Google Puts Bar Codes On Favorites

Posted on December 12, 2009 by Barry Welford

These barcodes are not those Google was celebrating back in October. That marked the 57th anniversary of the first patent on the bar code.

Its inventors were Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver, who filed the patent in October 1949, which was granted in October 1952. The original patent suggested encoding data in circles (a bulls eye pattern), so that it could be scanned in any direction.

Now Google has moved on to squaring that circle and is offering stickers bearing Google’s logo and a QR code. QR stands for Quick Response.

What could be easier. Your phone must be able to scan a QR code with its camera, either with an application that you download or via software that’s already installed on your phone.

When you see a QR code, you can then use your phone’s application to scan it. If you’re scanning a QR code on one of the window decals that Google has sent to thousands of U.S. businesses, you’ll quickly be taken to that business’ mobile Place Page on Google.

This is a way in which Google is promoting its local business listings in storefronts around the U.S. with QR codes.

favorite barcode

Stickers have been distributed to 100,000 of the most popular businesses in Google’s Local Business Center database. Starting this week consumers will be able to use code-scanning applications on modern phones to look up the Google listing for a particular restaurant, store, or dry cleaner. The stickers will be prominently displayed in store windows of participating businesses, and represent a shot across the bow of companies like Yelp which offer similar branded services.

As Bill Slawski points out there is one question that needs to be asked. Why would Google rely upon stickers for a system like this instead of using something like Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) information, or cell phone triangulation, or some other method that would avoid the need to use your phone’s camera to take an actual picture?

According to a Google patent just filed, GPS systems have some limitations, such as:

Subscription to a GPS navigation system may be expensive, and difficult to use
GPS Functionality requires unobstructed skyward views, which may not be possible in some places, like metropolitan areas with skyscrapers
Privacy concerns with GPS may keep some people from using a device that permits precise tracking of their location without their consent

Barcodes stickers are not limited to just the windows of businesses. They could also be located on the pavement of parking lots or on signs associated with those lots, near the entrance to an office building, on a traffic light pole, at or near the base of a monument, or in many other places. … and of course they can be of any size. It’s all just another way that mobile world is becoming so very much easier.

Technorati Tags: barcode, camera, mobile phone, scan

Mobile Device Screen Resolution – here’s looking at you

Posted on November 18, 2009 by Barry Welford

As might have been expected, mobile device screens keep getting smaller even though desktop monitor screens get bigger. That paradox is one that is difficult to avoid. Mobile devices are becoming ever more popular and must be highly transportable. That gives you two problems

The keyboard
The screen

The keyboard is an easy one to resolve since voice control can provide an ideal input method. Indeed smart phones are designed to handle voices so what could be better.

The screen is an entirely different problem. It might appear that mobile web pages must be small. However desktop screens show what the user really wants. Much more information and much more interactivity with a higher content of a whole variety of multimedia experiences.

What could be the answer? Perhaps the words of that Peter Gabriel song may give a clue, In Your Eyes.

If you consider that difficult to believe, consider the words of an informed spectator of the digital world. Robert X. Cringely suggests that the solution is Pictures in Our Heads. He too sees a huge growth for mobile devices since the purchasing cycle is rapid and new technology comes along very fast. Reluctantly he accepts the voice control approach to inputting data as we struggle with an ever diminishing keyboard.

Where he opens up a whole new way of thinking is when it comes to that mobile screen.

We’re at the point right now where primitive single-pixel displays can be built into contact lenses. They act as user interfaces for experimental devices like automatic insulin pumps. This already exists. A patch of carbon nanotubes on your arm continuously monitor blood glucose levels, driving a pump that keeps your insulin supply right where it should be. Any problem with the pump or the levels is shown by a red dot that appears in your field of view courtesy of that contact lens. The data connection between pump and eyeball is wireless. The power to run that display is wireless too, since the contact lens display scavenges RF energy out of the air to run, courtesy of that mobile phone on your belt and that WiFi access point on the ceiling.

While that display is a single pixel today, we can pretty easily predict at what point it could be the equivalent of HDTV. Except I don’t expect we’ll ever get there.

Shortly we will communicate with our devices, I predict, through our thoughts. By 2029 (and probably a lot sooner) we’ll think our input and see pictures in our heads.

In other words, we avoid the need for mechanical devices between our neural circuits and our smart devices. Both ways communication will occur directly from your brain waves to the Internet via wireless transmissions. Only twenty years to get there but perhaps that is a very feasible scenario.

Technorati Tags: Mobile Device, mobile phone, Peter Gabriel, User interface

Canadian Cell Phone Rates Throttle Mobile Web Innovation

Posted on August 14, 2009 by Barry Welford

Canadians pay among the highest cellphone rates in the western world, according to a new international report by the OECD that has reignited calls for greater competition and regulation in Canada’s wireless sector.

Any way you slice it, technology consultant Jesse Hirsh said Canadians aren’t getting a good deal from the country’s three large carriers because the trio — Telus, Rogers and Bell — make up an oligopoly that “are all ex-monopolies and they think and act like monopolies. They’re less interested in innovation and more interested in the least amount of effort that they can make to charge the highest price.”

That is why the iPhone was so long delayed here in Canada and you should not expect that the exciting innovation represented by Google Voice will be available in Canada anytime soon.

The Mobile Web is a major sector for technological investment and innovation. It is heart-breaking that Canadian involvement is severely weakened by the dog-in-the-manger attitude of the Canadian cellphone oligopoly. Their short-sighted focus on maximising short term revenues from existing customers does both them and the Canadian economy a major disservice. One can only hope that the Canadian Government puts a high priority on changing this situation. In terms of reward on effort, it would be one of the most important dossiers they have.

Canadian cellphone rates among worst in world (cbc.ca)

Technorati Tags: Bell, Canada, mobile phone, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Rogers, Telus

Time For A Mobile Website

Posted on May 7, 2009 by Barry Welford

Angie Haggstrom makes some interesting points in her article, Optimize Your Mobile Website And Stop Losing Money! on SEO Scoop. A recent Orange research study on mobile marketing had some results that may surprise you. After following the habits of over 2,000 mobile surfers and looking at both quality and quantity, here are a few of the findings that I found surprising:

Picture MMS and Bluetooth are the top two uses of mobile media. Using the Internet came in fourth.
81% of users access mobile media at least once per week mostly from home.
Users feel content should be made specifically for mobile phones.
72% of all mobile users place an emphasis on consistency and clarity.

She then goes on to give some great advice on how to monetize this explosively growing Mobile Web. According to her, it is all about immediacy. The written content should be rich in active verbs to produce powerful sentences and encourage visitors to take action. Lastly, you might also want to consider trigger words such as ‘fast’, ‘easy’, ’simple’, and ‘free’ (who doesn’t like something that’s fast, easy, simple, and free??)

That very same thinking has triggered the new SMM mobile website, Smart Tips. It is designed for mobile devices with any web page having only 100 words or less. It is designed to show on a regular PC how it will appear on a 320px width screen. It is also linking with the Local Business theme since that is where you will see the biggest impact of the Mobile Web. These are exciting times and there is much to learn.

Technorati Tags: mobile phone, website

Mobile Web Pages Must Be Small

Posted on April 28, 2009 by Barry Welford

Two news items about the Mobile Web bring to mind that troubling truth about Screen Resolution. It is like the Gordian knot of web development.

Web designers now regard the minimum screen resolution for a desktop PC as 1024 pixels by 768 pixels. On the other hand (most appropriately), a smart phone may be as large as 480 pixels by 320 pixels. Looking at the cell phone, you are down to possibly 128 pixels by 160 pixels.

The mathematics of this mean that if you try to look at a desktop PC web page on your smart phone you must scroll down 5 times as much as you did on the PC. The cell phone is even worse forcing you to scroll down 38 times as much.

Nevertheless, the word is that The Mobile Web is the New Hangout. One indicator is that the Opera Mini Browser Sees ‘Explosive Growth’

Opera claims that the browser has seen a whopping 157% year-over-year growth, with more than 23 million people using Opera Mini in March 2009. This represents a 12.1% increase from February 2009 and more than 157% up from March 2008. The page view figures are impressive too, with users viewing more than 8.6 billion pages during March 2009, up 17.4 per cent on the previous month, with year over year page views increasing 255%.

We can assume that this did not involve all that scrolling down that would be involved if they are looking at desktop PC designed web pages.

Not surprisingly given this explosive growth, the BBC is asking, Is the mobile web coming of age? The article has some most interesting quotes.

EBay’s senior director of platforms and mobile Max Mancini states:

The first hype cycle on mobile failed because people wanted to recreate the desktop on the phone. The mobile device is not an alternative view into the web. It is a different experience. It might be an extension to different things on the web, but the real winning application on mobile will be the things that will be very unique to what you can get from a mobile device like the camera, the location, the address book and the communications.

Ernest Doku, of comparison site Omio.com, agrees:

We should not be looking at replicating the desktop on mobile. What people want on their phone is very different from what they want to experience seated in front of a PC.

Others are of a like mind. One of the most insightful comments is from Sir Tim Berners Lee, who told the BBC:

In developing countries it’s going to be exciting because the Mobile Web is the only way that a lot of people will actually get to see the Internet at all.

Google’s vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra said the migration to mobile was a natural progression for the world’s leader in internet search.

The entire world is moving to mobile and mobile is the most personal of all personal computers. This year we are going to sell more internet-connected phones as an industry than the entire notebook market. These devices will become our agents, support us with advice, be our friends.

The explosive growth is not new. Last year it was noted that Small sites drive big traffic on the mobile Web. The question was asked whether website owners were ready for the Mobile Web, which was the Next Big Thing.

The preferred solution at that time was to design websites with The One Web Principle in mind. By a process of Adaptation, the website would deliver the appropriate web page content dependent on the mobile device that was attempting to display the web page.

That is a very challenging approach. Clearly there are some things that should be avoided in mobile web design. Some major effort must be invested if Web Sites Are To Adapt to Mobile Access.

Perhaps a surer route is the approach that some adopt, which is to have a number of parallel websites, each designed for a particular range of devices. It is what has been called The Multi-Web Practice.

Follow the Mobile User (techcrunchit.com)

Technorati Tags: mobile phone, mobile Web, Opera Mini, Personal computer, Tim Berners Lee

Watch That Tag

Posted on February 25, 2009 by Barry Welford

Tagging is one of the most overused words there is. As an indication, Google finds 1.29 billion web pages with the word tag thereon. Not too many other words have that kind of usage. Most of those tags relate to cyberspace but increasingly visual tags are to be seen.

That process will be ramping up significantly with the introduction of the Microsoft tag. The Microsoft tag is visual and consists of a box featuring fifty multicolored triangles. It has similarities to a barcode but with much more sophistication. You start by downloading the free Tag application to your phone by visiting Gettag.mobi on your phone. Besides Windows Mobile phones, the software is available for the iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian phones, and any handset OS based on J2ME.

By snapping a picture of a Tag – or in some cases merely hovering over the image until it fills the target area displayed on your viewfinder — your phone will do whatever the Tag tells it to do. That can include launching a URL, dialing a phone number, downloading a V-card to your address book, or displaying a text message. If a You can also password-protect tags, so only folks in the know can unlock the data they hold.

If you are not ready for that kind of tag, then perhaps a simpler name tag can do as much for you as it seems to be doing for Scott Ginsberg, the self-named Name Tag Guy. What is the value of being approachable? What would happen if you wore a nametag all the time?

Scott Ginsberg knows this works. He has now won a name tag every day for over eight years two months and counting — more than 3,000 days in a row. He’s the world’s record holder. He’s even had his nametag tattooed on his chest. This high energy marketing student turned entrepreneur and author of numerous books is now walking talking life changing expert on approachability and the good fortune it brings.

For more information visit http://www.hellomynameisscott.com

Playing Tag with Microsoft (jkontherun.com)

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, mobile phone, tag, watch, Windows Mobile

The NOW Web Is Not The Mobile Web

Posted on February 18, 2009 by Barry Welford

The NOW Web is a new term to describe the cyberspace collection of all the information packages that may be currently flying around “online”. Some may assume that must be the same as the Mobile Web. This is not the case.

The Mobile Web is a subset of the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web is all those online properties that are accessible once you know their Universal Resource Identifier (URI). The Mobile Web is that section of WWW.that is accessible if you are using a mobile device. The Mobile Web is thus defined by the hardware used to connect with it. It is concerned with online properties that have a URI.

The World Wide Web itself is a subset of the NOW Web. The NOW Web is intended to signify all those information packages or what might be called Instants that are currently available either via the Internet or perhaps via a telephone circuit or a cell phone wireless connection. It might be an RSS news feed, or a request to get involved in a Google Chat, or even an indication that one of your Facebook friends has come online.

Clearly any Instants that you may be interested in should be accessible to you and ideally you should be made aware of their creation (via alerts) and of their ongoing existence. The NOW Web is therefore defined by the interests of users or consumers. It could be seen as a user-centric defined concept. There are many technical challenges in working with this expanded NOW Web. However this way of picturing the flux of information flow may suggest creative ways of better fulfilling consumers’ needs. This NOW Web way of looking at the online scene was suggested by the way in which Twitter has so grabbed people’s attention and interest.

Footnote: It should be mentioned that this use of the term, NOW Web, is much bigger than that suggested by Vaibhav Domkundwar. The concepts are very much related, but this bigger use may suggest more interesting technical solutions.

A fitter Twitter? (news.bbc.co.uk)

Technorati Tags: Facebook, mobile phone, NOW web, Twitter, World Wide Web

Voices mumble, fingers fumble

Posted on November 19, 2008 by Barry Welford

John Markoff in his New York Times blog post, Google, iPhone and the Future of Machines That Listen, raises some important issues. He is talking about Google’s new speech recognition service for the iPhone, which was released on Monday.

He suggests that it will understand you most accurately when you speak to it just the way you enter queries into the Google search box. .. The accuracy is far from 100 percent, and probably not even 95 percent (Google execs demurred when I asked if they had any meaningful accuracy statistics). My experience is that it captures your voice query substantially more than half the time, and that in itself is a revelation.

More and more people seem to be finding that voice recognition systems can often do the job. As cell phones become smaller, it seems likely that speech technology will become the preferred way to input instructions and questions.

Another important influence here may be changing population age structure. Senior citizens may prefer to talk to their cell phone, rather than trying to hit those incredibly tiny buttons. Even if someone mumbles, what they say includes extremely rich data. With the right software, the cell phone can undoubtedly figure out what is wanted. At worst it can ask a question or questions for greater precision.

On the other hand (no pun intended), if you hit the wrong key, the cell phone may still assume that this was intentional. Trying to figure out when the cell phone should question you on whether you intended to hit that key would not be easy. It would also lead to much frustration as the cell phone refused to accept your command.

There are challenges either way, but I believe those facing speech technology will prove to be solvable in very user friendly ways. With all the resources the big guns are applying here, it is likely that acceptable, commercial solutions will be seen within 18 months

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Technorati Tags: Google Search, iPhone, mobile phone, New York Times, Speech recognition

Future Mobile Phone Online Banking Now

Posted on September 27, 2008 by Barry Welford

Your cellphone can be your RBC ATM

Could your cell phone become your ATM (automatic teller machine)? RBC Royal Bank seems to be moving in that direction. There’s a new mobile payment system by RBC that lets users text money from their mobile phones.

Already, more than 1,100 people have signed up for the RBC Mobex mobile payment service, which was launched last Tuesday for a trial run that wraps up in January with a consumer pilot program yet to be announced. In another technological advance in the works, RBC is lab-testing a system that would let users pay by waving their cellphones at the checkout instead of using a Visa credit card for small purchases.

It almost seems to be beyond the mobile future that Andy Rubin, Engineering Director, of Google foresees:

Smart alerts:: Your phone will be smart about your situation and alert you when something needs your attention.
Augmented reality:: Your phone uses its arsenal of sensors to understand your situation and provide you information that might be useful.
Crowd sourcing goes mainstream:: Your phone is your omnipresent microphone to the world, a way to publish pictures, emails, texts, Twitters, and blog entries.
Sensors everywhere:: Your phone knows a lot about the world around you.
Tool for development:: Your phone may be more than just a convenience, it may be your livelihood.
The future-proof device:: Your phone will open up, as the Internet already has, so it will be easy for developers to create or improve applications and content.
Safer software through trust and verification:: Your phone will provide tools and information to empower you to decide what to download, what to see, and what to share.

As Rubin mentions, already there is a incredible acceptance of the mobile phone as a necessary life support system:

There are currently about 3.2 billion mobile subscribers in the world, and that number is expected to grow by at least a billion in the next few years. Today, mobile phones are more prevalent than cars (about 800 million registered vehicles in the world) and credit cards (only 1.4 billion of those). While it took 100 years for landline phones to spread to more than 80% of the countries in the world, their wireless descendants did it in 16. So it’s safe to say that the mobile phone may be the most prolific consumer product ever invented.

Who could argue with that prognosis?

Technorati Tags: Andy Rubin, Automated teller machine, cellphone, future, mobile phone, online banking, Royal Bank of Canada

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Tag Archives: mobile phone

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Canadian Cell Phone Rates Throttle Mobile Web Innovation

Time For A Mobile Website

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Watch That Tag

The NOW Web Is Not The Mobile Web

Voices mumble, fingers fumble

Future Mobile Phone Online Banking Now

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