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. With Great moments in student outreach
Posted Under: Foolhunting
NYT recounts problems with an attempt to promote 2D barcode marketing concept to college students. Best is this:
Then there was the presentation by the chief executive of Mobile Discovery, David H. Miller, whose slide show in Professor Wnek’s class devolved into sexist banter after he showed an image of a topless woman, back to the camera, who had a bar code on the back of her blue jeans.
The photo evoked a few titters, but then a student bantered with Mr. Miller about the technology’s use in meeting girls.
“So I take a picture of a broad, you know, a good-looking girl, and her name and phone number are loaded in my phone — I’d pay five bucks a month for that,” a male student commented, according to the university’s recording of the class in February.
Mr. Miller replied that it might work as a marketing technique to post a woman’s picture with a bar code underneath that said, “sign up to a service to get more girls like that.”
Turns out not everybody was so into this exchange. One student later wrote an article for the campus paper comparing it to “slapping bar codes on women as if they were six-packs of Budweiser from the local grocery store.”
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Reader Comments
Leave it up to Scanbuy to push a substandard mobile application, let students puke all over it, and, not fully explain how the entire system works.
The reader should read more than just 2D codes, AND, it should let the user click on any physical world object. What about logos, trademarks, keywords, QR, Data matrix, RFID, 1D barcodes, etc.
http://www.neoreader.com
Maybe, Scanbuy should have paid the students off to say something nice.
Could Scanbuy have just screwed up an easy button for mobile navigation to the physical world?
Who is this David Miller guy and who in their right mind let him near the press? I can forgive the sexist presentation and the refusal to admit he is wrong (well, it may take some time), but he has done a huge disservice to a very promising technology by being a total jackass. Hey, David, before you go to the press next time, hire a public relations firm. With a good PR firm, this would have never happened. And, you owe the barcode community an apology.
It should be noted that:
Scanbuy’s indirect resolution process, which they use for their proprietary EZcode, is infringing on NeoMedia Technologies’ core patents.
Scanbuy uses the indirect encoding method for their barcode resolution process.
Indirect encoding (patented by NeoMedia) is the process of linking the target information to an index (364528 for example) and putting that unique identifier into a 1D UPC/EAN or 2D barcode. The code reader on the mobile phone reads the barcode and sends the code data over the Internet to a central resolution server that will tell the mobile phone what action is associated with the index, i.e. access a URL, download media, initiate a phone call, ect.
NeoMedia Technologies has a suite of twelve issued patents covering the core concepts behind linking the physical world to the electronic world dating back to 1995.
http://neom.com/13.html
If Scanbuy’s CEO Jonathan Bulkeley believes infringing on another companies patents is an ethical business practice, then by all means, infringe away.
However, I have a feeling that the US Judicial System will see Scanbuy’s unethical business practices differently.