14 ms·

Remember QR Codes? They’re More Powerful Than You Think

245 points by yarapavan 7y ago

Tomte 7y ago
> Because every scan is linked to the shopper’s online profile, the store collects valuable data to personalize its customer experience. No, thank you.
- lol768 7y ago
  >No, thank you. Do any shoppers actually want this? I have legitimately never walked into a supermarket and thought "Gee, the experience today just wasn't as personalised as it could've been. I'll go elsewhere next time".
  - wccrawford 7y ago
    Plenty of people say it about the staff. I don't see why they couldn't come to expect the same about their digital experience as well.
    - iainmerrick 7y ago
      Personal interactions between a regular customer and regular staff are very different from interactions between a regular customer and a customer database. The digital version is much more one-sided. Some people may like this kind of personalization. I find it’s very rarely useful to me and very frequently intrusive.
  - netsharc 7y ago
    I was in an airport in China, in the departures area. They had a screen showing a live video from a camera pointing at passer-bys, it said "Stand here, we'll scan your face and tell you how to get to your gate". I did, and it showed my name and where to go. But, when did I link my face to my boarding pass and agree to this "commercial" use by the airport? Before you enter China there are machines where you scan your passport, face, and fingerprints, so that's how they link faces to identities, but the example above shows the government gives this info out to... at least airport operators, but whom else?
    - ricardobeat 7y ago
      They don't need to give it to anyone, since they already operate everything.
  - cuddlybacon 7y ago
    Depends what they use it for. So pretty much a 1% chance. If it offered things like how to get through the store faster based on what I buy, changes to the location of products I buy, or changes to open hours that are when I usually go. Instead it will probably just give ads for products it thinks I am slightly more likely that average to buy. So no thanks.
  - diminoten 7y ago
    People very often do say the opposite, though. "Gee the experience today was very personalized, I'm definitely coming back next time!"
    - freehunter 7y ago
      A great, older, lower-tech example of this: I go to the store looking for Lays chips and they only have Ruffles. They're chips, sure, but I don't want Ruffles. I want Lays. I don't come back to that store because they don't have Lays. I go to the store next door, they have Lays. It's exactly what I wanted. I now come back to that store frequently. Store 1 has no way of knowing what I wanted or why I didn't come back. Store 2 has no way of knowing why I suddenly started coming to the store. I would still frequent Store 1 if they had the products I wanted. I only go to Store 2 because its (inadvertently) personalized for me.
  - charwalker 7y ago
    Safeway tracks my buying habits and their app suggests coupons for products I buy often. It's probably a loss leader sales tactic but I manage my spending. If you are paying attention, there's (I think) a reasonable trade off by some companies. I'll take 3 minutes before each grocery trip to save $20+ a month via coupons in exchange for my purchasing history.
- rainbowzootsuit 7y ago
  Most of the store chain shopping reward programs will accept a phone number, so I'll use [Local Area Code] 867-5309. It's generally always setup for me already, but sometimes needs an override because it "was used too many times today."
matheusmoreira 7y ago
QR codes can also encode binary data. With structured append it's even possible to encode larger amounts of data as a series of QR codes. Open source decoders don't seem to support these features though. Could've been a great way to transfer small files.
- makapuf 7y ago
  What throughput do you think you could attain with manual scan ?
  - netsharc 7y ago
    Not OP, but I'd imagine a lot, if the camera scans at 30fps, maybe be conservative and show the codes at 10fps.
    - arpa 7y ago
      ~30kb/s assuming the data density of 3kb per QR code. Not that much.
      - makapuf 7y ago
        I'd say I wont scan manually at 10 scans per seconds. I'd say 2 seconds per scan, which would be 1.5kbps. Not that much but quicker than typing.
- kalleboo 7y ago
  I've seen this show up on Hacker News before - transferring data via an animated series of QR codes https://github.com/divan/txqr https://github.com/divan/txqr
  - matheusmoreira 7y ago
    Awesome project. I see it is based on ZXing. Do you know if it decodes binary data? I see there's support for multiple error correction levels in the qr/qr.go file but I don't see anything related to encoding modes, binary or otherwise. I assume it is defaulting to alphanumeric encoding. I'm asking because I'm not sure if ZXing supports decoding binary data to begin with. I know zbar doesn't: current versions seem to mangle the output by trying to convert it to UTF-8. I haven't tested ZXing yet. Also, is it using structured append mode or simply reading normal QR codes in a series and concatenating the data? Structured append mode QR codes have metadata such as an identifier for the sequence they're part of and as well as their position within it.
michaelt 7y ago
> Tip bar staff [...] Scan and shop anywhere [...] digital public transportation cards The thing that surprises me here isn't the success of QR codes, but the failure of NFC (and to a lesser extent Bluetooth) which was practically designed for paying with your phone. How did NFC lose out to QR codes at the application it was designed for? Was it a reliability problem? Were the APIs too locked-down for anyone to be able to work with them?
- hav 7y ago
  Pretty much any smartphone you've been able to buy for the past 10 years has had a camera, the same can't be said for NFC.
- atoav 7y ago
  My Alarm app has the functionality to remember a NFC or QR code that you need to scan in order to make it stop. Why did I go for a QR code? I can print a QR code, but I can’t print a NFC code.
  - nidificate 7y ago
    But you can buy NFC tags for relatively cheap.
    - adolph 7y ago
      You go to market with the printer you have, not the gizmos you'd like you have. You'd wind up printing something anyway to let people know about the NFC tag. And if you are printing something out, you may as well just add a QR code for folks who like that method. There's a "if you give a yak a razor" joke in there somewhere.
    - atoav 7y ago
      I could, but printing a QR tag is even faster and cheaper, and there are no real benefits to the NFC in this case.
- thinkingemote 7y ago
INTPenis 7y ago
Remember them? This wednesday I saw a giant QR code 2 meters high at a train station in Copenhagen. They're very much in use, everywhere. I fail to see how I'd forget about them. But without even reading the article I know that QR codes are only as powerful as the app that parses them. They can't do anything on their own, just convey a chunk of data to a reader. I believe they caught on more than NFC because they require so little. Just a camera, which is already present in all devices. While NFC is a much bigger decision to implement since its field of use is much more restricted.
- paulgb 7y ago
  They have (finally) snuck in to North American life, but it would still be unusual to see them on a billboard here. I find it interesting that most use cases in America involve transmitting information from a phone, rather than to it: boarding passes, event tickets, Amazon Prime codes at Whole Foods. The only exception I can think of off-hand where scanning the codes on a phone is common here is scooter rentals. I doubt the average person on the street here would know how to scan a QR code they encountered in the wild (as opposed to app-specific codes).
- netsharc 7y ago
  Also NFC wouldn't work with a billboard a few dozen meters away, but QR does. Although I find the stupid implementations funny, I've seen ads pasted on cars, they'd have super dense QR code, but maybe be the size of your palm.. uhm, if the idea is for people stuck in traffic around you to see them, they need to have less pixels or be bigger. Besides the dense QR codes are not just some domain, but usually is some ad agency who wants to track how many times the code has been scanned and how many times they've redirected people to the real URL, so they can charge the owner for the service of... having a QR code.
- atoav 7y ago
  I think you are right on track with your observation. Another thing I might add: QR codes can just be printed, by everybody with a printer. Designers don't need to think a lot about technical details, they just put the QR code into their layout and send it off to the printing press (or in fact the screen). Additionally because QR Codes are optical, it doesn't matter if you stand 20 meters away from the billboard if the QR code is big enough, while with NFC you would have to come close.
m-i-l 7y ago
"Nomophobia, the fear of low battery on phones, is virtually nonexistent in China, thanks to the widespread availability of power bank stations" Actually nomophobia is more than a fear of low battery - it is a fear of being without a working mobile phone, e.g. due to loss of phone, poor signal or low battery. It is more of a psychological condition, and proper treatment is to address the root cause rather than avoid the situation - it would be like saying heroin addiction is not a problem because there are heroin dealers on every street corner.
- qplex 7y ago
  I think this is a valid thing to worry about. It's almost the same thing as worrying about a car breaking down if you're 100 miles from the nearest town. Yet we don't have a specific "fobia" for that, because it's really not a mental disorder to worry about such things. So many things today depend on having a working mobile phone.
  - donclark 7y ago
    Curious to hear your thoughts/experience about the 'many things today depend on having a working mobile phone'. I often do not carry a phone because I use my laptop at home/office to do most digital things.
    - qplex 7y ago
      Ah, you're right. So what I should have said is 'depend on having a working computer'. I can't even begin to list the things; everything.
    - trothamel 7y ago
      I'd say navigating on long road trips is one of them. While my current car has a built-in GPS, my previous one didn't, and so I was somewhat dependent on having a working phone in order to navigate. Now, only somewhat. I generally know how to get home from where I am, and I figure if my phone were to fail, I could drive until I could find a gas station with a map. (Or perhaps a convenience store to get a charger cable or new phone.) And of course, this fear (of being phoneless) is just an update of an old one (of being lost). It's really hard to get lost in the modern world of gps and data.
pacificleo12 7y ago
Alan Zhang of WeChat was prophetic when he said: “The entry point for PC internet is the search box. The entry point for mobile internet is the QR code
emilfihlman 7y ago
QR codes are awful at usability. Shortlinks are much, much better.
- thiscatis 7y ago
  Yeah, it's great UX to scan short links with your phone :)
  - emilfihlman 7y ago
    And if your phone is broken? Or you want to share the resulting location? Do you share the QR-code? How about if your phone is charging somewhere else? Please. QR codes are awful and have huge issues and pitfalls.
- _def 7y ago
  I don't think that an average user wants to type in cryptic urls rather than simply scanning a code. At least, if they know what to do. But I don't know how the adoption rate for QR code scanning is. Do the stock android camera app and the ios camera support QR codes yet?
  - kn0where 7y ago
    Stock iOS camera has supported QR codes for a few years now
  - emilfihlman 7y ago
    No, Android has no built-in support. And if you break your camera, you can't use QR-codes. Happened to me with Whatsapp Web. Like I said, QR-codes are awful at usability and have extreme pitfalls. Shortlinks are quick, fast and concise and they take much less space. Also, shortlinks does not mean "cryptic urls". For example slush.org/L01 is much, much better and faster than some QR-code, it's wayyyy more accessible and also more shareable. You can also tell about it to people with just words that they can easily remember.
dirktheman 7y ago
I like the functionality of QR codes, but the fact that they're not human readeable makes them unsafe. It would'nt be unthinkable to make a QR-code, paste it over an existing one (for instance: the QR code in the bar to pay for a tip) and redirect the user to a spoof website where they can tip me instead of the bar/musician.
- wccrawford 7y ago
  My QR reader on Android (ZXing's Barcode Reader) shows you the information on the screen before you decide what you want to do with it. That's as "Human Readable" as it needs to be, for me.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    It's only helpful if you know what to expect. A side effect of adtech and surveillance mania infecting everything, URLs in QR codes are likely to be either semirandom strings with tracking IDs, or links to URL shorteners that expand to such semirandom strings with tracking IDs. Either is very trivial to spoof with a similar-looking malicious URL.
    - jakub_g 7y ago
      It's the same with or without the QR code. Say you're on the bus stop and want to check upcoming buses (real stuff in the place where I live). The bus company could either slap a QR code, or a "bit.ly/bus-stop-1234" URL. And someone could paste over it a "evil.com/bus-stop-1234". Hint: use Firefox Focus as your default handler for URLs on mobile phone. It clears all history and cookies after each usage, which is perfect for opening unknown URLs.
      - jschwartzi 7y ago
        I'm looking forward to 20 years from now when all QR codes have to be digitally signed to be valid, and the digital signature must be authorized by a certificate authority in your phone.
onion2k 7y ago
"Nomophobia, the fear of low battery on phones, is virtually nonexistent in China, thanks to the widespread availability of power bank stations" Perhaps I'm more paranoid than other people, but plugging your phone in to a public USB device seems incredibly dangerous to me. At the very least someone could have tampered with it to damage the next user's device, and at the worst it could be cloning your device's entire storage.
- greenleafjacob 7y ago
  You are best off buying a “USB condom”, a USB 2.0/3.0 connector with the data pins removed.
  - Retric 7y ago
    An actual USB condom should also include a surge suppressor. However, the closest thing to that I have found is simple battery packs which can generally remove the need for 3rd party mid day charging.
  - MereInterest 7y ago
    The problem there is that the USB standard requires the initial power transfer to be low amperage, and only switches to the high amperage mode on request, with the request being delivered over the data pins.
    - jandrese 7y ago
      USB condoms include a tiny chip that does the negotiation to get full power. Sometimes they even work better than the phone itself at getting the charger to give up the juice.
    - theamk 7y ago
      For up to 1 amp, three resistors is enough (that's how power banks work) -- and those easily fit inside the connector.
- cs02rm0 7y ago
reportgunner 7y ago
What is this garbage top 10 article? I could as well say Remeber 1 and 0 ? They're more powerful than you think since all computers use them to store your virtual copy.
- robjan 7y ago
  I think they are talking about its usefulness as a cheap, easy, quick interface between computers and the physical world.
  - reportgunner 7y ago
    Oh if they'd said useful I would stay quiet. The word they used was powerful I mean QR codes are just an encoded link, right ? What is the big deal ?
    - rootusrootus 7y ago
      > I mean QR codes are just an encoded link, right Encoded data. Could be a link. Could be WiFi credentials. Payment information. Any sort of identification code. Etc.
bryanlarsen 7y ago
Just as much an enabling technology as QR codes is the ubiquity and openness of WeChat/AliPay/Taobao, in my opinion.
_ph_ 7y ago
In short: QR codes are a great way of connecting arbitrary physical items with your smartphone and as a consequence with any kind of web service. A bit similar to NFC, but with some important differences: they don't require any electronics, work at any range (just make the QR code large enough) and they can be done either by print or displayed on a screen. Additionally, when scanning the QR-code, the user can see the URL it translates to. (Doesn't have to be URLs, but that is probably the most common usage). I am surprised, not more business cards have QR-codes printed on them with the important contact information. But for my personal use, I have a QR-code containing my email address as a picture on my phone, so I can display it for anyone to scan whom I want to give my address to.
cyborgx7 7y ago
It's still strange to me that android doesn't come with a simple qr reader. They did the right thing with the thousand crappy flashlight apps, and just integrated the functionality in the OS. They should do the same with QR code scanning.
- quelltext 7y ago
  Actually, I don't know which version they started but on my Pixel it's built into the Camera as well as the Lens app. When you point your phone camera to a QR code it'll show a description/link.
  - cyborgx7 7y ago
    That's pretty neat! Good to know. Mine doesn't do it yet though. I'm also worried about discoverability if they don't give any indication that the camera has this feature.
  - lozf 7y ago
    Same on my few years old MotoG4 ... but not a friends much newer Sony Experia. QR codes are really handy for connecting to Wifi, I have a shell alias that runs: qrencode -t utf8 "WIFI:T:WPA2;S:<Basestation-SSID>;P:<SecurePassw0rd>;;"
    - muxator 7y ago
      Nice! How do you consumer it on your phone (I suppose)? Is "WIFI:..." automatically passed to the network intent? Edit: just tried in ZXing QR code scanner on Android, I was too curious. After scanning the code, the proposed action that appears in the bottom part of the screen is "connect to network". It just works! Super useful, thanks!
- chrsstrm 7y ago
  Most android cameras recognize QR codes. Chrome has a QR code scanner built in, look for the icon at the top of the keyboard. Facebook has also had a scanner in their app for quite a while but of course that’s not native to Android.
Causality1 7y ago
I think the biggest problem QR codes had when it came to adoption is that phones, by default, don't come with software to read them. If every OEM camera app could read QR codes I think they'd be much more common.
- FanaHOVA 7y ago
  iPhones do it now, as well as some newer Android phones. They problem is that they don't tell you that :)
matt_the_bass 7y ago
My understanding of QR code’s is that they just are a machine readable string and that string is usually a URL. The phone then is responsible for parsing the string and doing something (like launching a browser/url or other installed app). So users are not paying by QR code, users are paying via a web app and Using the QR code to input the url for that app/item/quantity etc. Is my understanding incorrect?
- strikelaserclaw 7y ago
  You are right, a QR code can encode information about a bunch of transactions in an image, which is much easier for a person to use than do so manually through screens.
- jakub_g 7y ago
  Correct. My (wild guess) understanding is that QR codes took off in China because of widespread usage of WeChat, which is a do-all mobile app, including payments etc. If your QR code requires user to create an account in your webservice or install your native app to do anything useful, it does not bring much value, unless everyone around has your native app. Whereas if you integrate via a an app widely used by all people in the country (i.e. the QR code is a URL which opens the widely used app with certain parameters), you're more likely to have people use it. Classical chicken-and-egg problem and a situation where monopolies do better than a fragmented market.
  - godot 7y ago
    That's one use case; the other use case that's less talked about is when you use an app where you need to log in on more than 1 device. WhatsApp and WhatsApp Web's QR login is a good example. One of my side projects, http://karaoke.house/ http://karaoke.house/ does something similar as well.
- matheusmoreira 7y ago
  Standard QR codes can encode numeric, alphanumeric, kanji and binary data. Alphanumeric is the simplest, well supported and most widely used encoding mode. QR code size increases with the amount of data they contain. The larger versions take up lots of space and can be awkward to use. URLs are popular since they're usually small.
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pmoriarty 7y ago
I just found "The Barcode Book" in my local library, and it was pretty cool to see dozens of different barcode schemes out there, all with different properties. The world of interesting, useful barcodes is much larger than QR codes.
0x38B 7y ago
I use QR codes to quickly share a URL (or text) with my Android phone from my iPad. The Shortcut is simple and easy to use (1). If I wanted to do the same thing on Android, I'd use Termux (2). --- My 'Universal Clipboard' is a text file on a VPS. My devices set or get the contents via SSH. E.g. Android[Termux SSH] > VPS < iOS[Shortcuts 'Run Script over SSH']. Comes in handy! 1: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/2190aca622b948258a9024d8dda78b9f https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/2190aca622b948258a9024d8dda... 2: https://termux.com/ https://termux.com/
- rz2k 7y ago
  I used QR odes for the same sort of thing, but Firefox sync has gotten so good at sending tabs to specific devices, including a desktop that might not have a convenient camera, that it's even more convenient.
  - jraph 7y ago
    In the "now that I think about it, it was silly" category, I "copy pasted" a mail using QR Codes from the computer to the phone while in a train. I could send the mail from the phone, but it was more convenient to type it with the computer. KDE Plasma provides a QR Code for anything not too big you copy-pasted by clicking on an icon. "It should be more convenient than using the computer as a Wi-Fi hotspot for the phone, which is a two clicks operation, right?" Wrong. It was painful. We should reuse the idea of Quiet.js, seen today on HN [1], to solve this kind of situation. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21415946 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21415946
    - raksoras 7y ago
      Shameless plug: http://zipl.ink http://zipl.ink is the bookmarklet I use for the exact same purpose which also keeps record of the interesting links I zipped to my phone locally as a nice side effect
  - OrgNet 7y ago
    I love Firefox sync, mostly to share tabs to any of my devices but also to access history/bookmarks
ldiracdelta 7y ago
I'd guess that they're not used more in the US because of patent trolls.
novok 7y ago
QR codes are not good for high throughput situations, like subway gates although: https://atadistance.net/2019/08/13/transit-gate-evolution-do-qr-codes-suck-for-transit/ https://atadistance.net/2019/08/13/transit-gate-evolution-do... But China is in love with the QR code, so who knows how many years or decades it will take them to make their subway gates use fast NFC payments.
- s_dev 7y ago
  Both have advantages that make them complimentary identifiers and not actually that competitive with each other. Ultimately they promote each other rather than consuming each others market share and I see both last years and years in to the future. You can print a QR on paper. You can't do that with NFC. NFC works in low light conditions -- QRs typically don't. NFC chips have allocated uids -- QRs are mutable. NFC is expensive and QRs are cheap. QRs are universal while NFC is tightly controlled.
  - ryukafalz 7y ago
    >NFC chips have allocated uids -- QRs are mutable. NFC is mutable too; the low-cost unpowered chips you'll buy are mostly write-once read-many, but an NFC device with host card emulation can largely be whatever you want it to be. I suppose it's analogous to a QR code displayed on a screen vs. a printed QR code.
    - s_dev 7y ago
      >but an NFC device with host card emulation can largely be whatever you want it to be. Nope -- even host card emulation can't emulate the UID for obvious reasons. Hence making it controlled.
      - ryukafalz 7y ago
        Well sure, but it can emulate just about everything else. And if you're depending on the UID not being spoofable, well... https://www.aliexpress.com/popular/nfc-card-writable-uid.html https://www.aliexpress.com/popular/nfc-card-writable-uid.htm...
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ricardobeat 7y ago
Many, many years back (2011?) I and a few friends applied to YC with an eye on use cases like 1/8/12, but mostly focusing on enabling quick interactivity with storefront displays, billboards, and public screens in general. We didn't go through (our video was awful) and never carried on the idea, but almost a decade later I still feel there is a ton of yet-to-be-unlocked potential in this!
nikkwong 7y ago
I find Vxiaocheng's use of QR to be super interesting and something that I'd think is worthwhile to work on; QR reading is now native in android + iphone camera apps and this is an itch I've been looking to scratch for a long time. Anyone interested? I would think of expanding the application to restaurants, libraries, etc. I would be comfortable with design + engineering + product while mostly looking for a business developer to sell the product to customers.
- jimminator7 7y ago
  let’s chat. i’ve tried a couple qr-related early stage ideas this past year.
megaremote 7y ago
The rent-a-gym, I guess the west solves that by having gym equipment in a park? An interesting solution to a busy city.
andrewstuart 7y ago
Surprises me that YouTube videos don't use them - instead the YouTubers say: "click the link in the description" but I am always using a console to watch YouTube on TV from my couch, so I never click their link. Also free to air television never uses them. Also I've never seen one used on the giant screen at a sports game or concert. Also they could just be used for paying for anything at the checkout.
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ben_w 7y ago
Because it says “powerful” rather than “useful”, I was expecting this to be about surprising data types rather than business cases. For example, you can make a data URL containing JavaScript and turn that into a QR code: https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/executable-images/ https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/executable-... Some QR code readers execute that JavaScript. (Not all, fortunately).
- acbart 7y ago
  Hah! Reminds me of Piet: http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/piet.html http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/piet.html
  - pugworthy 7y ago
    Ok Piet is pretty sweet...
jcmontx 7y ago
I'm currently working on a QR product for small business and companies. I hope to launch in 6 weeks in my home country. QRs are truly powerful.
santojleo 7y ago
I’ve contemplated a startup that eliminates “checking in” a doctors office using paper or worse, a shared tablet, via QR code to personal smart phone form. Have at it hackers.
graciousbeast 7y ago
This is a fantastic post. I particularly love the analysis about how QR codes have been underestimated in the US market. Great work by Avery Segal! He's been doing some great things at a16z. Rising star in tech!
jstewartmobile 7y ago
every post from a16z makes me hate my own profession.
jillesvangurp 7y ago
I put a simple image on my homescreen with a QR code of my contact details some time ago. One thing I like to do when somebody asks me for my details is just show them the image and tell them to point their iphone camera at it. On Android, use Google Lense. The look on their faces when the phone offers to save the contact is priceless. Apple only added this feature fairly recently. So, people are mostly unaware of how convenient QR codes can be. Most people I do this to are completely unaware their phone can do this and it beats having to fumble with apps and mobile keyboards trying to figure out email addresses, phone numbers, etc. If you are interested; just google for qr code generator and contact and you will find dozens of sites offering that. There are plenty of libraries for generating QR codes client and server side. You can download them as pdf, png, svg, etc. I puth the document on my Google drive and created a short cut on my android phone.
- akrosis 7y ago
  Great idea. I just figured out my Xiaomi has a QR code option for each contact. It is also possible to share wifi passwords with QR codes.
- 0x38B 7y ago
  Really cool idea. I used Qrafter[1] to make a QR code from my contact. Uploaded the image to Google Drive, then dragged a GDrive widget onto my home screen on my Android phone for quick access to the QR code. Even cooler, on Sunday made friends with someone just back from teaching English in China, and at lunch we're exchanging phone numbers and I go, "Wait a minute..." and opened up the image. She scanned it and immediately demanded to know how I'd done it. Thanks for the tip! :) 1: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/qrafter-qr-code/id416098700 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/qrafter-qr-code/id416098700
samstave 7y ago
If you want some seriously powerful (and free) barcoding (including all forms of QR codes etc) software, PLEASE learn how to use Bartender by Seagull Scientific. Its incredibly powerful and superior-simplistic UI/UX to make really complex labels, barcodes, qrcodes, etc..etc..et... The free version is the full version, but you dont pay for the software - you pay for the PRINTER license. And the software is incredibly cheap. Its ~600 (but its $300 for the printer license and $300 for a year of full support (which is fantastic BTW) This is the pre-eminent labeling and coding software used for all cannabis compliance labels, among many other industries. Do yourself a favor and download it. One example for QR codes - is that you design a form (drag and drop fields onto a page. When you go to "print" the document, it will prompt you for the input data you want in each field and update the actual printed label as required. Tie it to Excel, SQL, ODBC others... Its powerful. https://portal.seagullscientific.com/downloads https://portal.seagullscientific.com/downloads --- OK cool, either this comment wasn't germane to the thread (QR Codes) or? What? You think im someone affiliated with Seagull? Nope. Just think people should have this great tool in their arsenal. Mkay?
nayuki 7y ago
Same link a day ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21398697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21398697
sriku 7y ago
++ India. QR codes are everywhere for payments due to NPCI's (national payments commission of India's) efforts with instant payments. Shops small and big today display a QR using which you can pay bank to bank without credit/debit card charges and interoperability between payment processing companies like Paytm is mandatory. The ad network and renting bikes and more recently charging electric scooters cases are also catching on.
jakeogh 7y ago
TIL you need to provide ID for TP in China.
dexen 7y ago
Always reminds me of the "Pictures of People Scanning QR-codes" blog >https://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/ https://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/
g8oz 7y ago
>>>"At scenic sites and public spaces nationwide, toilet paper is BYO. Those who come empty-handed can do a QR code or facial recognition scan to receive up to 31 inches of toilet paper." So hold on, if I don't have a working phone, I can't wipe my ass?

245 points by yarapavan 7y ago

> Because every scan is linked to the shopper’s online profile, the store collects valuable data to personalize its customer experience. No, thank you.

lol768 7y ago
>No, thank you. Do any shoppers actually want this? I have legitimately never walked into a supermarket and thought "Gee, the experience today just wasn't as personalised as it could've been. I'll go elsewhere next time".
- wccrawford 7y ago
  Plenty of people say it about the staff. I don't see why they couldn't come to expect the same about their digital experience as well.
  - iainmerrick 7y ago
    Personal interactions between a regular customer and regular staff are very different from interactions between a regular customer and a customer database. The digital version is much more one-sided. Some people may like this kind of personalization. I find it’s very rarely useful to me and very frequently intrusive.
- netsharc 7y ago
  I was in an airport in China, in the departures area. They had a screen showing a live video from a camera pointing at passer-bys, it said "Stand here, we'll scan your face and tell you how to get to your gate". I did, and it showed my name and where to go. But, when did I link my face to my boarding pass and agree to this "commercial" use by the airport? Before you enter China there are machines where you scan your passport, face, and fingerprints, so that's how they link faces to identities, but the example above shows the government gives this info out to... at least airport operators, but whom else?
  - ricardobeat 7y ago
    They don't need to give it to anyone, since they already operate everything.
- cuddlybacon 7y ago
  Depends what they use it for. So pretty much a 1% chance. If it offered things like how to get through the store faster based on what I buy, changes to the location of products I buy, or changes to open hours that are when I usually go. Instead it will probably just give ads for products it thinks I am slightly more likely that average to buy. So no thanks.
- diminoten 7y ago
  People very often do say the opposite, though. "Gee the experience today was very personalized, I'm definitely coming back next time!"
  - freehunter 7y ago
    A great, older, lower-tech example of this: I go to the store looking for Lays chips and they only have Ruffles. They're chips, sure, but I don't want Ruffles. I want Lays. I don't come back to that store because they don't have Lays. I go to the store next door, they have Lays. It's exactly what I wanted. I now come back to that store frequently. Store 1 has no way of knowing what I wanted or why I didn't come back. Store 2 has no way of knowing why I suddenly started coming to the store. I would still frequent Store 1 if they had the products I wanted. I only go to Store 2 because its (inadvertently) personalized for me.
- charwalker 7y ago
  Safeway tracks my buying habits and their app suggests coupons for products I buy often. It's probably a loss leader sales tactic but I manage my spending. If you are paying attention, there's (I think) a reasonable trade off by some companies. I'll take 3 minutes before each grocery trip to save $20+ a month via coupons in exchange for my purchasing history.
rainbowzootsuit 7y ago
Most of the store chain shopping reward programs will accept a phone number, so I'll use [Local Area Code] 867-5309. It's generally always setup for me already, but sometimes needs an override because it "was used too many times today."

matheusmoreira 7y ago

QR codes can also encode binary data. With structured append it's even possible to encode larger amounts of data as a series of QR codes. Open source decoders don't seem to support these features though. Could've been a great way to transfer small files.

makapuf 7y ago
What throughput do you think you could attain with manual scan ?
- netsharc 7y ago
  Not OP, but I'd imagine a lot, if the camera scans at 30fps, maybe be conservative and show the codes at 10fps.
  - arpa 7y ago
    ~30kb/s assuming the data density of 3kb per QR code. Not that much.
    - makapuf 7y ago
      I'd say I wont scan manually at 10 scans per seconds. I'd say 2 seconds per scan, which would be 1.5kbps. Not that much but quicker than typing.
kalleboo 7y ago
I've seen this show up on Hacker News before - transferring data via an animated series of QR codes https://github.com/divan/txqr https://github.com/divan/txqr
- matheusmoreira 7y ago
  Awesome project. I see it is based on ZXing. Do you know if it decodes binary data? I see there's support for multiple error correction levels in the qr/qr.go file but I don't see anything related to encoding modes, binary or otherwise. I assume it is defaulting to alphanumeric encoding. I'm asking because I'm not sure if ZXing supports decoding binary data to begin with. I know zbar doesn't: current versions seem to mangle the output by trying to convert it to UTF-8. I haven't tested ZXing yet. Also, is it using structured append mode or simply reading normal QR codes in a series and concatenating the data? Structured append mode QR codes have metadata such as an identifier for the sequence they're part of and as well as their position within it.

michaelt 7y ago

> Tip bar staff [...] Scan and shop anywhere [...] digital public transportation cards The thing that surprises me here isn't the success of QR codes, but the failure of NFC (and to a lesser extent Bluetooth) which was practically designed for paying with your phone. How did NFC lose out to QR codes at the application it was designed for? Was it a reliability problem? Were the APIs too locked-down for anyone to be able to work with them?

hav 7y ago
Pretty much any smartphone you've been able to buy for the past 10 years has had a camera, the same can't be said for NFC.
atoav 7y ago
My Alarm app has the functionality to remember a NFC or QR code that you need to scan in order to make it stop. Why did I go for a QR code? I can print a QR code, but I can’t print a NFC code.
- nidificate 7y ago
  But you can buy NFC tags for relatively cheap.
  - adolph 7y ago
    You go to market with the printer you have, not the gizmos you'd like you have. You'd wind up printing something anyway to let people know about the NFC tag. And if you are printing something out, you may as well just add a QR code for folks who like that method. There's a "if you give a yak a razor" joke in there somewhere.
  - atoav 7y ago
    I could, but printing a QR tag is even faster and cheaper, and there are no real benefits to the NFC in this case.
thinkingemote 7y ago

INTPenis 7y ago

Remember them? This wednesday I saw a giant QR code 2 meters high at a train station in Copenhagen. They're very much in use, everywhere. I fail to see how I'd forget about them. But without even reading the article I know that QR codes are only as powerful as the app that parses them. They can't do anything on their own, just convey a chunk of data to a reader. I believe they caught on more than NFC because they require so little. Just a camera, which is already present in all devices. While NFC is a much bigger decision to implement since its field of use is much more restricted.

paulgb 7y ago
They have (finally) snuck in to North American life, but it would still be unusual to see them on a billboard here. I find it interesting that most use cases in America involve transmitting information from a phone, rather than to it: boarding passes, event tickets, Amazon Prime codes at Whole Foods. The only exception I can think of off-hand where scanning the codes on a phone is common here is scooter rentals. I doubt the average person on the street here would know how to scan a QR code they encountered in the wild (as opposed to app-specific codes).
netsharc 7y ago
Also NFC wouldn't work with a billboard a few dozen meters away, but QR does. Although I find the stupid implementations funny, I've seen ads pasted on cars, they'd have super dense QR code, but maybe be the size of your palm.. uhm, if the idea is for people stuck in traffic around you to see them, they need to have less pixels or be bigger. Besides the dense QR codes are not just some domain, but usually is some ad agency who wants to track how many times the code has been scanned and how many times they've redirected people to the real URL, so they can charge the owner for the service of... having a QR code.
atoav 7y ago
I think you are right on track with your observation. Another thing I might add: QR codes can just be printed, by everybody with a printer. Designers don't need to think a lot about technical details, they just put the QR code into their layout and send it off to the printing press (or in fact the screen). Additionally because QR Codes are optical, it doesn't matter if you stand 20 meters away from the billboard if the QR code is big enough, while with NFC you would have to come close.

m-i-l 7y ago

"Nomophobia, the fear of low battery on phones, is virtually nonexistent in China, thanks to the widespread availability of power bank stations" Actually nomophobia is more than a fear of low battery - it is a fear of being without a working mobile phone, e.g. due to loss of phone, poor signal or low battery. It is more of a psychological condition, and proper treatment is to address the root cause rather than avoid the situation - it would be like saying heroin addiction is not a problem because there are heroin dealers on every street corner.

qplex 7y ago
I think this is a valid thing to worry about. It's almost the same thing as worrying about a car breaking down if you're 100 miles from the nearest town. Yet we don't have a specific "fobia" for that, because it's really not a mental disorder to worry about such things. So many things today depend on having a working mobile phone.
- donclark 7y ago
  Curious to hear your thoughts/experience about the 'many things today depend on having a working mobile phone'. I often do not carry a phone because I use my laptop at home/office to do most digital things.
  - qplex 7y ago
    Ah, you're right. So what I should have said is 'depend on having a working computer'. I can't even begin to list the things; everything.
  - trothamel 7y ago
    I'd say navigating on long road trips is one of them. While my current car has a built-in GPS, my previous one didn't, and so I was somewhat dependent on having a working phone in order to navigate. Now, only somewhat. I generally know how to get home from where I am, and I figure if my phone were to fail, I could drive until I could find a gas station with a map. (Or perhaps a convenience store to get a charger cable or new phone.) And of course, this fear (of being phoneless) is just an update of an old one (of being lost). It's really hard to get lost in the modern world of gps and data.

pacificleo12 7y ago

Alan Zhang of WeChat was prophetic when he said: “The entry point for PC internet is the search box. The entry point for mobile internet is the QR code

emilfihlman 7y ago

QR codes are awful at usability. Shortlinks are much, much better.

thiscatis 7y ago
Yeah, it's great UX to scan short links with your phone :)
- emilfihlman 7y ago
  And if your phone is broken? Or you want to share the resulting location? Do you share the QR-code? How about if your phone is charging somewhere else? Please. QR codes are awful and have huge issues and pitfalls.
_def 7y ago
I don't think that an average user wants to type in cryptic urls rather than simply scanning a code. At least, if they know what to do. But I don't know how the adoption rate for QR code scanning is. Do the stock android camera app and the ios camera support QR codes yet?
- kn0where 7y ago
  Stock iOS camera has supported QR codes for a few years now
- emilfihlman 7y ago
  No, Android has no built-in support. And if you break your camera, you can't use QR-codes. Happened to me with Whatsapp Web. Like I said, QR-codes are awful at usability and have extreme pitfalls. Shortlinks are quick, fast and concise and they take much less space. Also, shortlinks does not mean "cryptic urls". For example slush.org/L01 is much, much better and faster than some QR-code, it's wayyyy more accessible and also more shareable. You can also tell about it to people with just words that they can easily remember.

dirktheman 7y ago

I like the functionality of QR codes, but the fact that they're not human readeable makes them unsafe. It would'nt be unthinkable to make a QR-code, paste it over an existing one (for instance: the QR code in the bar to pay for a tip) and redirect the user to a spoof website where they can tip me instead of the bar/musician.

wccrawford 7y ago
My QR reader on Android (ZXing's Barcode Reader) shows you the information on the screen before you decide what you want to do with it. That's as "Human Readable" as it needs to be, for me.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  It's only helpful if you know what to expect. A side effect of adtech and surveillance mania infecting everything, URLs in QR codes are likely to be either semirandom strings with tracking IDs, or links to URL shorteners that expand to such semirandom strings with tracking IDs. Either is very trivial to spoof with a similar-looking malicious URL.
  - jakub_g 7y ago
    It's the same with or without the QR code. Say you're on the bus stop and want to check upcoming buses (real stuff in the place where I live). The bus company could either slap a QR code, or a "bit.ly/bus-stop-1234" URL. And someone could paste over it a "evil.com/bus-stop-1234". Hint: use Firefox Focus as your default handler for URLs on mobile phone. It clears all history and cookies after each usage, which is perfect for opening unknown URLs.
    - jschwartzi 7y ago
      I'm looking forward to 20 years from now when all QR codes have to be digitally signed to be valid, and the digital signature must be authorized by a certificate authority in your phone.

onion2k 7y ago

"Nomophobia, the fear of low battery on phones, is virtually nonexistent in China, thanks to the widespread availability of power bank stations" Perhaps I'm more paranoid than other people, but plugging your phone in to a public USB device seems incredibly dangerous to me. At the very least someone could have tampered with it to damage the next user's device, and at the worst it could be cloning your device's entire storage.

greenleafjacob 7y ago
You are best off buying a “USB condom”, a USB 2.0/3.0 connector with the data pins removed.
- Retric 7y ago
  An actual USB condom should also include a surge suppressor. However, the closest thing to that I have found is simple battery packs which can generally remove the need for 3rd party mid day charging.
- MereInterest 7y ago
  The problem there is that the USB standard requires the initial power transfer to be low amperage, and only switches to the high amperage mode on request, with the request being delivered over the data pins.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    USB condoms include a tiny chip that does the negotiation to get full power. Sometimes they even work better than the phone itself at getting the charger to give up the juice.
  - theamk 7y ago
    For up to 1 amp, three resistors is enough (that's how power banks work) -- and those easily fit inside the connector.
cs02rm0 7y ago

reportgunner 7y ago

What is this garbage top 10 article? I could as well say Remeber 1 and 0 ? They're more powerful than you think since all computers use them to store your virtual copy.

robjan 7y ago
I think they are talking about its usefulness as a cheap, easy, quick interface between computers and the physical world.
- reportgunner 7y ago
  Oh if they'd said useful I would stay quiet. The word they used was powerful I mean QR codes are just an encoded link, right ? What is the big deal ?
  - rootusrootus 7y ago
    > I mean QR codes are just an encoded link, right Encoded data. Could be a link. Could be WiFi credentials. Payment information. Any sort of identification code. Etc.

bryanlarsen 7y ago

Just as much an enabling technology as QR codes is the ubiquity and openness of WeChat/AliPay/Taobao, in my opinion.

_ph_ 7y ago

In short: QR codes are a great way of connecting arbitrary physical items with your smartphone and as a consequence with any kind of web service. A bit similar to NFC, but with some important differences: they don't require any electronics, work at any range (just make the QR code large enough) and they can be done either by print or displayed on a screen. Additionally, when scanning the QR-code, the user can see the URL it translates to. (Doesn't have to be URLs, but that is probably the most common usage). I am surprised, not more business cards have QR-codes printed on them with the important contact information. But for my personal use, I have a QR-code containing my email address as a picture on my phone, so I can display it for anyone to scan whom I want to give my address to.

cyborgx7 7y ago

It's still strange to me that android doesn't come with a simple qr reader. They did the right thing with the thousand crappy flashlight apps, and just integrated the functionality in the OS. They should do the same with QR code scanning.

quelltext 7y ago
Actually, I don't know which version they started but on my Pixel it's built into the Camera as well as the Lens app. When you point your phone camera to a QR code it'll show a description/link.
- cyborgx7 7y ago
  That's pretty neat! Good to know. Mine doesn't do it yet though. I'm also worried about discoverability if they don't give any indication that the camera has this feature.
- lozf 7y ago
  Same on my few years old MotoG4 ... but not a friends much newer Sony Experia. QR codes are really handy for connecting to Wifi, I have a shell alias that runs: qrencode -t utf8 "WIFI:T:WPA2;S:<Basestation-SSID>;P:<SecurePassw0rd>;;"
  - muxator 7y ago
    Nice! How do you consumer it on your phone (I suppose)? Is "WIFI:..." automatically passed to the network intent? Edit: just tried in ZXing QR code scanner on Android, I was too curious. After scanning the code, the proposed action that appears in the bottom part of the screen is "connect to network". It just works! Super useful, thanks!
chrsstrm 7y ago
Most android cameras recognize QR codes. Chrome has a QR code scanner built in, look for the icon at the top of the keyboard. Facebook has also had a scanner in their app for quite a while but of course that’s not native to Android.

Causality1 7y ago

I think the biggest problem QR codes had when it came to adoption is that phones, by default, don't come with software to read them. If every OEM camera app could read QR codes I think they'd be much more common.

FanaHOVA 7y ago
iPhones do it now, as well as some newer Android phones. They problem is that they don't tell you that :)

matt_the_bass 7y ago

My understanding of QR code’s is that they just are a machine readable string and that string is usually a URL. The phone then is responsible for parsing the string and doing something (like launching a browser/url or other installed app). So users are not paying by QR code, users are paying via a web app and Using the QR code to input the url for that app/item/quantity etc. Is my understanding incorrect?

strikelaserclaw 7y ago
You are right, a QR code can encode information about a bunch of transactions in an image, which is much easier for a person to use than do so manually through screens.
jakub_g 7y ago
Correct. My (wild guess) understanding is that QR codes took off in China because of widespread usage of WeChat, which is a do-all mobile app, including payments etc. If your QR code requires user to create an account in your webservice or install your native app to do anything useful, it does not bring much value, unless everyone around has your native app. Whereas if you integrate via a an app widely used by all people in the country (i.e. the QR code is a URL which opens the widely used app with certain parameters), you're more likely to have people use it. Classical chicken-and-egg problem and a situation where monopolies do better than a fragmented market.
- godot 7y ago
  That's one use case; the other use case that's less talked about is when you use an app where you need to log in on more than 1 device. WhatsApp and WhatsApp Web's QR login is a good example. One of my side projects, http://karaoke.house/ http://karaoke.house/ does something similar as well.
matheusmoreira 7y ago
Standard QR codes can encode numeric, alphanumeric, kanji and binary data. Alphanumeric is the simplest, well supported and most widely used encoding mode. QR code size increases with the amount of data they contain. The larger versions take up lots of space and can be awkward to use. URLs are popular since they're usually small.

deleted 7y ago

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pmoriarty 7y ago

I just found "The Barcode Book" in my local library, and it was pretty cool to see dozens of different barcode schemes out there, all with different properties. The world of interesting, useful barcodes is much larger than QR codes.

0x38B 7y ago

I use QR codes to quickly share a URL (or text) with my Android phone from my iPad. The Shortcut is simple and easy to use (1). If I wanted to do the same thing on Android, I'd use Termux (2). --- My 'Universal Clipboard' is a text file on a VPS. My devices set or get the contents via SSH. E.g. Android[Termux SSH] > VPS < iOS[Shortcuts 'Run Script over SSH']. Comes in handy! 1: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/2190aca622b948258a9024d8dda78b9f https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/2190aca622b948258a9024d8dda... 2: https://termux.com/ https://termux.com/

rz2k 7y ago
I used QR odes for the same sort of thing, but Firefox sync has gotten so good at sending tabs to specific devices, including a desktop that might not have a convenient camera, that it's even more convenient.
- jraph 7y ago
  In the "now that I think about it, it was silly" category, I "copy pasted" a mail using QR Codes from the computer to the phone while in a train. I could send the mail from the phone, but it was more convenient to type it with the computer. KDE Plasma provides a QR Code for anything not too big you copy-pasted by clicking on an icon. "It should be more convenient than using the computer as a Wi-Fi hotspot for the phone, which is a two clicks operation, right?" Wrong. It was painful. We should reuse the idea of Quiet.js, seen today on HN [1], to solve this kind of situation. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21415946 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21415946
  - raksoras 7y ago
    Shameless plug: http://zipl.ink http://zipl.ink is the bookmarklet I use for the exact same purpose which also keeps record of the interesting links I zipped to my phone locally as a nice side effect
- OrgNet 7y ago
  I love Firefox sync, mostly to share tabs to any of my devices but also to access history/bookmarks

ldiracdelta 7y ago

I'd guess that they're not used more in the US because of patent trolls.

novok 7y ago

QR codes are not good for high throughput situations, like subway gates although: https://atadistance.net/2019/08/13/transit-gate-evolution-do-qr-codes-suck-for-transit/ https://atadistance.net/2019/08/13/transit-gate-evolution-do... But China is in love with the QR code, so who knows how many years or decades it will take them to make their subway gates use fast NFC payments.

s_dev 7y ago
Both have advantages that make them complimentary identifiers and not actually that competitive with each other. Ultimately they promote each other rather than consuming each others market share and I see both last years and years in to the future. You can print a QR on paper. You can't do that with NFC. NFC works in low light conditions -- QRs typically don't. NFC chips have allocated uids -- QRs are mutable. NFC is expensive and QRs are cheap. QRs are universal while NFC is tightly controlled.
- ryukafalz 7y ago
  >NFC chips have allocated uids -- QRs are mutable. NFC is mutable too; the low-cost unpowered chips you'll buy are mostly write-once read-many, but an NFC device with host card emulation can largely be whatever you want it to be. I suppose it's analogous to a QR code displayed on a screen vs. a printed QR code.
  - s_dev 7y ago
    >but an NFC device with host card emulation can largely be whatever you want it to be. Nope -- even host card emulation can't emulate the UID for obvious reasons. Hence making it controlled.
    - ryukafalz 7y ago
      Well sure, but it can emulate just about everything else. And if you're depending on the UID not being spoofable, well... https://www.aliexpress.com/popular/nfc-card-writable-uid.html https://www.aliexpress.com/popular/nfc-card-writable-uid.htm...

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ricardobeat 7y ago

Many, many years back (2011?) I and a few friends applied to YC with an eye on use cases like 1/8/12, but mostly focusing on enabling quick interactivity with storefront displays, billboards, and public screens in general. We didn't go through (our video was awful) and never carried on the idea, but almost a decade later I still feel there is a ton of yet-to-be-unlocked potential in this!

nikkwong 7y ago

I find Vxiaocheng's use of QR to be super interesting and something that I'd think is worthwhile to work on; QR reading is now native in android + iphone camera apps and this is an itch I've been looking to scratch for a long time. Anyone interested? I would think of expanding the application to restaurants, libraries, etc. I would be comfortable with design + engineering + product while mostly looking for a business developer to sell the product to customers.

jimminator7 7y ago
let’s chat. i’ve tried a couple qr-related early stage ideas this past year.

megaremote 7y ago

The rent-a-gym, I guess the west solves that by having gym equipment in a park? An interesting solution to a busy city.

andrewstuart 7y ago

Surprises me that YouTube videos don't use them - instead the YouTubers say: "click the link in the description" but I am always using a console to watch YouTube on TV from my couch, so I never click their link. Also free to air television never uses them. Also I've never seen one used on the giant screen at a sports game or concert. Also they could just be used for paying for anything at the checkout.

deleted 7y ago

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ben_w 7y ago

Because it says “powerful” rather than “useful”, I was expecting this to be about surprising data types rather than business cases. For example, you can make a data URL containing JavaScript and turn that into a QR code: https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/executable-images/ https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/executable-... Some QR code readers execute that JavaScript. (Not all, fortunately).

acbart 7y ago
Hah! Reminds me of Piet: http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/piet.html http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/piet.html
- pugworthy 7y ago
  Ok Piet is pretty sweet...

jcmontx 7y ago

I'm currently working on a QR product for small business and companies. I hope to launch in 6 weeks in my home country. QRs are truly powerful.

santojleo 7y ago

I’ve contemplated a startup that eliminates “checking in” a doctors office using paper or worse, a shared tablet, via QR code to personal smart phone form. Have at it hackers.

graciousbeast 7y ago

This is a fantastic post. I particularly love the analysis about how QR codes have been underestimated in the US market. Great work by Avery Segal! He's been doing some great things at a16z. Rising star in tech!

jstewartmobile 7y ago

every post from a16z makes me hate my own profession.

jillesvangurp 7y ago

I put a simple image on my homescreen with a QR code of my contact details some time ago. One thing I like to do when somebody asks me for my details is just show them the image and tell them to point their iphone camera at it. On Android, use Google Lense. The look on their faces when the phone offers to save the contact is priceless. Apple only added this feature fairly recently. So, people are mostly unaware of how convenient QR codes can be. Most people I do this to are completely unaware their phone can do this and it beats having to fumble with apps and mobile keyboards trying to figure out email addresses, phone numbers, etc. If you are interested; just google for qr code generator and contact and you will find dozens of sites offering that. There are plenty of libraries for generating QR codes client and server side. You can download them as pdf, png, svg, etc. I puth the document on my Google drive and created a short cut on my android phone.

akrosis 7y ago
Great idea. I just figured out my Xiaomi has a QR code option for each contact. It is also possible to share wifi passwords with QR codes.
0x38B 7y ago
Really cool idea. I used Qrafter[1] to make a QR code from my contact. Uploaded the image to Google Drive, then dragged a GDrive widget onto my home screen on my Android phone for quick access to the QR code. Even cooler, on Sunday made friends with someone just back from teaching English in China, and at lunch we're exchanging phone numbers and I go, "Wait a minute..." and opened up the image. She scanned it and immediately demanded to know how I'd done it. Thanks for the tip! :) 1: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/qrafter-qr-code/id416098700 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/qrafter-qr-code/id416098700

samstave 7y ago

If you want some seriously powerful (and free) barcoding (including all forms of QR codes etc) software, PLEASE learn how to use Bartender by Seagull Scientific. Its incredibly powerful and superior-simplistic UI/UX to make really complex labels, barcodes, qrcodes, etc..etc..et... The free version is the full version, but you dont pay for the software - you pay for the PRINTER license. And the software is incredibly cheap. Its ~600 (but its $300 for the printer license and $300 for a year of full support (which is fantastic BTW) This is the pre-eminent labeling and coding software used for all cannabis compliance labels, among many other industries. Do yourself a favor and download it. One example for QR codes - is that you design a form (drag and drop fields onto a page. When you go to "print" the document, it will prompt you for the input data you want in each field and update the actual printed label as required. Tie it to Excel, SQL, ODBC others... Its powerful. https://portal.seagullscientific.com/downloads https://portal.seagullscientific.com/downloads --- OK cool, either this comment wasn't germane to the thread (QR Codes) or? What? You think im someone affiliated with Seagull? Nope. Just think people should have this great tool in their arsenal. Mkay?

nayuki 7y ago

Same link a day ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21398697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21398697

sriku 7y ago

++ India. QR codes are everywhere for payments due to NPCI's (national payments commission of India's) efforts with instant payments. Shops small and big today display a QR using which you can pay bank to bank without credit/debit card charges and interoperability between payment processing companies like Paytm is mandatory. The ad network and renting bikes and more recently charging electric scooters cases are also catching on.

jakeogh 7y ago

TIL you need to provide ID for TP in China.

dexen 7y ago

Always reminds me of the "Pictures of People Scanning QR-codes" blog >https://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/ https://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/

g8oz 7y ago

>>>"At scenic sites and public spaces nationwide, toilet paper is BYO. Those who come empty-handed can do a QR code or facial recognition scan to receive up to 31 inches of toilet paper." So hold on, if I don't have a working phone, I can't wipe my ass?