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11 Jun 2006
Physical permalinks
I talked with Roger Fischer of Kaywa about the QR codes he has been playing with. Basically the Q-codes are two-dimensional bar-codes. These bar-codes can contain various-kineds of data, such as an URL. Using a mobile reader, such as a mobile phone, one can extract the data and do something with. Thanks to three prominent dots in the code, the recognition process is much more easy than other codes. Roger showed various examples from Japan, where it seems heavily in use.
This approach would allow us add URL's to any physical object, by adding this QR-code. One can see this barcode as a format. The question is more what one should encode in it.
- Physical Permalink - this could should be some unique ID, which refers to an object in the physical world. A sticker with a QR-code should be placed on that physical object. And when we blog about that physical object, then we should include the same QR-code. I am not sure what should be encoded in the code, but surely there will be some ideas out there. One could see blog items about physical objects as reviews;
- Internet Permalink - the QR-code that I added to this blog-post is in fact the permalink of this blog-post. So if you print out this blog-post and forget to add the URL to the post, it will still be available. This might be useful when you start mashing with your scissors. When you always keep the QR-code with snippet that you are mashing, then you can always get back;
- Address Card - in practice the QR-code will be mostly be use as Address Card. The URL contained in the code will refer to the company web-site. The URL could also point to a product-page, a campaign-page or whatever.
The code that I used initially turned out to be wrong, the app required a serial number before I worked. There is however a QR-code generator on the Net available, which created the image I show here.
Categories/tags:
MicroContent •
format •
general
PermaLink •
(2)
Comments •
TrackBacks •
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Comments
Dear Arnaud,
Thanks for writing about it. I tried to decode your QR Code, but the interference (the white stripes) and the form (it should be “un carré") make it impossible to decode. QR Codes can have quite a high error correction (35%), but this seemed to be too much.
I made a QR Code for you, it encodes:
http://www.sivas.com/microcontent/musings/blog/physical_permalinks/
You can see it below (if you accept images)
I could decode this link without any problem
As for the physical permalink. I think an URI (or IRI) is the right way to go. It is certainly interesting to read David Weinberger’s thoughts concerning this issue.
I think for many things we could also reuse the existing schemes like EAN numbers, ISBN’s etc. But it will become difficult, to find an agreement as participants will have differing views on an object. Take pharma products with EAN numbers as an example. The pharmaceutical industry will have another view on its product than a pressure group.
Anyway, if you come up with ideas, I would be very interested to continue the conversation.
I hope you had a good trip back to France. I very much liked meeting you again and I hope we see each other next year again.
PS: We will provide our free QR Code Reader in a few weeks, if all goes well before the end of the World Cup
Well it’s out now:
http://reader.kaywa.com (only for Series 60 phones right now)
http://qrcode.kaywa.com - to generate your QR Codes
Here are two videos - magazine and stamp:
http://mobile.kaywa.com/p492.html
http://mobile.kaywa.com/p491.html