A bridge between the real and virtual worlds

There’s a new(ish) advertising tool called quick response codes that has been getting some press recently. They’re basically barcodes that are readable by web-enabled cell phones and point people to particular Web sites. So you could include a quick response code in a paper advertisement, for example, and people who scanned that code into their phone would go directly to your site where they could purchase whatever you’re advertising. The technology is being billed as a bridge between the real and virtual worlds.

Being an expert on neither, I can only recommend the following articles for a quick and informed introduction to how it all might work:

RU Ready 4 QR Codes from Multichannel Merchant 

The Scannable World: Mobile Phones as Barcode Scanners from Read Write Web 

Mainstream America is Ready for Bar Codes – Converging ‘RealSpace’ and ‘MobileSpace’ from David Harper’s Different Things 

To me, when I hear “bridge between real and virtual worlds,” I think Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe. So it’ll probably be a lot like that. But with more commerce. And fewer talking animals.