Google slaps barcodey stickers on Favourite Places Google has sent out 100,000 window stickers to US businesses, proclaiming them to be Favourite Places and providing a QR Code for a quick link to information and reviews. The QR Code is a variant on the traditional barcode, and readable by the majority of smartphones using the camera, the codes sent out to businesses link to a …
If the opening hours aren't on the door, you could be really retro and, like, try the door to see if it's open. Then if you want to go in and conduct some form of transaction, or just look around, you can! But maybe I'm getting a little too over-engineered with this advice ... ?
(It may indeed be true, as I've occasionally had people poke their head into our brightly-lit shop with the big OPEN sign on the door and ask "Excuse me, are you open?")
I quite like the idea of mobile barcodes, not just for acquiring URLs but also for passing contact details into phones - but are many people using them? Maybe Google's Place Pages will make mobile barcodes a bit more popular.
Of course, there's nothing to stop businesses using mobile barcodes in adverts of various kinds as way of passing their website URL, phone numbers or a URL to a map of their location - it isn't limited to Google's Place Pages.
This is great news - I've been playing around with this system ever since it came out, so its gratifying to see someone using it. The problem up until now has been that it requires a software download to your phone, and I understand the majority of punters can't or won't do this. Now that someone as big as Google's involved, handset manufacturers will hopefully get a clue and pre-install it.
@g e .. how about using the barcode to access a web page that lets you check stock/order stuff when the shop's closed?
I cant imagine any information that would be on the app that wouldn't be on the store front or obtained simply by asking someone in the place (assuming its open).
However, for google this presents a decent opportunity to datamine people's brick and mortar shopping habits.
My shop sign has my web address on it - a nice, short, simple address that you can just type into any web browser to get my opening times, order stuff when I'm closed, stuff like that.
A lot easier than trying to photograph a barcode, then getting a custom bit of software on a phone to decode that barcode, then using that to open a webpage.
It really isn't that hard to do.
You don't actually photograph it you just point your camera at the code and it scans it and takes you to the website with one click.
A lot easier than typing in a web address of any kind.
It also allows your premises to look a bit cutting edge and get people interested in the technology.
I use these codes all the time for accessing Android based web pages or downloading apps.
Imagine the scenario where you are looking at nice restaurants to book or eat at the next night when on holiday. You can scan the code, check the review, get all the contact details saved automatically and the location will be stored so you can remember exactly where it was. Put the code on your website and if I book your hotel I can scan the code and have the location on my phone which I can then navigate to using google maps.
quote: Imagine the scenario where you are looking at nice restaurants to book or eat at the next night when on holiday. You can scan the code, check the review, get all the contact details saved automatically and the location will be stored so you can remember exactly where it was. Put the code on your website and if I book your hotel I can scan the code and have the location on my phone which I can then navigate to using google maps.
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surely the code is redundant and Google maps can do all this from its knowledge of where you are
try it - show a piece of map, type in hotel or petrol or whatever you're looking for, choose one nearby, click on it for details, phone number, reviews, website links ...
are we supposed to have forgotten this?
So I'm standing outside a coffee shop in the Angel, Islingtron, and see a dot pattern.
I photograph it, send it to google, and it says "you are outside a coffee shop in the Angel, Islington"
If this is regarded as cool technology, then I give up. If this is the best we can use all this silicon for, after years of effort, then.. well I don't know what.
I like the new spiffing "voting" system on this and other pages. Problem is, after voting I appear to have to press the "Go back" button on the browser and then refresh the page to see my vote. Isn't this a little clumsy?
Perhaps I missed something but a return to the page of comments button that automatically refreshed the pages, somewhere near the "Your vote will be there in a minute" comment would have been nice. But why not just register the vote without going to another page at all? Other sites manage this better.
With devices getting smaller and people getting fatter (with fatter fingers), typing the web address and opening times into a notepad is becoming a problem.
Wonderful. Now you can capture all the details in seconds. Yes, you can look up the website, but who wants to stand outside a restaurant in the freezing cold typing the web address and searching google for reviews. Yes, you can ask someone, but you either need a good memory, or you need to write it down.
Isn't life so much easier when the information is just there. Instantly!
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