Social Barcoding

I’ve been working on some conference presentations for various speaking engagements over the next few months, and just returned from the annual K2 team meeting last night.  One of the trends which I firmly believe that you, the gentle reader of this blog should adopt ASAP is the QR code.  These 2D barcodes store lots of information which can be automatically read by smartphones.  Some examples of QR codes are shown below.

QR codes for CPATechBlog.com (below) and Brian’s business card (right)

I know that this is the real deal because, even though I heard about QR codes 3-4 years ago from @GWickes and others, I heard about the QR code from some people who tend to be about 2 steps ahead of CPA’s in technology adoption.  The Realtors.

Realtors.  Realtors?!?

Yes, Realtors.

See, one of the first issues with adoption of a new technology is to determine a solution to an existing business need.  The next step is to create a solution which is easy enough for the average person to use.  Until this point, only the geeks are using the technology – and then many times because they think the technology is cool. 

The next step is to make the technology actually cool in the minds of real people who take kids to school and have full-time jobs.  This is the specialty of those former football captains and cheerleaders who make up the beautiful realtors of the world.  You see, when they adopt a technology, it’s usually very easy to use and requires little tech support (because most of them are self-employed and have no tech support), it solves a significant business need (getting data keyed into a device, like a smart phone), and because the “cool kids” (cheerleaders, football captains, etc.) are now using it, it’s a hot commodity.  Just as Apple products have a component of “status symbol” with them (how else would you get people to pay 2X as much for a computer with less than 1/2 of the available software?), the realtors know how to make stuff into status symbols, and do so all of the time.  As a family friend frequently says, “It takes all kinds.”

Some tools for barcoding include:

• Zint – An open source barcode generator available from SourceForce.net
• QRStuff – A website which has tools to generate QR codes

There are also a plethora of apps for smartphones to read these strangely deformed checkerboards, including Barcode Scanner, ScanLife, QR Name Card, and many more.  You can even create barcodes which you print and put on the front door of your office…

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Brian Tankersley is the Publisher of CPATechBlog.com, the Technical Editor of The CPA Practice Advisor, and teaches educational courses for K2 Enterprises and Becker CPA Review.  He also posts interesting things to Twitter, where he is known as @BFTCPA. (Thanks to my lovely bride, Janette the Mortgage Goddess, for the tip on this cool tool)

Comments

[DustinwCPA]

Brian, another tool for creating QR codes is bit.ly. I have used bit.ly for shortening links in the past, but just today I noticed that it generated a QR code.

I took a picture of the QR code with the Google Goggles app on my Android phone, and after a few seconds the browser loaded the page I entered into bit.ly.

It's a cool technology, though I wonder if near field communication will make it obsolete in a few years.

[Dee Guinoo-Miraña]

I was just surfing the net when I found your post. This is really great and it made me want to research more about QR codes. Thanks!