Are quick response codes.“over” with in the US? Did they ever “take off”?
Er… what’s a QR code?
just a quick response.
it’s a two dimensional bar code used where your would use a bar code. used in industry for parts tracking/ordering. it can be in print advertisement where a person could scan it and find more product information.
You seriously couldn’t have looked it up?
You’ve definitely seen them.
They are all over the place in advertising.
IMHO, they are a novelty, and even though many advertisers use them, I suspect that only a tiny percentage of people with smart phones ever take advantage of them.
I my case, the few times I’ve actually bothered to scan one, the link is generally useless (it doesn’t give any more information than the physical ad itself). Where they might be useful - roadside advertising, for example, it’s usually too difficult or too dangerous to scan the code from a car, so I suspect that they just go unused.
I had a client who asked me to create one for an email she was sending out, and I had a hard time convincing her that putting a QR code in an email was a pretty dumb idea. So, they have some “buzz,” but people don’t know what to do with them.
The code themselves seem to be pretty common and becoming more so, but the use of them very sporadic. I’ve used a couple on products to get more info, sometimes helpful sometimes not. I have also seen them in places of self guided tours where a person can get more info on what they are viewing. I have also seen them link to hiking maps of the area - sometimes unfortunately where their is no cell or wifi service.
I think it’s yet to find it’s niche, and when it does it may be too late, though the self guided tours actually seem a pretty good use of them
Well, yeah, I just didn’t know what they were called.
Since all I have is a stupidphone they’re sort of irrelevant to me.
The house name here is “Martian fingerprints.” 
They are definitely climbing in usage and popular acceptance.
They’re definitely useless with a dumbphone. There are myriad aps for them on smartphones that are very easy to use. The iPhone doesn’t have a native ap as far as I am aware.
I’ve actually used them three or four times; each of them to show people how the things work. They’re in a lot of magazine ads and bus stop type signage. I’ve also seen them at Best Buy on the little placards for each product.
This has been my frustration too. Just a few days ago, I used a QR code for maybe the third time ever. It was in a nursery where the little insert gave me very limited information about what conditions the plan would like, and also didn’t give me a picture of its flowers, just the adult leaves.
Unfortunately, the QR code took me to a link that was nothing more than a digital version of the tag in the plant. WTF people?!
One place they can be very useful is on posters at scientific conferences. That way, your viewers can be directed to a site where they can download the full version of the paper, or see animated versions of your figures, or the like.
But yeah, it misses the point if the only information at the link is the same as what’s right next to the code.
We use QR codes in real estate ads and on signs sometimes. I think it is a waste of space, and won’t last much longer, as even more sophisticated optical reading devices/programs will take over, and they don’t need something like a barcode.
But in more sophisticated societies, it might be a useful tool. Our real estate buyers just aren’t hi-tek enough to make this worthwhile. Too bad, as I often get calls from people who don’t know the address, the street, the agent or the real estate company, and want me to tell them all about a property they just drove by with a sign on it. Right now, dammit.
Unless you want to save the info to read at home or something. That’s kind of a stretch though. I assume that companies are doing that as a placeholder to potentially update at a later time. Like management told them that everything must have a QR Code but didn’t provide the resources to do anything with the links.
Almost no one uses them from what I can tell. It’s a good idea, I’ll give it that, but when you have to pull out your phone, open the app, scan the code, click a button and then see where it goes, sometimes it’s easier to just google the product name if that’s what you’re after.
At work we have sell water bottles with out logo on them. They also have a QR code that goes to our website. Of the 10,000 or so bottles that we’ve printed that code on, about 20 people have used it. It’s not even worth the ink that’s used to print it.
And my QR code did give you a lot more information. We get a lot of people coming in for lunch and a lot of people call every day asking what our soups are. We put our soups on Twitter but a lot of offices have twitter blocked at work. What I did was put our twitter feed on our website so when they’re at work they can just go to our website (easier to remember then our twitter address and other things to look at). If they’re in the store and tell them this and I get the “I’m not that good with my phone” answer I can just tell them to scan the code on the water bottle.
You need to spend more time on the floor of a retail establishment (or define, more clearly, what “tiny percentage” and “almost no one” means. I will make no claim that they are widely used (yet), but I see customers reading them once or twice a week, and I hardly see all the customers coming through my store (since I work in the back room).
Five years ago I would have agreed with “tiny percentage” and “almost no one,” but the numbers appear to continue to grow. I cannot verify the accuracy of the following poll. (On-line polls are pretty notoriously unreliable). However, it seems to demonstrate a definite movement toward greater usage.
http://mghus.com/lp/qr-codes/
But this is my point exactly. Aside from being a cordless cuecat, what is the QR concept? What is the difference, that isn’t window dressing?
Granted, the self guided tour sounds good.
And I would assume someone can make a “Choose your own adventure” book or some similar game with it, that would work.
Are micro transactions and grocery delivery, as seen in other countries not viable for the US?
Is it simply a matter of too little too late?
Related if somewhat hijacking ; what ever happened to the PS2 (was it?) AR called “Eye of judgement?” Is it not a hop skip and a jump from QR codes? What does that mean for Skylanders and Disney infinity?
I’d say the biggest difference is that the CueCat system required a specialized piece of hardware that couldn’t be used for anything else, while QR codes only need a general-purpose device that a great many people already have, and would have even if it weren’t for QR codes. That greatly simplifies the chicken-and-egg problem in getting them adopted.
I use QR codes when I pair my Blackberry to my Playbook. I used to use it to add people to BBM, before the NFC days.
Now, I don’t have much use for QR codes. I work in high tech, and I’ve never seen any of my co-workers use QR codes, other than what I just mentioned.
A “great many people” may define many markets; it doesn’t define our local one at all. Although ours may be an exception, I suspect it is more common that you think.