{"id":1148,"date":"2008-09-11T13:29:42","date_gmt":"2008-09-11T20:29:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wapreview.com\/?p=1148"},"modified":"2011-04-18T12:17:05","modified_gmt":"2011-04-18T20:17:05","slug":"ctia-endorses-2d-barcodes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/1148\/","title":{"rendered":"CTIA Endorses 2D Barcodes"},"content":{"rendered":"
Today the CTIA announced a “Camera-Phone Based Barcode Scanning White Paper<\/a><\/em>” (PDF) at\u00a0the morning keynote. There was a demonstration\u00a0of scanning a bar code with a camera phone to launch a video on the handset.<\/p>\n The white paper describes a somewhat complicated indirect access architecture where the code scanning application\u00a0sends an identifier to a central “Clearing House<\/em>” which routes it to a “Campaign Manager<\/em>” associated with\u00a0a particular service.\u00a0 The Campaign Manager then sends a message to the handset application directing it to perform an action such as opening a mobile site in the browser,\u00a0adding a contact to the address book or a date to the calendar or\u00a0pre-populating\u00a0an SMS, email\u00a0or phone call.<\/p>\n The layered architecture seems to be designed to let the carriers control and monetize the process.\u00a0 The white paper also talks about providing subscriber demographic information to\u00a0campaigns including age, zip code, gender, household income!, date\/time and handset make and model.\u00a0 Information would only provided when “technically, ethically and legally possible”.<\/p>\n The paper essentially endorses two bar code formats; the open standard Data Matrix<\/a> (image, above)\u00a0and\u00a0 proprietary EZ Code<\/a>.<\/p>\n In an interview, CTIA Vice-President of Wireless Internet Development Mark Desautels predicted that shipping handsets using the technology will be widely\u00a0available in\u00a012-18 months.<\/p>\n I’m excited that the US mobile industry sees the value of 2D bar code technology which is already well proven in Asia and\u00a0that at least one of the supported codes is based on an open standard.\u00a0 I’m disappointed however that they feel the need to monetize the process beyond the added SMS, call and data traffic it would naturally generate.\u00a0 I suspect that the layered architecture will also introduce unnecessary latency into the process compared with the direct access model used in Japan.\u00a0 There are also the obvious privacy issues associated with sharing so much demographic information with bar code campaigns.<\/p>\n What do you think? Comments are open.<\/p>\n Related Post:<\/em> QR Codes<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today the CTIA announced a “Camera-Phone Based Barcode Scanning White Paper” (PDF) at\u00a0the morning keynote. There was a demonstration\u00a0of scanning a bar code with a camera phone to launch a video on the handset. The white paper describes a somewhat complicated indirect access architecture where the code scanning application\u00a0sends an identifier to a central “Clearing House” which routes it to a “Campaign Manager” associated with\u00a0a particular service.\u00a0 The Campaign Manager then sends a message to the handset application directing it … Continue reading