Sunny Man’s Blog

October 27th 2006

(2) Windows Live Barcode

Life, Misc.

The Windows Live empire just spat out it’s next idea - Windows Live Barcode. To be honest, when I first heard this I thought loads of things like a mobile shopping scanner (why did I think this?!) or assigning your Windows Live account to a barcode. Well, I was nearly there. Windows Live Barcode is a way of storing your personal and business information in the form of an image. The service takes the traditional idea of a barcode and turns it on its head by turning it into a square and managing it to hold more information. This then can be scanned by a device such as a phone or PDA and decoded to display the information. Personally, I think this is a great idea but I don’t think it will have the success that Skype did in the world of business. I can see many uses of this idea and you can use it now if you’ve got a Windows enabled phone and in-built camera - all you have to do is download the decoding software.

Quick Response Code

The barcode is called a ‘Quick Response Code’, a two-dimensional image that can store up to 450 characters of alphanumerical information - much more than a traditional barcode you see on the back of products you get at Tesco. It works by storing information both horizontally and vertically in the image. The example to the right is one I created to test the service and you can have a go as well at the site - but it’s Internet Explorer only at the moment.

What can it do?

There’s a short tour on the idea over at the site which is rather interesting and explains the concept nicely. It basically shows one use of the idea: that you can put your barcode on business cards and allow those who can and who want to, to add your information quickly and simply without having to manually input the information. This is a time saving idea.

Besides the implementations that the site shows, there are numerous other ways to use the service. The barcodes could be placed on websites, in e-mails, in text messages, on paperwork - on anything that requires your personal details to be there. If it’s on a computer screen, it can be captured odd the screen. If it’s on paper, it can be captured of that easily. It reminds me of my GCSE examinations that I took just a few months ago with which, most noticeably on the science papers, had our personal information printed on them along with a barcode. This is exactly the same thing - the Windows Live Barcode service can hold any information as long as it’s under 450 characters.

Foreseen Problems

There’s always some problems - especially with any Microsoft service - but there are some here that would mean the barcodes would basically be superfluous. To decode the information contained in the barcode, it needs to be captured by a camera within the phone or device. This created a problem. Although the cameras contained within these phones and PDAs are getting better and better every week, the user has to take a picture of the barcode - any movement or any focus issues can cause it to fail decoding and more time is spent scanning it again. Though, the actual barcode itself goes some way to try and avoid this by containing the 3 corner squares as a reference for the decoding software and so it should decode images that are just slightly blurred.

I don’t have a Windows Mobile powered phone, nor the software to try this service out in a real world test so I can’t comment on the usability of this service nor the practicality of it, but the idea is something I like and I think that many businesses will employ, even if just internally. One issue does remain though; will the service be free? I’m going to bet that there will be a charge somewhere, maybe for the software download. Even so, I think that the idea of a digital contact card could be a useful tool for business men and women on the go. Although this will be much more popular in places like America and Japan, it will spread. Give it a go, try it out and leave a comment on what you think. Will the idea go further than the suggestion box at Microsoft and what other uses can you think of?