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Unlock Newspapers with QR Codes
More from the White Paper
The obvious goal of any newspaper, AltWeekly or otherwise, is to get more readers. Today these readers have to get the value of the ‘paper’ (articles, reviews, features) from the newsstand or online. By providing a bridge for a mobile reader of the newspaper to the comment and sharing functions it creates a virtuous circle bringing in more readers. The bridge between paper and digital can be accomplished with QR Codes. QR Codes are a 2-D barcode developed by Denso-Wave (subsidiary of Toyota) in 1994#. Popular in Japan, it is gaining usage in Europe and is starting to be used in North America.
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A QR Code
Using a cell phone’s camera and other widely available applications, the reader can scan a code and receive a URL that can be accessed by the cell phone’s browser (reader needs a data plan). Simply having a link to a website isn’t useful to the mobile user unless it’s actionable and useful. Roger Smolski has summarized how to use QR Codes successfully in his “Three Rules of QR Codes”#
1st Rule: Mobilize the landing page
2nd Rule: Keep the url short
3rd Rule: Make the content valuable
1st Rule: Mobilize the landing page
Bar code scanner applications will be able to decode a web address from the QR Code and open the phone’s mobile browser to it. It’s important that the web site be mobile friendly; formatted to a smaller screen, simple in design, and fast to download. Having the phone try to display the full desktop site is painful. It doesn’t render correctly many times and takes longer to download than a mobile specific page.2nd Rule: Keep the url short
Shorter URL encodes to a qr code that is easier to scan. Notice the difference in appearance between the two codes below:
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*http://thephoenix.com/Boston/arts/106194-moor-power-for-free/ http://bit.ly/dqHC4w
The code with the long link will go immediately to the web site but produces a code that is more complex. The code with the shortened link (using the bit.ly service) is less complex. There are a number of services that help manage shortened URLs as well as Free/Open Source software (F/OSS) to implement your own in your present systems. A key attribute in selecting a means to shorten URLs is the ability to dynamically reassign redirected links in case of mix-ups in the newspaper production cycle.
3rd Rule: Make the content valuable
Remembering that the reader has scanned a code from the paper which has the same article as the website, redirecting them to the same article is pointless. They want to get at the comments and possibly read an update.Ideally, the reader would be able to read all comments from the article in a mobile friendly manner. Think of a Twitter timeline with more detail a link away. Readers would authenticate to the comment system using Facebook, Twitter, or OpenID (GMail or Yahoo! Mail) and their comments would appear on the comment timeline in addition to being posted to their social network of choice.
