Like every other piece of technology, QR codes can also be overused and abused. This isn't worth ranting over though.
There are perfectly good reasons to use QR codes. URLs may be long, confusing or just awkward enough to be a pain to type. Sometimes there may not be enough space on the product to put in a full URL. There's no reason to stop the 'madness' as this author puts it - like other pieces of technology, folks will experiment quite a bit in the early days and then settle on good usage practices as time goes on.
Good use case: on a For Sale sign in front of a house or apartment with a deep link to the listing. Much easier than going to the web site and searching.
Sure, QR codes are always a "good use case" when it comes to this. They ARE faster than typing in a link or searching. Doesn't do much good when no one uses the code, though.
The current use of QR codes in Japan seems to mainly be for specials, bargains and contests tied to a physical location (i.e. you don't want it to spread virally). For instance, when a new single is released, they'll put up QR codes that link to random cell phone wallpaper downloads in different record stores, to get you to go around and collect them all (and presumably spend money).
For regular ads, it seems advertisers have moved to the method of showing a picture of a search bar+button with the keywords to find the homepage pre-filled out. (URLs are much harder to remember than words, especially when you barely know any english). I think this practice has come with the rise of smartphones and laptops).
I have lined up for a QR code here. But the site it linked to didn't support smartphone...
I was just trying to point out cultural differneces in a tongue-in-cheek manner. I think Japan is the least Europeanized wealthy country (the other Asian tigers count too but are less renowned for shocking westerners). As a result, it's often a lot less valid to generalize from Japanese culture to American culture than, say, Australian or German.
There's a world of difference between pointing out cultural diversity and racial stereotyping. I guess the fact that I'm actually kind of into Vermillion Pleasure Night blinded me to the fact that some people might have interpreted my comments as derogatory.
They're not necessarily derogatory, just ignorant. For instance, "least Europeanized" is indeed a generalization to Western culture, just a negative one.
I've made a point to ask people who work in retail stores/shops that have QR codes if they've ever had people scan the QR codes. The most "positive" answer I heard was that they weren't sure. Some people stopped in front of the signs, but they weren't sure if they were scanning the code or following the link or sending an email/sms to subscribe.
Most of the time, it's a flat out no. I suspect it might be different in other places where there is greater awareness or density of QR codes though.
BTW, asking for a use case? Entering secure keys. Initializing OTP code generators. (aka Google Auth, which you SHOULDN'T have to ask about because it should ALREADY be active. Go do it, right now, mid-sentence, if you haven't) Potentially initializing 3 keys for use in a two-factor auth tool for phones and NFC tags. cough.
They are free to set up, advertisers and marketers understand them (or at least they think they do), they feel very "modern".
QR codes aren't going anywhere is because they are a perfectly attractive novelty for the non-tech world. There is a far better conversion, and ease from using short URLs or even a 4 digit number that will next you the URL, but the QR code will still prevail.
I wouldn't expect QR codes to go away until the offline advertising and marketing world becomes more data driven. Given recent trends, that's unlikely to happen any time soon.
I feel like there's a routine anti-QR code thread on HN once a month and it's always the same argument. They'll die naturally when nobody wants them. For now it seems like certain people want them.
So far the best use I have found for QR codes is making up stickers than when scaned decode to "sorry i wasted your time this qr code does not contain anything interesting"
We started using them on the print pages of homes for sale that we provide for our clients. The QR links to a google map of the property's address. Usually a buyer would print out the listing and take it with them to see the house. So far it seems to be a much easier way to get directions to the house without having to type in an entire address on your smartphone.
Personally, I've found them to sometimes be useful.
I use an iPhone now, however they were fairly useful on Android -- a lot of Android forums would show a QR code when you hovered over links to .apk's, which made attachments easy to download.
I used them for a QR code scavenger hunt once and, even in this tech backwards town, got a couple people involved. This was when they were still new.
It familiarized people with our website and our store layout. It also got them asking at the counter for help to find things.
All in all exactly what I was hoping for.
I like the QR codes at Best Buy; I use them all the time when I'm just starting to research electronics and I make a visit to one of their stores. It's convenient, I can store it on my iphone for later, and I can read user reviews, etc.
That being said, I'm not sure if they help or hurt sales because when I do scan a QR code, I typically end up doing comparison shopping and typically Best Buy's prices don't compete well with online retailers.
I'm on the wrong side of the planet to check, but I'm bet reasonable money that Best Buy are running privacy-dubious redirection/browser-fingerprinting/analytics on the urls those QR code send you too.
Or if they're not, does anyone have a contact in marketing at Best Buy?
I think in SOME situations it's a good thing to have. But there are some horrible uses, such as while I was driving down the interstate the other day, on the complete opposite side to which I was driving, there was a billboard for the National Guard that had a QR code.
There is no way in hell I am or evan can pull out my phone, open the qr reader app, point it at that billboard in a steady enough motion WHILE driving 70mph on the OTHER SIDE of the highway and go to their website. We aren't even supposed to be using devices while driving and the freaking National Guard does that. I hope our tax dollars (wishful thinking, I know) didn't go to this. But it's plain ridiculous.
> Firstly, that’s a huge security risk in my mind, it’s like I am trying to open an email attachment from an unknown sender because nobody knows who put up these ads.
It's not like opening an email attachment, it's more like opening a URL. The only documented QR code attack I know of consists of a QR code with a malicious URL (http://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=12760). The QR code only served as a 'mask' to the URL, where the users were too ignorant to look at the URL before visiting it.
I don't think embedding malicious code in a QR code is practical or possible, mostly because the amount of data it can hold is very small. The only binary format I know of that is commonly used on a QR code is vCard; the rest are plaintext based formats.
I used the email analogy cause I figured that would be more obvious for people to recognize the security risk... it's hard to explain things like drive-by downloading for non-techy people.
But opening unknown URL IS dangerous. It's like URL shorteners that plague internet since Twitter - you never know where link will take you and what scripts etc. will run in your browser.
On my device (android with bar code scanner device), the experience is that I scan a QR code with a URL, it tells me that the QR code has a URL & shows me what the URL is, then gives me the option to visit the link.
Depending on if the URL is a shortened URL, it is just as safe or moreso than regular browsing.
I do believe I've found a decent use for them - I wrote an app that can push an iOS mobile provisioning wifi profile to an iPhone - this allows your guests to scan a QR code to have their iOS device connect to your wifi network (without directly sharing your WPA key with them). You can even geofence the QR code so that if it is scanned > 1/2 mile from your home, the profile will not be pushed.
You must use RedLaser to scan the QR code - it is the only that pushes URLs out to Safari (instead of to an internal web-view) which allows the profile to be pushed.
For instance in my lab, we've used QR codes containing YAML to allow any user to load up the appropriate configuration file in a custom built generic-purpose app to interact with a specific tangible system.
A concrete use of that would be as follow— imagine a museum with various installations, all of which you can interact with using your smartphone. Each installation could have a QR code next to it, which you scan from an app— which would then load up the proper UI for you to interact with the installation (the QR code could point to interpretable markup code for building a UI , etc.).
QR codes are great when you need to give your users instant access to more than ~20 characters of information (less than that and is just faster to type) OR non human interpretable information. Unfortunately, most people use them for URLs, which actually fill both these criteria.
Essentially the biggest reason they are used so much is because of the argument "why not?"
I was in a meeting with the organisers of a pretty big consumer tech event, a couple of clever, successful people, and they mentioned that they were going to be putting QR codes on nearly all branding at the event we were discussing. I, slightly rudely, chuckled and asked why on earth they would do that; the answer: "We've found a site where you can make them really, really cheap - like, almost free - so we might as well!"
The real WTF is... Almost free? Like, they found a company that will, what, sell you an image of black and white boxes for mere pennies? God, imagine the money they could make swindling companies with a per-scan advertising fee! Pixels will be mined like gold!
Apparently nobody in Corporate has heard of a free online barcode generator. You can even print the barcode as many times as you want! Maybe they just do not trust free services?
I imagine it's the tracking and statistics provided by paid services that is the really useful point from business point of view. Marketing people love response tracking.
Nope, in this case it was the creating of QR codes for printing. Don't worry, I did laugh pretty hard right in front of them and told them that it's easy to make them absolutely free - ah well, they'd already paid at this point.
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[ 254 ms ] story [ 2513 ms ] threadThere are perfectly good reasons to use QR codes. URLs may be long, confusing or just awkward enough to be a pain to type. Sometimes there may not be enough space on the product to put in a full URL. There's no reason to stop the 'madness' as this author puts it - like other pieces of technology, folks will experiment quite a bit in the early days and then settle on good usage practices as time goes on.
I saw them on some Churches main signs, I see them on pretty much everything... They are all techinically "linked" to the internet...
Maybe, that "day" the conspirators speak of is upon us?
:-\",
People literally lining up to take snapshots of QR codes.
For regular ads, it seems advertisers have moved to the method of showing a picture of a search bar+button with the keywords to find the homepage pre-filled out. (URLs are much harder to remember than words, especially when you barely know any english). I think this practice has come with the rise of smartphones and laptops).
I have lined up for a QR code here. But the site it linked to didn't support smartphone...
If there's one thing that's clear, it's that they will do absolutely anything in Japan.
EDIT: In Japan, this is the kind of thing they watch on TV: http://youtu.be/xqoXcLqVemA
There's a world of difference between pointing out cultural diversity and racial stereotyping. I guess the fact that I'm actually kind of into Vermillion Pleasure Night blinded me to the fact that some people might have interpreted my comments as derogatory.
Most of the time, it's a flat out no. I suspect it might be different in other places where there is greater awareness or density of QR codes though.
BTW, asking for a use case? Entering secure keys. Initializing OTP code generators. (aka Google Auth, which you SHOULDN'T have to ask about because it should ALREADY be active. Go do it, right now, mid-sentence, if you haven't) Potentially initializing 3 keys for use in a two-factor auth tool for phones and NFC tags. cough.
QR codes aren't going anywhere is because they are a perfectly attractive novelty for the non-tech world. There is a far better conversion, and ease from using short URLs or even a 4 digit number that will next you the URL, but the QR code will still prevail.
I wouldn't expect QR codes to go away until the offline advertising and marketing world becomes more data driven. Given recent trends, that's unlikely to happen any time soon.
Like an iframe for the physical world.
LOL Nice.
Because it's cheap and can digitize analog goods easily.
Sample: http://virtualstagingsolutions.com/a/view/1159/print
I use an iPhone now, however they were fairly useful on Android -- a lot of Android forums would show a QR code when you hovered over links to .apk's, which made attachments easy to download.
That being said, I'm not sure if they help or hurt sales because when I do scan a QR code, I typically end up doing comparison shopping and typically Best Buy's prices don't compete well with online retailers.
Or if they're not, does anyone have a contact in marketing at Best Buy?
There is no way in hell I am or evan can pull out my phone, open the qr reader app, point it at that billboard in a steady enough motion WHILE driving 70mph on the OTHER SIDE of the highway and go to their website. We aren't even supposed to be using devices while driving and the freaking National Guard does that. I hope our tax dollars (wishful thinking, I know) didn't go to this. But it's plain ridiculous.
It's not like opening an email attachment, it's more like opening a URL. The only documented QR code attack I know of consists of a QR code with a malicious URL (http://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=12760). The QR code only served as a 'mask' to the URL, where the users were too ignorant to look at the URL before visiting it.
I don't think embedding malicious code in a QR code is practical or possible, mostly because the amount of data it can hold is very small. The only binary format I know of that is commonly used on a QR code is vCard; the rest are plaintext based formats.
Depending on if the URL is a shortened URL, it is just as safe or moreso than regular browsing.
Is your experience different from this?
95 percent of the problem is non-tech people don't know they need an app to scan or can't be bothered with getting one.
I've literally seen a friend of mine try to take a photo of a QR code and complain it doesn't work.
It's like having a PC without a web browser -- what the hell do you do with a URL then?
You must use RedLaser to scan the QR code - it is the only that pushes URLs out to Safari (instead of to an internal web-view) which allows the profile to be pushed.
http://www.getonmywifi.com.
For instance in my lab, we've used QR codes containing YAML to allow any user to load up the appropriate configuration file in a custom built generic-purpose app to interact with a specific tangible system.
A concrete use of that would be as follow— imagine a museum with various installations, all of which you can interact with using your smartphone. Each installation could have a QR code next to it, which you scan from an app— which would then load up the proper UI for you to interact with the installation (the QR code could point to interpretable markup code for building a UI , etc.).
QR codes are great when you need to give your users instant access to more than ~20 characters of information (less than that and is just faster to type) OR non human interpretable information. Unfortunately, most people use them for URLs, which actually fill both these criteria.
I believe both Zbar and Zxing do that.
I printed Marvin the Paranoid Android pointing to a fat QR code with extra text saying sth like 'internets r here... and ur emailz, too.'
One of the best QR code use cases, I believe.
edit: User must have app installed on her phone.
I was in a meeting with the organisers of a pretty big consumer tech event, a couple of clever, successful people, and they mentioned that they were going to be putting QR codes on nearly all branding at the event we were discussing. I, slightly rudely, chuckled and asked why on earth they would do that; the answer: "We've found a site where you can make them really, really cheap - like, almost free - so we might as well!"
Apparently nobody in Corporate has heard of a free online barcode generator. You can even print the barcode as many times as you want! Maybe they just do not trust free services?