Enhancing QR Codes

ColorCodeFor those who are unfamiliar with QR Codes, they are basically 2-dimensional barcodes that use little blocks instead of lines and can hold thousands of bits of information rather than a couple of dozen or so. The big thrill was that you could take a picture of them using a cameraphone with the right software and get the info. Now ColorCode has been developed by ColorZip. The new system uses color blocks instead of the complicated dot-pictures used by QR Codes, and encodes a shortcut to information that is stored on a server. Because it only encodes the information required for the shortcut the actual content can be a lot bigger — such as an MP3 file or anything really, there’s no reason a DVD can’t be stored on the server. Because the squares hold less information they can be bigger, so they can be read from further away. In addition, ColorZip has ensured the reader only takes notice of the color of the square, not the shape, so the tags can be individualized to look a lot better.

The only fly in this ointment was pointed out by a couple of commenters on the wireless.3yen story. The big benefit of QR Codes over barcodes is that the information can be encoded into the code rather than stored on a server. By taking the information back out of the code and putting it in the server, ColorZip seems to have created a technology that — while more colorful — is not much more useful than a barcode. Unless I’m missing something… Mind you, if colors were added directly to the QR Codes (rather than being able to be encoded in the same space) you should be able to increase the amount of information in the codes by at least 10-fold. (from picturephoning.com)

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