Everybody is familiar with the 1 dimensional UPC bar codes that are found on just about every packaged product.
The codes are read at the check out counter. They tell the cash machine what the product is and how much it costs.
These codes have primarily been used as a tool for inventory control, shipping, and quick check outs.

Well, North America will soon be familiar with a handful of new 2D barcodes that are primarily being displayed for public consumption. Using your mobile phone, with the right software you can scan these images with your phone’s camera and get information on that item.

What are they?
Real world hyper-links.
A mobile marketing technology.
Fantastic for marketers hoping to measure the effectiveness of their print campaign.

What can they do?
They can spawn a mobile browser session and take you to a website. It’s often a pain to type in a long URL into your mobile browser. Why not provide a 2-D barcode for your website to ease that pain.
They can spawn a pre-populated SMS message, complete with destination phone number or shortcode and some text in the body.
They can deliver a binary file to your mobile phone. (think graphics, text, or any file supported by the handset). The amount of information a 2D bar code can convey is different for each format.
Initiate a phone call.
GeoSpatial tracking.
Labeling.
Textual information.
Save contact information.

How do they work?
On your mobile phone, start the scanning program. Typically, this will launch your camera. Then just snap a clear shot of the bar code.
The program will decode the image and deliver the information to your handset.

Many 2D bar code formats and readers
There are many providers of 2-d bar codes. Some are proprietary formats, that as a creator, you need to pay to use. All of the code readers are free.

Quick Response code

Open format created in 1994 by Denso-Wave. The most popular 2D code in Japan.
Get the reader here :: http://reader.kaywa.com
Create one at http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ or at http://nfggames.com/system/qrcodegen.php
Cost = free

ShotCode

Created by High Energy Magic
Website - http://www.shotcode.com/
Get the Reader here :: m.shotcode.com or on your PC go here http://www.shotcode.com/download
Cost = 50 pounds/month for 1-10 shotcodes.

Moseycode

Open format. Initially designed for Android platform. Created by Tom Gibara.
Website - http://www.tomgibara.com/android/moseycode/
Create a Moseycode here :: http://www.tomgibara.com/android/moseycode/barcodes
Cost = free

Semacode

Open Data Matrix format created in 1989
Website - http://www.semacode.com
my semacode for retrofitweb.com website -
http://semacode.com/display/tag.html?hide=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.retrofitweb.com&title=RetroFit+Website+Services+-+Semacode+for+website
Create one here = http://semacode.com/tag
Cost =

EZcodes

created by ScanBuy
The ScanLife reader also works with QR and Data Matrix codes.
Website - http://www.scanlife.com/
User Guide - http://www.scanlife.com/images/ScanLife-Client-Application-User-Guide.pdf
Create an EZcode :: You need to register your company fisrt. http://www.scanlife.com/register_company.html
Cost :: ???

ZXing (Zebra Crossing)

Google’s Open Source barcode reader reads QRcode, Data Matrix, and UPC
Google plans to trial QR codes in print ads. They have no plans to develop a new bar code format.

Closing words
This should both thrill and scare marketers and store owners because I can imagine many layers of information being layered onto these codes. Imagine you are in a big box store, you scan an item’s bar code and a layer from ebay or Craig’s list that tells you that the item you have scanned is available through them at 40% of the cost.

Or perhaps you are on a diet, but you have no time or desire to spend the time to figure out what kind of foods you absolutely need to stay away from. Then you would just need to install the latest reader plug-in from Google Health, modified to your personal settings, and then you could get ratings on each item scanned.

The ubiquitous UPC bar code is enough reason to have a wide install base for these code readers. Everything else is just the gravy on top. It’s just a matter of time until someone builds a specialized search engine for the upcoming explosion of these information layers. Really, right now these readers are crude visual pattern recognition programs that work with a limited number of symbologies. Later they will be able to recognize logos, common objects, and eventually places and faces.

Well it’s been a month since my last post and competition for hosting your activity stream has already started and is starting to pick up.

Plaxo released a new feature dubbed “Pulse” that ties into many of your other social networking accounts and combines them into one feed. Their have been rumours this week about Google buying Plaxo. It would be a great fit for their mobile offering. Great for Android. Contact data and communication tools are what you should be investing in to build a great social network. I think Plaxo is way under valued at this fictional price of $200 million. Now let me play match maker here and say that I wouldn’t be surprised if Yahoo made a play for Plaxo in the interest of keeping their dominance in email services.

FriendFeed is now doing some beta testing of their re-combinate social network feed service. I like it! They currently have 27 services you can draw from, including Flickr, del.icio.us, Google Reader, and Twitter. You can make your feed public or keep it private. Items in public feeds can be commented on…you can click on the ‘like’ link to say that you like a stream item. Not really sure what this is for yet, but I imagine they will be building APML from this data. The website is quite simplistic and baron right now, but I really think this company has the right idea and I am excited to see what they unleash in the next few weeks.

My FriendFeed is http://friendfeed.com/bobbykelly
LinkedIn where are you in this race to host my activity stream? There are plenty of people using services like Twitter and Blogging for business reasons. I want to know what my business colleges want me to know. Know what i mean?

more about the activity stream later…

Facebook has a good example of an activity stream. When you login to your account you can see a feed of things that your “friends” are doing. It may be a “News Feed” to Facebook but these are the activity streams of your “friends” aggregated here. They are changing their profile pics, joining the group “Toronto Crime Stoppers”, becoming “friends”, and hosting a jam at the Unicorn tonight. They are doing all these things and adding the Zombies Appplication (I frickin’ hate these apps). We will see finer granularity for what we see in our aggregator and what we publish to our activity streams.

“I already belong to a social network….it’s called the internet” - Cory Doctorow?

People will still be using multiple tools that specialize in some area of expertise to manage their social networks, but it will be published to a common feed for consumption.
There will be companies that will allow you to publish to your activity stream.
There will be many companies that will compete to host your activity stream.
We will see user-centric activity stream feeds just as we now are seeing the rise of user-centric IDs (openID, i-names)

“Data is the Intel side.” - Tim O’Reilly

Data portability is an important trend to watch but there are a few incremental steps we will see before people are touting their data around everywhere. That goes double for the data we store within the current social networking sites.
The tool providers will gain loyalty by having great UIs and adding value to the data we host with them, not the current reason for loyalty which is lock-in.

An activity stream aggregator will make publishing our activities that occur across the net to a single activity stream easy and transparent.
Think about what Facebook tried to do with beacon except not as evil and actually more secure with less privacy issues.
This would not only apply to commerce sites. It’s a marketing tool for the people using the social network and the stuff they interact with.
I could mark my flickr uploads to be published in my stream, videos on youTube, comments i make in groups and on blogs, and postings to twitter.

RSS has been around for years but main stream use is not very high because it still is not simple enough. Back in 2005, I had hoped that Windows Vista would usher in a new era for RSS and bring it to the limelight, but it hasn’t and people still toil along with live bookmarks.
Only internet geeks hand out their RSS feed URLs to friends!
People use RSS feeds for their portal pages (iGoogle) and don’t even realize it. They don’t need to know what’s going on under the hood and that’s when these sorta things get adopted by the mainstream.

Email, IM, Voice, and SMS are the communication tools of preference. The internet players that make these tools play nice together within our user-centric social network will be the ones that receive our attention.
The telcos aren’t gonna do it even though they may be best positioned to do so. The PC is a dying form factor which is being replaced by mobile devices. These devices have access to our photos, documents, calendar, email, voice mail, contact lists, text messages, and location data via cell tower or GPS. In the near future the cell phone will be our wallet and therefore will know our spending patterns better than Air Miles. The players that offer us the most value for controlled sharing of this information with them will receive our attention and loyalty.

Still think Google isn’t making a real bid in the upcoming 700Mhz spectrum auction?

Future of the Activity Stream Part 2