WTF QR Codes might be my new favorite blog, at least for the past 2 days it has been.
Anyone who thought QR codes had a chance in hell of catching on meet the following two criteria:
- Doesn’t understand the very basics on how humans prefer to interact with technology.
- Is too much of a computer n00b to remember the CueCat.
Oh look, and a cryptic spot of contrasting pigment! Let me take out my phone, browse to an app I’ve pre-downloaded in case I ever ran across such a marking and is specifically for this purpose. Now I’ll point and focus at this spot, universally found in an awkward position and try and take a picture. I’ll likely need to try more than once due to lighting, focus, obstructions (common for billboards, moving trains, cars) and it not being a large enough portion of the picture for my phone to figure it out. Once I succeed at this magic act, I’ll be taken to a mystery site that could just be malware (it does exist for phones), or perhaps a legit site.
Amazingly someone went through this use case, and thought it was a brilliant idea.
Bonus: They did this years ago when cell phone cameras were much worse than they are today.
But seriously, it was a bad idea (or a really good prank). Lets just laugh about it, and move on.