Putting a Bar Code on Places, Not Just Products
If you walk past the gift shop of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, or Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles, or Cheeseburger Baby in Miami, the chances are that you will see a sticker in the window that has a Google Maps logo and a one-inch-square with a series of pixelated black-and-white cubes called a QR Code.
In the coming weeks, Google plans to send out 100,000 of these stickers, each with their own QR code, to a new demographic of businesses Google is calling “Favorite Places”. These favorites are based on search results from users interacting with local business listings on Google Maps.
As Louise Story reported on the front page of The Times in April 2007, QR Codes have been around for several years across Asia. In Japan, for example, you can find the codes on food wrappers in grocery stores, helping customers get more information about calories or possible recipe ideas. The codes are also visible on bus stops, allowing access to up-to-date bus schedules, or in real-estate agents’ windows, allowing passers-by to click with their phones to view more images and floor plans of a property.
The idea sounds great on paper (or pixels), but because of privacy concerns in the United States, the process can be a little laborious in reality. First, you have to download the right code reader for your specific mobile phone.
