There is hardly a program or ad on TV these days that doesn’t ask its viewers to like its Facebook page or tweet about it. According to a new survey by global consulting firm Accenture, there’s a simple reason for this: those social media symbols actually work. Accenture found that, in the U.S, about a third of TV viewers have liked a show’s or brand’s Facebook page or tweeted about what they saw on TV after seeing one of these logos. → Read More
New York City’s Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg today announced the use of Quick Response or QR codes (which are something like a smartphone-readable barcode) on building permits, to provide New Yorkers with easy access to information related to buildings and construction sites throughout the city.
Smartphone users who scan a QR code on a construction permit in New York, according to a press release from the mayor’s office, will get “details about the ongoing project – including the approved scope of work, identities of the property owner and job applicant, other approved projects associated with the permit, [and] complaints and violations related to the location.” → Read More
I can’t see this on my own Facebook profile yet, but we’ve gotten a number of tips in our inbox in the past 10 minutes so it’s safe to assume it’s not a hoax or anything: Facebook appears to have started enabling users to generate custom two-dimensional QR codes.
From the looks of the screenshot embedded above, there are two types of QR codes: a personal barcode or a “status QR barcode”. This also seems to appear on Facebook Fan Pages. Judging from the tweets about this, the QR codes don’t seem to actually function yet, and the links on pages appear to come and go. → Read More
QR codes, or “Quick Response” codes, are a mechanism to codify data for quick recognition. They’ve been used in package tracking applications for some time, and apparently they’re hugely popular with mobile phone users in Japan. Snap a picture of a QR code with your phone’s camera, and your phone can then decode the info and do something useful — usually load up a URL contained within the code to alleviate the tedium of typing. Now an Austrian company plans to put QR codes on fashion accessories! → Read More
QR codes have yet to conquer the US and Europe but are prevalent in mobile phone-crazy Japan. Denso Wave, a Tokyo-based tech company, invented the nifty little two-dimensional bar codes as early as 1994. And they are everywhere now in Nippon: magazines and newspapers, billboards, clothes, beer cans, maps, business cards, cigarette boxes etc. etc. Scanning the QR code you see above should lead you to www.crunchgear.com, for example. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
