On an unrelated note, I have many blog posts in the hamper, partially written. You will likely not see them for a bit though as I’m moving across town between this weekend and next.

Their website is basically a very simple blog-style gallery of street and other public art. The creators put a QR Code sticker next street art that they find. The code links to a web page with an image of the art and offers viewers an opportunity to leave comments and discuss the work.

Passersby who see the art can scan the QR Code and be taken to the page about that artwork. They can then add to the conversation. If someone finds artwork that hasn’t been “tagged” with a QR Code, they can email its location and a photo of it to the site’s creator and it will be added to the site. The owners of the site will also send a QR Code sticker to the person who found it so that it can be tagged so that others can connect and join the discussion.

Read more about QR Codes here in an earlier post.

Geolocation by johnrhopkins

Geolocation isn’t anything new. It has, in a sense, been around since we began to locate object or places on a map with relative accuracy.

According to Wikipedia.org‘s entry on the subject:

Geolocation is the identification of the real-world geographic location of an object, such as a cell phone or an Internet-connected computer terminal. Geolocation may refer to the practice of assessing the location, or to the actual assessed location.

Right now you are likely reading this content on a computer screen. Since I use Google Analytics to monitor traffic to my site, I’ll be able to know that someone from your town visited my site. This is because most IP addresses are listed with their supposed location. This is called IP Location.

What I’m excited about is how geolocation applies to mobile technology.

Many of us use geolocation already and don’t know it. For example: If you took a picture with your location-enabled phone and uploaded it to the web, you likely uploaded the location of where you took the image as part of the image file’s data. Take a look at sites like flickr.com. You can view your photos on a map that shows where the photos were taken. You can even use your phone to see pics taken by others near your current location!

So imagine the following events:

You are walking through the downtown area of whatever town is closest to you. Your phone alerts you that it has a message to relay to you. A push notification from an app… It tells you that there is a coffee shop 63 meters from you that is having a happy hour special. Not only that, but 8 of your friends have recommended this business. You look a bit deeper into the location’s entry in the app and you see that one of your good friends signed into the location not 10 minutes ago with the following message: “Having a tasty caramel macchiato while getting some work done”.

Was this intrusive? It might seem so for some. But would you stop in to the business and have a coffee with your friend? Probably so. We aren’t too far away from this being reality. Apps like Loopt will already let you know when you are near your friends.

For marketers, the bad news is that currently, there aren’t enough users to make the data generated as valuable as it could be. This won’t last long. Yes, it took Facebook years to get to the number of users it has. The good news is that sites like Facebook and Twitter have paved the way for users to accept tools like Foursquare and Gowalla. The growth of these tools has already been explosive. I predict that within the next 12 months, there will be HUGE growth in the geolocation arena. Like social media, it isn’t going anywhere but up.

So the question is this: Who has access to the data? We will soon see agreements between the makers of these highly used tools and the big dogs like Google, Microsoft and Facebook.

Is this a good thing? While some fear the issues related to privacy, I believe that since marketing isn’t going away, having better data will only result in more targeted advertisements. That said, everyone should be aware of what data they share with the world and consider their safety. I’ll write more on the safety aspect soon.

It did take some effort to get this code to scan. I tried four different apps on my iPhone. Finally NeoReader was able to figure out the code. It links to the Japanese Louis Vuitton store.

While I love the look, I’m not sure trading scan-ability for style is going to work for many audiences outside the Japanese LV customer.

My first experience with SCVNGR was via a window sticker at Dottie’s True Blue Cafe in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District much like one of the Google Places window stickers. It is, by the way, the BEST breakfast I’ve ever had. SCVNGR is one of the many geolocation games/systems that are popping up on many smartphones across the world.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Evan Korzon of SCVNGR. He showed me some of the exciting new features of their platform. The most exciting of which is the rewards system. Unlike Foursquare where the users are rewarded with virtual badges, SCVNGR allows businesses to create unique rewards for their customers. Journeys, an Alternative shoe retailer, is offering customers $10 off for completing challenges in their store.

Challenges are based on criteria that the business can create. Some possibilities are:

• Bar/club: Snap a photo of your favorite bartender
• Salon: Enter the name of your hair stylist
• Retail: Take a photo of the strangest product in the store
• General: Ask the owner for the super-secret password
• General: Take a funny picture of an employee at work
• General: Find and scan the QR Code

As you can see, these can be a lot of fun!

I also found out that unlike many of it’s competitors, SCVNGR actually has a game plan that includes generating revenue. Although, for now, they are focused on growing their user numbers, primarily in the big cities. The fact that they are funded by the likes of Google helps with this growth period. They plan on charging businesses a small fee to use their platform for promotion (rewards). For now, Evan told me, they are offering the services free of charge for the first 50 businesses in each market.

ARE0065 by Fabrice de Nola

I found this to be an interesting use for QR Codes. It is a map of Rome with the codes set on specific, most likely touristy locations. You can find a detailed image of the painting here. Each QR Code, in this instance, links to a Wikipedia article. This is located at Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Palermo, Italy.

While this is a great use of the technology, it’d be much more immersive if it linked to video as well as the wiki content. One of the great things about being able to connect real-world locations to mobile content is that you aren’t limited just text and static imagery.

From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code):

A QR Code is a matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code), readable by QR scanners, mobiles phones with camera, and smartphones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on white background. The information encoded can be text, URL or other data.

OK, enough with the boring stuff. Why should anyone who isn’t tracking automotive parts care?

Right now in a given week, you might not even see one of these codes. But they are out there! Mostly overseas in Japan, the Middle East and more recently in Europe.

Here is how it typically plays out right now. You see an advertisement in a magazine, movie poster, billboard, or some strange place you might not expect.

You pull out your smartphone and scan the barcode with your camera. You’ll need app like quiQR for the iPhone or Barcode Scanner for Android phones. There are options for other phones. I’ve been told that most any phone with a camera will work, but I haven’t had the opportunity to test them out.

Most scans will take you to a web page (hopefully one that is designed for mobile) with more information. For example, a scan of the code on a movie poster will take you to a movie trailer. Scan a Google Places sticker on a restaurant window sticker will take you to a place that shows the menu, customer reviews, prices and other information about the business.

What else can these codes do? Well I’ll be exploring that idea in future posts.

From a customer’s point of view, it isn’t a simple task to quickly compare prices between stores. It is time-consuming and often the stores don’t carry the same items. Many stores carry items that are store-branded that other stores won’t have.

Sure, if you regularly buy bananas at store “A” at .52 cents/pound, you know that it is cheaper than store “B” at .89 cents/pound. It doesn’t matter though. All that matters is how much your total grocery bill added up to.

So here it is. The app must do the following:

1. Allow customers to scan bar-codes, either at the competitor’s store or at home as they un-bag their purchases.
   You can already do this with many other tools for Android and iPhone
2. Offer comparable products for items not available an their store
3. Offer users the ability to manually add in items that have no barcode (produce)

Other nice features would be:

1. A Progressive Insurance-like ability to compare to other grocery stores in the area for the same list of items (via geolocation)
2. A customizable notification of prices that have drastically changed.
3. Other ideas?

This is the PERFECT time for brands large and small to get into geolocation. This is the time to experiment, make mistakes, learn and lead! Better to make mistakes now, while the audience is small. The number of people who use geolocation tools are growing every second.

For example, a quick punch of a few key websites at Compete.com shows some interesting numbers. Skip past the chart and look at the percentages. Yearly change for Facebook is 37%. That is awesome considering how large Facebook is. Getting continual growth like that is a big deal! As a comparison, google.com only manages a 4% annual increase.

Foursquare by comparison has seen a year over year increase of 18,438%… that is 18 THOUSAND percent! Granted the numbers are substantially smaller.

Now let’s look at the average user as determined by the Forrester Research: 80% Male, 70% are between 18 and 35-years-old and 70% have a college degree. The study also mentions that 38% of this group say that friends and family ask their opinion before a purchase. I just can’t imagine why anyone would want to reach an audience like that! </sarcasm>

Obviously, if you are a marketer and want to explore these tools, you have to make sure your clients understand that this realm is in its infancy and won’t likely net earth-shattering results. That said, I’d suggest that small businesses have the most to gain from well-executed efforts.

So, lead, experiment and learn, or be left playing catch-up.

UPDATE: It looks like the folks at Fast Company agree with me! w00t!!!

Yet for, some reason, I have stopped writing. The silence is over.

I have been toying with writing a book on the strange topic of anomalies. I’ll be sharing some of those ideas here. I’m also getting pretty excited about the next big things in Social Media and Mobile. They aren’t anything new, but new to most. Geolocation and QR Codes. If you aren’t sure what Geolocation is, think Foursquare, Gowalla and SCVNGR… but it is WAY more than that. This new branch of social media is going to be amazing… and rather scary. QR Codes are a 2D Barcode technology that originated in Japan. While they are widely used in the East and in Europe, The Americas are just seeing them, and most have no idea what they are. Simply put, they are square-ish barcodes that you can scan with a smartphone and it will link you to some online content.

If you have ideas on either Anomalies, QR Codes or Geolocation, I’d love to hear them.

That is it for now. More soon.