Marcus,
some comments below.
marcus saw wrote:
> Hi,
>
>>From what I can gather Semacode is a European and American
>implementation of a similar technology to the QR code
>that's so popular in Japan. I don't know too much about
>Semacode but it looks like it will follow a path as QR codes.
>
> QR codes are free to make,
Yes and no. The QR code specifications were developed
by Denso for the car industry mainly for TOYOTA. The
patents are owned by Denso, but apparently Denso does
not enforce any license fees. So, QR code software etc
are not public domain but covered by Denso's patents.
>you can download generators
>from all the main carriers ( they are carrier specific
>but simple things like a URL can be encoded the same for all )
>the limitation to the amount of data you can store is the
>actual physical size and definition of the QR code that
>can be read by any specific phone.
Actually its a bit more complex. There is the QR code
specification which was developed for the car industry,
not more mobile phones. On top of that, the mobile
phone operators and handset manufacturers limit the
full QR code specifications to more narrow specifications
with smaller data content, and on top of that is the
specific operator mark-up, e.g. the coding to produce
an entry into the address book, or how to encode
a melody - that was not done at all for the car
industry.
> The program just creates a pattern of dark blocks to
>represent the data you want to pass. The main costs
>associated using QR codes is with their distribution
actually, distribution is free, except if you need
to pay for advertisements
>although they are so wide spread and common in Japan
>that you can plaster them over pretty much all your
>printed marketing material. From what I can gather
>the US and Europe are still a long way behind in
>their awareness of bar codes as a marketing tool.
It also depends on the quality of the cameras in the
camera phones. Because there is quite a lot of data
in each QR code, you need to be assured that the
camera has a certain minimum quality, otherwise
you can't guarantee that the QR code can be read
always with good success. DoCoMo has pretty tight
specifications which ensure that the QR code reading
really works every time. I guess that some of the
older camera phones, and some of the camera phones
sold in US and Europe don't have good enough
quality to read dense QR codes reliably every time
in bad lighting conditions.
We just published a report on QR codes for mobiles:
http://www.eurotechnology.com/store/qr-code/
Hope this helps.
Gerhard
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Gerhard Fasol, PhD Eurotechnology Japan K. K.
http://fasol.com/blog/ http://www.eurotechnology.com/
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Received on Mon Jul 11 04:12:11 2005