Seen a few adverts with a small square pixellated image on them that says point your smart phone camera at this etc, etc. Well I have done and nothing seems to happen, I have a nokia 5800, is this not a ‘smart’ enough phone or is there something else I need to do?

I think you need to install an app to “read” them…

If you’ve got an android phone you need to download barcode scanner – this can then read them & send you to the web address the funky thing is advertising

I presume you mean these?

for the nokia’s there is an app called Point and View

It is quite good there are more and more things that are using it but it is still very limited.

they’ll get more popular, containing embedded html links on billboards, advertising posters and the like. there was a bit of chat about them at a conference i worked at recently. they could even end up being seen on commonly photographed landmarks and points of interest.

they could even end up being seen on commonly photographed landmarks and points of interest.

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

*heads off to the tattoo parlour*

I remember when they tried something similar to this before, where they had similar things printed in magazines which you could then scan with your computers web cam…

I also seem to remember that failed dismally…

So if you can’t tell what URL it is going to take you to, you might end up downloading something malicious.

really hope these take off in the mainstream. Already useful for grabbing apps you’ve seen in reviews etc.

CaptainMainwaring – Member

So if you can’t tell what URL it is going to take you to, you might end up downloading something malicious.

Pops up with the URL or whatever it’s decoded as before anything happens (at least on the ‘barcode’ app on Android).

retro83 – Member
really hope these take off in the mainstream. Already useful for grabbing apps you’ve seen in reviews etc.

So basically the benefit is you take a pic and your phone converts it to text?

So if you can’t tell what URL it is going to take you to, you might end up downloading something malicious.

You might want to pop a ? on the end of that sentence. Otherwise people might mistakenly take it as a statement of fact.

A little out of date, but this may help explain it:

http://mobilecodes.nokia.com/scan.htm

“QR Codes”

I saw a nice flickr the other day of someone who has laid his driveway to form one of these and now you can read it from Google Maps 🙂