Brilliant Uses of 2-D Codes

Brilliant Uses of 2-D Codes

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Many members of the Fortune 500 have used 2-D codes to promote their products or services. For example, The New York Times Magazine took a photo of a QR code made entirely of balloons. Yes, you can create a QR Code using balloons and it actually works. Users who scanned the QR code were driven to a special mobile webpage promoting their 10th Annual Year in Ideas issue.
Starbucks is one of the first major corporations to use 2-D codes for commerce. The Starbucks Card Mobile Application allows baristas to scan a 2-D code off of your smart phone. The cost of your Venti, sugar-free, non-fat, vanilla soy, double shot, decaf, no foam, extra hot, peppermint white chocolate mocha with light whip and extra syrup is simply deducted from your card. When the money runs out, you just add more to your mobile card using the app.
Surprisingly, the best example I’ve seen for the use of a 2-D code was by the Smithsonian Institution. Yes, a quasi-governmental, traditional institution kicked the private sector’s rear end when it came to the best use of a new and emerging technology.
If you visit the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum, you’ll see an exhibit about Neanderthals on the main floor. Neanderthals were contemporaries of humans who lived in Africa, the Middle East and Western Europe 30,000 to 50,000 years ago.
The Neanderthal exhibit is pretty typical, except that they’ve placed a 2-D code on it that says, “Scan here to be part of our MEanderthal exhibit.”
When visitors scan the 2-D code, they’re sent to a website that allows them to take a picture of a friend or family member with their smartphone. Once they’ve done that, users can superimpose an image over the photograph that shows what that person would have looked like as a Neanderthal 30,000 to 50,000 years ago.
The Smithsonian’s MEanderthal experience doesn’t end with the superimposed photograph. You can also put different Neanderthal overlays on your photograph and even upload photos to your Facebook profile or e-mail them to a friend. The end result is that instead of spending, say, two or three minutes learning about Neanderthals, visitors with a 2-D code reader on their phone will spend five or ten minutes with the exhibit.