In an attempt to protect their turf, the CTIA, a wireless industry group, released a white-paper last week about Camera-phone Based Barcode Scanning. The CTIA Code Scan Action Team (CCSAT) made the following confusing recommendations:
- All applications/carriers must support EZ code and DataMatrix codes (hmm, no QR?)
- A central registry for 2D code links needs to be created–a strong push for indirect linking of 2D bar codes
How they came up with the idea of supporting Ez codes is beyond me. Ez Codes are part of a closed system that has seen relatively poor adoption rates. Adopting a format that would require advertisers to license the format to create codes is a recipe for failure. DataMatrix codes have seen significant use in business supply chains and operations (parts, inventory, document tracking) and are definitely a valid and strong format. Whether they can make the jump to adoption by advertisers is another story.
Now on to the second point: the paper acknowledges the importance of direct linking, but seems to sidestep this in favor of indirect linking. Direct linking is the traditional idea of 2D bar code usage–information is encoded in the code and directly accessed. Indirect linking requires each code to contain a unique number/identifier. Upon reading the code, a central registry is queried, and the real information (URL, text, etc.) is returned to the user. This is useful for analytics (demographic data is tracked when a user makes a request to read a code), but would be a direct barrier to the widespread adoption of 2D bar codes.
Supposedly the CCSAT’s guiding principles are inclusivness, simplicity, and modularity. Their proposals seem to ignore those values. The paper also highlights the fact that it is growing increasingly irrelevant if carriers even support bar-code reading software. As more open platforms increase in popularity (think the iPhone, smartphones, and Android) closed mobile software systems seem doomed to die a painful death.
Link: http://files.ctia.org/pdf/WhitePaper_CTIA_WIC_CodeScan_9_08.pdf