QR, AR, Barcode Scanning Becoming Interchangeable with Super Scanning Apps
There’s more to barcode and QR code scanning than what has met most marketing and consumer minds. Companies like junaio, Digimarc, Google Goggles and Layar by IBM are quickly blurring the lines between augmented reality and QR code scanning.
The third edition of what is touted the world’s most advanced augmented reality browser, junaio, allows you to scan the world around you.
Peter Meier, junaio’s company’s CTO says: “We are using the very objects around us as markers to get virtual information”.
Here’s the video on junaio’s capabilities in conjunction with the launch of junaio 3.0:
You might call junaio and Digimarc some of the first scanning super apps.
Augmented reality enthusiasts realized that rather than fighting against the QR Code’s rise that it could be more beneficial to embrace the popular barcode.
Digimarc’s Recent Upgrade
The most recent upgrade to Digimarc, named a #1 tech startup by Forbes in 2004, uses digital watermarking to create scanning experiences with text, images and video, but also allows you to scan QR Codes, adding a slightly different element to the scanning mix.
Here’s a video on Digimarc which was most recently used in The Oregonian newspaper:
While Google Goggles’ has been known for visual scanning or search much like junaio, I’ve heard rumors that Goggles has often been criticized for a poor application programming interface unlike junaio. Digimarc is also open to any partnerships that include their technology.
That was precisely why QR Codes spread like wildfire, for Denso-Wave made it open-source, free, and easy to integrate.
You can get information on literally anything you scan, provided that it can be found in the junaio’s channels, databases or connected partner platforms, just as Goggles showed their visual search feature in this video:
Meier continues: “junaio 3.0 takes us further towards our vision of making the “augmented world” around us come alive in every sense…just point the camera and scan it. This could be a famous painting in a museum showing how the artist created his master piece, or a simple box of breakfast cereals starting an entertaining AR game for our children”.
Layar by IBM
That’s not without competition from IBM’s Layar though, who plan to release Layar Vision soon.
The video description says: “Layar Vision is an extension of the Layar platform, taking augmented reality to the next level. Layar Vision allows the creation of layers and applications that recognize real world objects and display digital experiences on top of them. Layar Vision uses detection, tracking and computer vision techniques to augment objects in the physical world. It can tell which objects in the real world are augmented because the visual fingerprints of the objects are preloaded into the application based on the user’s layer selection”.
And a video:
Interactive Advertising Growing, Scanning Growing At Great Rates Still
The scanning super app market is heating up, while QR Codes show no signs of slowing down, increasing to over 1.2 million searches worldwide according to the latest figures Google Keyword Tool, 60,500 of which were in Canada alone when searching for “QR code”. QR Codes were barely searched 100,000 times some nine months ago. That’s an over 1000% increase, and perhaps stunningly, “QR” was searched 2.74 million times a month globally, 90,500 times in Canada alone.
With scanning’s potential slowly being realized, it’s difficult to see how this market won’t continue to grow for the near forseeable future, and this is really the beginning of augmented reality’s transformational potential for the technology has far greater use with tablets than smartphones.
Technology enthusiasts must think of other ways not outlined in the videos here and those spread across the Internet of how the visible 3D technology can be used to serve a greater purpose in our lives.
After all, Cotton Delo reported for AdWeek that Forrester Research predicted just last week on August 24th that the growth in interactive advertising by 2016 could more than double from around 35 billion to 75 billion dollars a year.
That’s an incredible transformation of the marketing and advertising world; part of what IBM predicts will change more in the next five years than in the last fifty, if the continued acquisition of mobile analytics companies by the tech giant is any indication.
