..overall, the barcoding mess is a user experience nightmare and until fixed, the best option out there IMO is JAGTAG hands down:
http://www.jagtag.com/index.php

Mobile Marketing is not going away and is almost a common sense requirement that it be integrated into Brands strategies,
Of course my opinion will seem biased but as soon as hardware technology catches up with Japans standard, as is often the direction of flow, then we may see that the use of QR far from being written off, may well have only just started.

But even then you could just type off the code on the keyboard, even without camera phone.

Therefore, what makes or breaks a barcode reader is the ability to turn the 12 or 13 digit code into a product name that can be plugged into a search engine, to display whatever information is available, be it health advisories, nutrional information, ratings or price quotes.

I have been trying to just that with ZebraScan. It is available for free for various Nokia phone models and in review with the iTunes App Store. Even without a camera phone there is a very simple mobile query field at app.zebrascan.net/uyuni.

That said, 2D codes are still pretty ‘cool’. They look good, and there is a magical effect when they work, especially when you use them for the first time. They can add a sense of the unpredictable and the novel to a marketing campaign. However, I guess that without standardisation we are, at best, going to see these codes used as an adjunct to campaigns, in a low-volume in-the-know kind of way. I don’t want to dismiss them, 2D codes are, of course ‘big in Japan’, with whole magazines just full of them, but then so is raw fish. There is, however, a type of barcode that is already out there and in use day in day out.

You refer to using barcodes to get info on FMCG goods, which reminded me of a semi-Eureka moment I had in my bathroom a couple of months back. Without going into too much detail, I had ‘some time on my hands’ and was playing with my new HTC Magic G2 Android phone, which has a built-in barcode reader. With no 2D codes to hand, I decided to try and scan some of the common-or-garden barcodes that were on the items I had in the bathroom. The reader on the device contained a ‘product lookup’ feature, so I decided to give it a go. My reading material (last weekend’s Observer, a copy of Viz), both had standard barcodes on the back, but didn’t come up with anything. The FMCG goods, like shampoo etc, all worked and pushed me to retail sites using google’s online product search. So, from this you can see that from one side of the chain at least, the technology and infrastructure is already in place to allow mobile users to discover more about and potentially interact with most retail items, including publications, CDs, books, FMCG items etc etc.

Take the FMCG example; if you hooked up a grocery application (like Ocado’s iPhone app in the UK) with a standard barcode scanner, then potentially you could walk around your kitchen scanning in the regular items for your weekly shop, as if you were your own cashier. If it made the loud ‘beep’ each time it recognised a product that would make the experience even sweeter!

That’s quite a pedestrian example (if you’ll excuse the weak play on words), but with so much barcode data being associated with products of all types, it would be fairly easy to say, create a pretty seamless experience for anything from artist information and gig tickets (from a CD), price comparison and ordering (for any number of goods), links to mobile content sites (from the barcode on publications like newspapers) and, of course, plain old marketing campaigns, using dressed-up barcodes. Some of these things are already being done, and, as per 2D codes, you still need the reader on the phone, but with half the job done (standard barcodes on products and online retail and information systems already driven by them) they seem the obvious choice – if a little one-dimensional!

Simon Liss
MD We Love Mobile

Let’s sum it up : mobile bar codes COULD have helped to solve the well known accessibility problem that’s related to mobile internet. It could have fixed a “usage issue” : so many people could use mobile internet more often if it was more accessible (what url to go to, where to enter it…)

But 2D codes created another usage issue : apart from asia, it was never part of our daily lives. And could not become part of it given its bad launch and poor marketing.

So how about solving a usage issue with another usage issue. Ain’t work.

As you say, convergence is around the corner : unique urls whatever the screen, easy to find where to type it, accessibility through apps, ease of 1st time accessibility (appstore and the likes)…

2D codes are doomed, even more because gencodes clearly are mainstream, featured on all products, and readable using a handset…. (hey, did you ever think FMCGs were going to find room on packagings to add another piece of (ugly) code)