30 September 2008

Mobile Technology


Ubiquitous…pervasive…omnipresent these words are all used to describe mobile technology. Though the term is generally associated with mobile phone technology, and how can it not be with statistics like 2 Billion mobile phones compared to 900 million PCs http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=7iAyC1vyJ44mobile devices and there capability and potential fall into a variety of categories. We began our Multimedia Pioneering course by defining the two terms that constitute the name of the course, in that light I turn to http://www..dictionary.com/to define mobile technology:

  • Mobile: Definition
    • capable of moving or being moved readily
    • capable of changing quickly from one state or condition to another
  • Technology: Definition
    • the branch of knowledge that deals with the creation and use of technical means and their interrelation with life, society, and the environment

On October 24th, James Eberhardt of Echo Mobile generously volunteered his time to speak to our class. James is a a Technical Director with over 13 years of experience of leading convergent media projects. He spoke to us regarding QR (quick response) Code; a technology firmly ensconced in Japan, has acquired a foothold in Europe, and is in the early stages of dipping its toes in North American waters. QR Code is a bar code; it differs from standard UPC bars found on products today as it is two-dimensional. A URL, business card, message (up to 7500 text characters) or image (7k jpg) is encoded along an X and Y access.

A mobile phone equipped with a camera and QR Code generator (provided by the mobile phone provider or downloaded by the user, snaps a picture of (or sometimes scans in real time) the encoded square. The reader decrypts the QR Code for the user. The following URL provides a demonstration http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=uf_DNHPBV-s

QR Codes have been used to encode Wikipedia articles http://www.semapedia.org/,in contests http://www.cbc.ca/theborder/blog/2008/01/annoucing_winner_2_for_1000_at.html, city walking tours http://mobilestance.com/2008/03/28/san-francisco-the-plymouth-rock-of-qr-codes/, billboard advertising http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=EBja1blJ3GU, ticket purchases (both concert and airline) http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=BDop0sqOR2E, loyalty programs http://theponderingprimate.blogspot.com/2006/08/coke-uses-qr-codes-for-mobile.html, gaming http://qrcode.es/?p=209&language=en, and matrix tracking as in the example James gave about the Australian wine company who used QR Codes to geographically tract from where people were coming to their websites.

As is evidenced by the aforementioned examples the potential for QR Code is vast yet for a technology which is meant to act as a quick way to retain information on the go the it is not without its inherent problems, some of which James touched on. For example, multiple readers, which decode different things i.e. one reader for QR Code images another for text as opposed to a single reader that can read all. James pointed out like with most applications, the majority of end users will use what has been made available for them by their mobile phone provider. However, as most mobile phones are not yet generally equipped with QR Code readers the onus is currently on the end user to download the reader and it is inconvenient to download and configure multiple readers. Another issue is how the decoded QR Codes are stored, neither the phones nor the readers have a convenient way of storing the generated material, though one can save the material to a bookmark on del.icio.us it still requires the end user to make the second step of going to del.icio.us to retrieve the link, image etc. Marketers could potentially loose a percentage of users because of the extra step or because they download so many QR Codes that they can’t easily find the one they are looking for a second time. Additional issues with QR code can be found at http://www.canadianmarketingblog.com/archives/2007/08/qr_codes_aka_3_d_codes_the_hol_1.html.

As I mentioned above mobile technology is more then just mobile phones. Below is a list of links for other mobile applications, I do not elaborate in detail because they were not the focus of James presentation but I do feel they are worth noting.

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