Mobile Codes for Increased Productivity

Man, this is the coolest thing I discovered this month.

Before what I am going to show you now, the only ways to transfer data from your computer to your mobile device was to send an e-mail to yourself and read it in your cell, or through bluetooth, or infrared.

There is a new thing (for me) called Mobile Codes (or QR Codes according to Wikipedia, or Datamatrix) that combined with your mobile’s camera and simple software, will let you actually read the content from your computer screen.

OK, lets explain it with some images to make the concept more user-friendly. Look at the following image.

Think Open :: Think Linux

Yes, I know the image says nothing to you, but your camara-equiped mobile device is able to read “Think Open :: Think Linux”.

We can play with more stuff. The URL for this blog post is here (with a note attached):

http://avi.alkalay.net/2007/11/mobile-codes.html

Lets add some semantics. You can directly call an international number as 00551112345678 using the following barcode:

qrcode

Or SMS “Hi, I just discovered this barcodes that will make my life easier” to same number with this code:

qrcode

The Details

Some modern Nokia phones already come with the software needed to decode this datamatrix. For my Nokia E61i to work, I installed on it a free (registration required) program called Kaywa Reader (their site doesn’t list my model so I selected E65 and it worked fine). So I just shoot the software, point my mobile’s camera to the datamatrix and it instantly decodes the content.

To generate this images, I used the QR Code Generator by Winksite and the Nokia mobile code generator. In fact it all started when I found the Nokia Mobile Code website, almost by an accident.

Oh, and there is a handy Mobile Barcoder Firefox plugin to help me transfer URLs from browser to cellphone.

Install in your cellphone and have fun.

12 thoughts on “Mobile Codes for Increased Productivity”

  1. Holy cow!
    I’ve already seen this kind of datamatrox working as a 2D barcode. But this kind of application I’ve never seen before, seems interesting.

    After Twitter, gonna think ’bout cool applications for this one. 🙂

    []’s

  2. Aqui no Japão os QR Codes são usados pra muita coisa. Qualquer propaganda vem acompanhado do QR Code com a URL pra se acessar a versão móvel do site do anunciante. No McDonald’s, por exemplo, as embalagens de hamburguer tem o QR Code com a URL que leva direto pra página com informações “nutricionais” do sanduíche. 🙂

  3. I installed the Kaywa Reader, but the site doesn’t list my cell phone model (6125). I selected 6136 and it worked very fine. The Firefox plugin is really cool! 🙂

  4. Semapedia.org was probably the best use of QRCodes over the last year 😉
    One thing annoys me about your codes from winksite, they include that 4th small box, which seems to be a “feature” of using this library, http://hrlk.com/script/wp-qrcode/
    I guess you heard about it because Google’s Android will have a native reader? or some other happy coincidence!

  5. John, believe me, was a happy coincidence. I was browsing the Firefox add-ons directory looking for an offline feed reader, and the barcode add-on (mentioned in the post) popped.

  6. Eduardo,
    ShotCode is evil 🙂 it requires the lookup (the code is simply numeric) to proxy through their servers, so wont work without a network connection, and they also mung the incoming HTML.

Leave a Reply to John Drinkwater Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *