The CueCat is Back! (just spelled differently)
December 7, 2009
Remember the :CueCat? The company devised a non-standard barcode that could be placed anywhere. If a user scanned the barcode they would be redirected to a website. Of course the CueCat was a commercial failure. It was dubbed “The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time” according to PCWorld Magazine.
Well the CueCat has been reborn (once again here in North Texas) and is now called Qyoo (pronounced “Q” or “cue”). I rarely spend ANY time being negative on this blog, but I after watching a long form news piece on Qyoo I can’t help but comment. The Qyoo folks have created a ‘new’ 2D barcode. Of course 2D barcodes have been around since 1994 and are standard on almost ALL shipping packages throughout the world. Companies like NeoMedia and Scanbuy have attempted to convince marketers to locate 2D barcodes on print, television and outdoor advertising. These efforts have been successful in Japan, Korea and France. In other places, namely the U.S., their efforts have been less successful. I have written about 2D codes or QR codes in context to our own barcode efforts here.
Qyoo claims that QR codes (the industry standard 2D barcode) are difficult for cell phones to read. This patently false. 2D codes are VERY easy for cell phone cameras to read. You don’t need a fancy auto-focus camera, instead almost all cell phone cameras produced since 1994 have the capability to read a QR code. So why would Qyoo try to solve a problem that doesn’t exist? Well, they are actually trying to solve a different problem: CONTROL.
You see, anyone can create a 2D QR code that links an image on a package back to rich media (a website, a video, an audio track, whatever) for FREE using a QR code. Why? The company that created them, Denso-Wave, decided to release the standard to the world for FREE. The format’s specification is available royalty-free from Denso-Wate. As a result, International standards organizations have adopted the open QR code standard including AIM International (Oct 1997), JIS X 0510 (Jan 2999), ISO/IEC 18004:2000 (Jun 2000) and ISO/IEC 18004:2006 (Sep 2006). QR codes have de facto standards to allow for encoding of URLs, contact information and other data types. You don’t need to pay Qyoo to create these 2D codes. You will see more and more 2D codes on packages, but they will be the free variety. 1D codes UPC/EAN codes took off because they were standard and FREE. If someone had tried to charge manufacturers for a 1D code there wouldn’t be 1D barcodes on 100% of the stuff you buy today.
If marketers REALLY wanted to link their packages, billboards and print ads to websites they could simply use a QR code generator, embed the links and include them - for free, today. The problem is that most US and EU marketers decided it was easier to simply write the URL in their ads. In Japan it is easier to print a 2D code than try to use Japanese letters (Kana/Kanji) in a URL. Are you getting the picture? 2D is big in Japan because there are more than 1,945 Japanese characters. Imagine trying to remember the characters in a Japanese URL? If you can scan the 2D code to the left you will find Qyoo’s website. Qyoo will control their 2D codes - you will have to pay for the privilege of using them. The one to the left is FREE.
Of course the real problem with Qyoo is that another little company has already entered the 2D ‘tag’ space. You might have heard of them - they are called MICROSOFT. Microsoft calls their 2D code a ‘tag’. Microsoft, like Denso-Wave, has released the reader and the creator for commercial and non-commercial use for FREE. Microsoft launched tag back in 2007 and began included them on DVDs. I wish the Qyoo people all the best, but I really believe that we don’t need another proprietary barcode standard - instead I think we need more stewards of the existing open standards. Build really great tools for marketers around the existing standards. Use QR codes or Microsoft’s Tag and build something great.
