Francesco's Space, a professional at your service
admin
(0 comments, 17 posts)
This user hasn't shared any profile information
Posts by admin
3 years ago
by admin
in Uncategorized
Waiting an huge penetration of NFC phones, at least in advertising fields, the NFC Smart Poster could be easily substituted by QR Code.
A QR Sample follows, it could be easily attached on brochure, posters and can carry a lot of informations, the reader could read the content and decide to present info at the user and download or send some other info at the backend for processing.
Buying a ticket for differnt metro zones could be more easy for instance.
A QR Code
A QR Code is a matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code) created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. The “QR” is derived from “Quick Response”, as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed.
QR Codes are becoming, specially in far east, more common than the most popular type of two dimensional code. It can contains:
Numeric only: Max. 7,089 characters;
Alphanumeric: Max. 4,296 characters;
Binary (8 bits): Max. 2,953 bytes;
Kanji/Kana: Max. 1,817 characters.
QR Code could be easily used for a lot of applications, such as:
- linking print articles to RSS feeds and blogs
- delivering product or tourist information
- linking “lost pet” flyers to contact forms
- dating – use your imagination on that one
- “find me” maps
- promoting an event or concert on flyers/postcards
- connecting geocachers to mobile logbooks
- creating museum exhibits and street tours
- building scavenger hunts or “collect-them-all” games
- downloading ringtones, music, wallpapers or video (think indie artists)
- ticket sales for clubs
- directing people to your mobile site and/or storefront
- enabling mobile sales from catalogs or flyers
- distributing coupons
- conference badges connected to profiles
- business cards connected to company sites
- signing up to text alert services
- running competitions
- connecting mix tapes to podcasts or vidcasts
- connecting posters to podcasts or vidcasts
- enabling community interaction at public locations
This is a funny usage …
A QR Code nice application
Much like other mobile technology, such as SMS, it typically takes a while for the market to embrace new mobile technology, but once it does we quickly match the usage seen in other parts of the world. I believe that will happen with bar codes as well. Already I see the signs…
Reader
Some years ago there was few mobile phones with an enbedded camera and the computing power on hadset was very poor;due this second aspect, application included at the end an MMS sending, followed by action taken in the backend after the QR recognition.
Nowdays computing power on phones and handheld in general is enough so there are a lot of readers available , one free is available for download from Kaywa web site, I suggest this one to youthis since it doesn’t initiate any Web, Text or call session in an unsolicited way.
Survey
A survey originally taken by InfoPlaint that was carried out at the end of August 2005. The respondents selected the survey themselves via a link in the DoCoMo iMode menu system. 7,660 people completed the survey; 5,023 of them were women.
Q: Do you know about QR codes (2D barcodes)?
- I’ve used them 73.3%
- I know about them, and have a reader feature in my phone, but I haven’t used them 7.6%
- I know about them, but don’t have a reader feature in my phone, so I haven’t used them 15.6%
I don’t know about them 3.5%
Looking at the age breakdown, for both males and females almost 90% of the under 20’s use them, but the rate steadily drops down to end up at just about half of all the over 50s.
Q: For those who answered that they used them, in what printed materials have you used QR Codes? (Sample size=5,513)
- Business card 5.7%
- Newspaper 31.9%
- Magazine 84.2%
- Advertising flyer 51.1%
- Poster 14.2%
- Direct mail 25.0%
- Mail-order catalog 24.8%
- PC web site 20.7%
- Other 13.1%
There was no significant differences between the sexes, except for almost two and a half times more women used mail-order catalog QR Codes.
Q: Which of the following QR Code-based services do you want to use? (Sample size=7,660)
- Easy phone book registration from a business card, etc 36.8%
- Read a URL and access a site 74.3%
- Replacement for company identification badge 29.0%
- Cashless shopping at vending machines, etc 28.3%
- Buying goods written about in magazines 27.7%
- Replacement for tickets (concerts, travel passes, etc) 32.5%
- Others 5.5%
- Don’t want to use 7.4%
LinkedIn, Spock, Facebook, Naymz & Others …
After your feeling about the usefulness or not, starting to be part of a social network could be tricky and could be misleading for newcomers. A simple guide about which program to use follows:
- LinkedIn is a professional tool, used by professional to maintain their network of contact without any boundaries, Of course a lot of Head Hunter are present there and for this is a must be for a professional looking for his/hes next challenge. Few partecipation stuffs and more link with Job Seeking world. At the same concept we can include Viadeo and Neurona, the advantage of these two tools is the localization. People in Europe speak a lot of language, while in LinkedIn is almost impossible operate without English knowledge, these other two permit to interact in proper mother tongue. Viadeo is useful to organize events and facilitate social networking outside the Net.
- Spock represent in the Social Networking tools what Google made for the search engines, light and coincise with a possibility to tag each other and to implement ‘word of mouth’ in a on-line version. Also voting is most important, people can say or add or note something and others could demonstrate if they agree or disagree in a polling way.
- Facebook is your life on the Net, everything you can make you can add to your profile with a lot of applications (widget) you can add.
- Naymz is the reference tool, all the system is based on the reputation you have, you can gain and you can lose.
- Other tool are present and have some limits jointly with some plus, often they offer localized content and localized or vertical professional in them, between those: like Ryze, hi5, Ecademy, Doonstag, Ciwi, Xing, Konnect, SuccessBC, Zubka.
- For sure I can hint the presence on the four above in the title, … and don’t forget to link myself
Happy networking e don’t forget to enrich them with a concrete real life networking.
A mobile citypass carnet in our cities
Paris CityPass
When we go for business or leisure in a beautiful city sometime we buy a City Pass. The Pass normally contains some discounts about what we can do in a city and facilitate our moving within it.
Four types of City Pass:
- Entering in a city paying a toll (London, Oslo, Stockholm, Milan, …) and parking somewhere
- Take a taxi or public transports
- Assist or visit a permanent museum or attraction
- Join an extraordinary event, not known or not planned before
Always everything happen based on paper tickets or carnet we use as admission for entry.
Eliminating papers a mobile handset that deliver tailored information about the first 3 points and customize the 4th, case by case is extremely important to have with us; if we can also buy event participation or just prompt info on the fly, far from home or from the desk is for sure a definitive guide we must have.
Of course municipality need to move in that direction to define partnership in order to deliver info and to permit access through specific pass area using e-ticket received and purchased by phone.
NFC is starting to have its limelights …
but what about the phones ?
A lot of application of NFC technology are taking place also in Europe. Some experimentations also in Italy will take the place in the next months. A good sample in transportation world in Italy after New York tap’n go initiative and London Underground has been created in Trentothanks to Telecom Italia and TSF last December. In those scenarios a good handset manufacturer position made the difference.
The Telco operators (as well as MVNOs) that would like to open its SIM to new applications want to protect their investements and to valorize their asset in the customer hands, not the handset itself of course unlockable or unbrnaded, but the SIM. So they push handset manufacturers to put antenna and RFID chip capable to interact with SIM application; from the other hand instead handset manufacturer would like to valorize their asset without any engagements (or lock) with Telecom Operators.
Any scenario has its plus and minus, in one case NFC could be used as a retention tool to avoid high churn rate and the management of the application is for sure seamless, in another case I can increase customer loyalty and fidelity could increase using an independent Telco provider solution that i need to maintain.
Which approach will depend by whole ecosystem scenario that will arise.
It will be almost impossible implement a Mobile Payment solution without involving banks and all the major national MNOs present in a country. This means that any proprietary solution working only on a customer base will be hard to deploy in the near future … It is also true that the NFC handset price is still high (more than 500 Euro) and to develop an ecosystem it needs some subsidy, as happened for Video Terminal to develop Video Calls, this could be supported by Telco jointly with some banks in a geographically defined territory.
So a position so unopen related the SIM could be justified by handset manufacturer only if they start to produce millions of terminal under 300 Euro price. Meanwhile thanks to Telco Operators will deploy solution facilitating the NFC adoption, the ecosystem creation, the handset manufacturer requests and the downprice of NFC handset.
Retail and Telco business starting to merge ?
Not only the MVNO is a way to merge the Retail world and the Mobile Business world, in fact already present in many retail chains is the possibility to re-charge the phone prepaid card using small card containing only bar-code. No more queue at tabacco shops or newspaper kiosks.
Here is how it works: The user buy a small piece o paper (glossy to be more nice) and put it in his/her basket, then the bar-code is read by the cashier as a coke can and the bill is charged in the store bill.
In the receipt the user will find a digit code he can use to recharge his phone.
This model offers two considerations:
- The first consideration is an integration of the recharge card fullfillment between the retail and the telco and its dealers, another actor appears in the phone recharge market that normally understand better distribution market than Telco operators. Next application could be the one-shot event buying on Digital terrestrial or Satellite television program.
- The other one is a bypass of Credit Card acquirer that gives to the store (or dealer chain) the possibility to pay the expense and then also the recharge card through the Credit Circuit. In fact the money flow could be short-circuited between the Retail and Telco banks.
The advantage are enormous from the customer side, since this open a lot of space to reduce commissions and facilitate the delivery chain.
The next applications will use NFC phone, in that case no more paper is needed.
Below the TIM and 3 recharge card in a Esselunga store in Milan.
Early Morning @ Linate
Sometime you need to take a plane very early and you would like to avoid people you meet every morning in your canonical preferred company lounge. Also for this reason I joined PriorityPass program; no business ticket required, no anymore match between company, airport, destination and the freedon to avoid mileage program but use only one program, yours !
Me & Nicola Savino
In these site is still possibile to meet people far, very far from your standard mindset. A nice early morning, before the 6.30 in has been to meet Nicola Savino, we were alone in the lounge but we had a lot of fun … a more confortable wake-up that day.
A bad Haircut …
… could make you dumb !
During a long travel to visit a customer in Mantova (far from railways and airports) a good top in Autogrill is very pleasant. Drinking a cappuccino thinking to Elvis is always a good idea.
Dedicated to whom never stop to remember that once upon a time we were kids.