographed by a mobile phone. The image leads to a unique reference point on the web which contains information. The technology was used as part of the BBC series Coast. Scenic walks were marked with posters that included these tags and linked to various pieces of information. You can learn more on the Active Print site.

There are a couple of barriers to this technology taking off. Having seen it in action, though, I'm much more convinced than I was. Properly integrated into phones it could be very easy to use and very useful. The phone tells you when you've succeeded in capturing the barcode - a major plus for usability.

There are, by the sounds of it, two major hurdles. The first is getting the appropriate software embedded into phones. The second is standardisation of codes.

This technology has all kinds of possible applications. The 'barcode' could, in theory, execute any number of activities on a phone. It could probably replace phone numbers on business cards, for instance.

It could definitely act as an easily traceable response mechanic on outdoor and ambient advertising. It could add real value to consumers and be easily trackable for media spend optimisation.

Some of the ideas that Tim covered were:

real time travel information at bus stops and on train platforms

in-store promotions

response mechanism on outdoor

incentive delivery on outdoor to increase footfall

map download from online to mobile

If you have another one, please feel free to comment...