QR codes are so 2004. Get ready for ColorCode
I went to a presentation of a new (well, at least in Japan) technology earlier this week, and even if heard on that topic before, I must admit it was pretty impressive. The technology is called ColorCode and the company behind it is ColorZip. Originally developped in South Korea, it has started there earlier than in Japan and it is apparently successful and gets encouraging results so far. Japan is next. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see Europe and the US following very soon.
A brief history first. Everyone knows about “1D” barcodes. Black and white lines easily scanned and containing a small string of information. But because those codes were only capable of storing a maximum of approximately 20 digits, Denso Wave Incorporated came up with QR codes, which is pretty much the same thing but with squares instead of lines, and that’s how the codes became 2-dimensional.On the right is a QR code that contains the URL of this website. It is nicer, contains more information in a smaller space, but it is still limited in content capacity because the more info you cram into the code, the smaller the points get, which will affect the readability by the scanner. The size limit is pretty comfortable, over 7,000 characters if it is digits only, half that for alphanumeric content. But still, it’s limited.
To remove this limitation in size, comes the next generation of code, where the information is not in the barcode itself anymore, but on a remote server accessible through the code. In other words, you scan a code with your mobile phone, it connects to a server and downloads information, then presents it to you. The little code on the left could “contain” an URL, a ringtone, or an mp3 for instance. (3Yen.com)
A brief history first. Everyone knows about “1D” barcodes. Black and white lines easily scanned and containing a small string of information. But because those codes were only capable of storing a maximum of approximately 20 digits, Denso Wave Incorporated came up with QR codes, which is pretty much the same thing but with squares instead of lines, and that’s how the codes became 2-dimensional.On the right is a QR code that contains the URL of this website. It is nicer, contains more information in a smaller space, but it is still limited in content capacity because the more info you cram into the code, the smaller the points get, which will affect the readability by the scanner. The size limit is pretty comfortable, over 7,000 characters if it is digits only, half that for alphanumeric content. But still, it’s limited.
To remove this limitation in size, comes the next generation of code, where the information is not in the barcode itself anymore, but on a remote server accessible through the code. In other words, you scan a code with your mobile phone, it connects to a server and downloads information, then presents it to you. The little code on the left could “contain” an URL, a ringtone, or an mp3 for instance. (3Yen.com)
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