Tag: qr code technology

The Sharbot Lake beach in Ontario, Canada will soon become much more smartphone friendly.

QR codes and free WiFi are about to bring a beach on Sharbot Lake into the 21st century, as Central Frontenac Township takes steps to add a more enjoyable and enhanced experience for visitors using high tech methods.

The beach will be only the first recipient of the high tech benefits in the area.

According to Mayor Janet Gutowski, as per a report from the Economic Development Committee, on the meeting of the council in Sharbot Lake, the committee was making the recommendation to use QR codes to help the township to draw attention to its points of interest so that they would be easier for visitors to find.

The QR codes will be scanned by the visitors so that they can learn more about what they can do in the area.

Visitors will be able to use their smartphones in order to scan the QR codes using any free scanner app. This, in combination to the free WiFi that will be available to those visitors, will allow them to instantly access the content that has been created to promote the township and many of the points of interest that visitors might otherwise miss.

According to Gutowsky, the QR codes will also provide smartphone users with other tourist information, such as the suggested starting points for the Sharbot Lake Historical Walking Tour. She pointed out that it is expensive to create and maintain signage, but that the barcodes aren’t, and that they “can be used by all sorts of devices such as smart phones and tablets.”

She also went on to point out that “We’ve been looking for inexpensive ways to highlight our points of interest and thought we’d start with the Sharbot Lake walking tour.” Moreover, she identified a number of other benefits of using the QR codes other than their low associated cost, and that is the quantity of information that they can provide to the scanner.

She said that far more information can be presented through the scans of QR codes than could ever be posted on a sign. Moreover, they are also environmentally friendlier, as they don’t require paper pamphlets that “end up as litter on the side of the road.”

The largest American in-mall digital network has now added both the barcodes and the contactless tech.

Adspace Digital Mall Network has just announced that it is installing both QR codes and NFC technology into 140 malls across the United States, within their network, in order to improve the shopping experience.

This new initiative will use the mTAG platform from Blue Bite on the mall Smart Screen.

The new feature will allow clients to view advertising with QR codes that they can scan with their smartphones, or they can tap the screen to activate the NFC technology. The mTAG placard that is located on the side of the Smart Screen units provide a considerably higher level of interactivity for shoppers.

The QR codes and NFC tags will become available to advertisers in the malls as of April 15, 2013.

As of yet, it is has not been announced whether there are plans to expand this QR codes program to the rest of the 206 total malls in the network if it proves to be successful. It is also not yet known whether the company intends to use data collected from the scans, such as the number of successful scans and which campaigns prove to be the most successful in terms of the activity that they generate. It has also not yet been announced whether the use of the barcodes will be compared with that of the NFC technology.

The QR codes and NFC tags are designed to facilitate a number of different types of interactions between brands and consumers. The mTAG experience is meant to be a rich one that offers content such as app, ebook, mp3 and movie trailer downloads, as well as web based games and applications, social media integration, coupons and other promotions, maps, and more.

With the scan of the QR codes or the use of the other mobile features on the Smart Screens, this information can be downloaded or viewed directly on the user’s own device. The barcodes were included because while NFC technology is considered to be the ideal choice for this interactive mall feature, there are still only a small percentage of device owners whose smartphones are enabled with those chips.