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Microsoft Finds a Home For Barcode
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Apr 21, 2007 02:39 PM
from the color-cuecat dept.
from the color-cuecat dept.
MicroBarcode writes in about the color barcode technology that Microsoft developed but shelved two years back because nobody adopted it. The technology promised a way to link packaging to Web sites — and once cell phone cameras get good enough, Microsoft hoped lots of people would use it. It seems the technology has finally found a home: the ISAN International Agency has inked a deal with Microsoft. The color barcodes, consisting of red, green, yellow, and black triangles, will appear on XBox 360 games and other products beginning later this year.
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Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, what you're telling us is that this is nothing but a pointless technology and that it would be much easier just to post a URL?
I have a to take a picture, possibly be charged depending on my mobile plan and if I choose that route, and then be tracked by Microsoft and the end company and then go to a website that would have been easier to just type in?
Right. Dumb.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Or failing that, just put the URL on the damn box.
Of course this is MSFT so using sensible existing methods is directly out of the question.
Tom
Don't be an idiot. (Score:3, Insightful)
Look. It's just like the QR Codes in Japan. What makes them so special is that you can encode much, much more data into them than a typical barcode (the blac&white QR codes can hold about 3KB, I assume this color version can do better). This lets you encode a ton more data about a product than w/ a typical barcode.
Basically it holds all of the promise of RFID with none of the scary privacy issues. But this is slashdot, so I realize I must spin this as ev
Microsoft embracing and extending standards again (Score:3, Insightful)
Not unless by "a ton" you mean twice as much, it's four colors instead of two. At the cost of a totally incompatible system.
We have had labels with two-dimensional scan codes for years. These can be printed in any laser printer and scan
Re: (Score:2)
If you were to make 10 old-style two-color lines, you have a possible of 2^10 = 1024 possible combinations.
If you were to make 5 new-style four-color lines, you have a possible of 4^5 = 1024 possible combinations.
There, 5 * 2 = 10, to have the same amount of data stored you need twice as many dots with
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My comment has nothing to do with anti-Microsoft sentiment (hell, I run Windows and use Office, *gasp*!) this has to do with me finding that the application is fucking pointless as described in the article.
I'm supposed to take a digital image of something and then scan it later to get to a website because of a billboard ad? Please.
Great New Invention! (Score:5, Interesting)
Entering text on a cell phone is a real pain in the ass and it's often the only device I have around me capable of recording data while 'out on the town'
Take for instance google maps. I'll often take a photo of a google map before driving just so that I can look at it later on my cell phone. Much cheaper than GPS. Imagine if you will if Google Maps could encode all of your driving directions into a little 2"x2" square barcode on your screen. Then you just snap a picture with your cell phone. The Cell Phone includes a text decoder which then decodes the driving directions for when you need them later.
Let's say you're in frys and you see a new 500 GB HDD for $220. Now you start thinking to yourself... "Is this a good deal?" but you can't remember what the going rate is. No problem you snap a photo of the barcode and you've already set up an association with product names and your favorite price grabber search engine and presto there it is on New Egg for $180 shipped.
Let's say you're in a big city and you're lost. No problem! Just snap a photo of the nearest street sign's colorful barcode and presto google maps (your chosen default map service) locates where you are. You already while at home scanned the barcode for the address of your hotel and google gives you new directions from where you are.
The problem with cuecat was that all it did was awkwardly enter URLs onto your PC. When you're on your PC there is no need for barcode scanners you already have an amazing data entry tool... your keyboard! Cellphones have no easy way to enter in a lot of information.
I doubt microsoft's lone solution will be the only survivor, but who cares! With a camera based system, you can have hundreds of competing formats on your cell phone. But the better compressed the data, the more likely it is to catch on because the more information it can convey.
I for one welcome our new barcode speaking overloads.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Cell phone cameras today are already high enough resolution to read regular barcodes. UPCs are, well, universal, as their acronym indicates. You could do all your product tie-ins with the UPC. This Microsoft technology sounds too much like a solution in search of a problem.
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Not even close. These color bar codes are still bar codes. GUIDs are 128 bits. If a black and white bar code can hold 3KB, as you said, then you could easily fit a few GUIDs in there. RFIDs are typically just GUIDs which reference a database. There is no reason why a black and white bar code can't include a server URL and an item GUID to effectively store infinate data.
The promise of RFID comes from its no-contact nature.
T
Re: (Score:2)
I've seen this in Japan for years. Ads in magazines and elsewhere have little square bar codes like American UPS packages. Take a picture of them with your cell phone and it pops up some content on your screen.
Good to see Microsoft "innovating" once again.
I once worked for a company that sank millions into the CueCat [wikipedia.org]. This seems like the same thing, only with a cell phone instead of a plastic
Not a UPC replacement (Score:4, Informative)
From the article:
Gavin Jancke, the Microsoft Research engineering director who developed the so-called High Capacity Color Barcode (HCCB), said the aim was not to replace the current barcode system, called UPC. "It's more of a 'partner' barcode," he said. "The UPC barcodes will always be there. Ours is more of a niche barcode where you want to put a lot of information in a small space."
Of course, since this is
Parent
Another Potential Exploit... (Score:3, Funny)
2. Post on flickr, youtube, et al
3. Wait for someone wearing glasses to visit the image
4. Let MS's automagical software see the barcode in the reflection in the user's glasses via the PC's
5.
6. Profit.
This is the visual equivalent of the exploit that uses an audiofile to tell the voice recognition software to do things.
Re: (Score:2)
I went digital camera shopping not too long ago. Wasn't really planning on it, I was at Best Buy and saw some interesting cameras. I ended up pulling out my phone and taking photos of the little placards they have on them with the model number and price, then I went back home and l
Re: (Score:2)
Where products are concerned, where the seller/manufacturer wants me to go is the last place I want to go to get more info.
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They can't lie about specifications. If the specs are interesting, then I can find my way to reviews. Very simple and convenient.
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The same kind of developers who regularly run out of gas 25 cm from the tank, wishing they had some kind of auxiliary tank with an additional
Re:revival of the cuecat? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
I've seen this before.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
CueCat (Score:5, Insightful)
Which, of course, sucked. One article about it from several years ago said something like:
"It fails to solve a problem that doesn't exist."
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One useful idea (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One useful idea (Score:4, Funny)
- check preview before posting
-
- profit
Parent
Bill Gates and (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I hope you were just being sarcastic...
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Well Duh! Obviously I know they couldn't really have invented the computer. They must have copied it off of Apple.
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QR codes (Score:5, Interesting)
-- dbg
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I kept seeing those when I traveled to the near future, aka "Japan". Microsoft's solution requires a 4 colour printer, this one is monochromatic... why am I not surprised that Microsoft is pushing their own bloated implementation of an already popular technology through "undisclosed financial terms"?
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Better implementation: SemaCode (Score:5, Informative)
It uses Datamatrix 2-D (monochrome) barcodes to encode URLs on paper billboards and flyers, and has scanner implementations for many cellphones w/ built-in cameras.
In a prototypical application, a typical college student sees an advertisement attached to a bulletin board, for a local concert of Local Rock Band XYZ. There is a semacode symbol on the poster. He or she, uses cell phone to take a picture of the link, which automatically launches the cell's built in web browser to that URL (saving much tedious thumb-typing), and purchases concert tickets instantaneously.
http://semacode.org/ [semacode.org]
Re: (Score:2)
In the end I don't friggin think so. Cool concept, but every company has to get their piece of the pie, and it needs to be bigger than everyone else's piece too.
Thus a good idea fails mise
Mark of the Beast, patent pending (Score:4, Funny)
Delicious Library - Nothing new required (Score:2)
It uses the webcam build into new Macs, or a third-party firewire camera, to scan barcodes and index books and DVDs and such. It pulls the data from Amazon or another web source.
No laser scanner needed, no special barcodes required.
This brings back problems (Score:4, Insightful)
While there are markers so that the orientation can be determined by scanners, there's no way to extend this encoding along the length of a package in any relatively inconspicuous manner the way that ISO/IEC 15416 codes do. This is the same problem which has prevented mass adoption of the Datamatrix 2D code outside of specific areas such as postage and shipping which simply needed to include the additional data required.
This is an interesting system and even more capable than Datamatrix and ShotCode of encoding a lot of information in a limited area. Unfortunately it suffers not only from requiring higher printing specs for those who use it (reflectance is of utmost importance; see here [barcode-us.com]) but also from a return to a less usable system in key areas. This is for retail packaging but it will slow (or prevent speeding up of) standard, real-life usage.
Yes, it would be possible to place multiple copies of the code along the length of some item, but the colour factor as well as the required resolution don't allow for interruptions and additional area uses that the current lengthwise 1D barcodes do.
Colored shapes? (Score:2)
http://www.johnlewis.com/jl_assets/product/230153
CMYK? (Score:2)
MS color-code vs monochrome 2-d barcode (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
He he.
Cell Phone Camera Resolution (Score:2)
Perhaps it's the processors that are still lacking.
How? (Score:2)
In the POS software market, that smells like a current-version-+1 feature
Why? Better Tracking (Score:2)
When you see an infomercial on TV, that phone number they display is different from region to region. By segmenting the data by region, the company knows where ads perform better, and they can pump for dollars buying airtime in that region.
It's harder with the web. You can't tell someone to visit www.acmewidgets.com/detroit, because nobody bothers with anything after the .com. The only trick is to create clever variations, like saveonwidgets.com, yeswidgets.com, buywidgets.com, etc.
This technology offers
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What more needs to be coded beyond a product code (hint: UPC)?
I'll bet you have to make the "pixels" larger than ordinary barcodes, due to the use of color and the unusual shape. If you assume that each "pixel" is worth one bit, then you only need two (4 values) or three (8 values) black pixels to hold the same number of values as one color "pixel". If the color pixels have to be twice as big in both dimensions, then they will require more space than ordinary black ones.
Then you h
you want a beautiful barcode? (Score:2)