Big feature on QR Codes in major UK newspaper

The Sun, the most read newspaper in the UK (famous for its topless Page 3 girls), had a series of pages promoting QR code last week:

• What is in Keeley's hands?
• How to crack QR smart code
• QR craze started in Japan
• Pet Shop Boys' coded message

Mobile Content News reports that News International, the Sun’s owner, is watching the take-up of the service closely, and may roll it out across all of its titles if it proves successful. Naturally the Sun is looking at the advertising potential and have already signed up Ladbrokes, Sky and Twentieth Century Fox to the service.

Also from mobilestance.com:

Google has stated that Andriod will feature a basic, but functional “format agnostic” QR reader, to be preloaded on all devices shipping with the Android Open OS.

The same link also contains this:

many of the major US carriers are getting behind the technology, giving the downloadable readers some fairly prominent deck placement over the next few quarters (sources confidential).

Obviously, I still haven't researched how the legals in QR Codes outside of Japan have been overcome. Any pointers anyone??

Our digital lifestyle, content publishing, privacy - a good thing

A USA Today article decries the loss of privacy as a result of everyone having a camera phone & the easy ability to publish content.

Far East Asia, then Europe and now the US is realizing the implications of our near 'always-recording' lifestyle in the 21st Century. From 2003, Camera phones banned in changing rooms of leisure centre.

There are positives: at the bottom of the US Today article, it mentions the Dog Poop Girl whose refusal to clean up her dog's mess on the Seoul subway was captured and posted and resulting social shame and capitulation. User generated journalism (most famous being Korea's OhMyNews) and consumer crime prevention (eg text your incriminating photos to your local police station) are other examples.

It is said that you shouldn't put anything in an email that you don't want published on the front page of the NY Times. See this list of career-limiting email blunders (the Claire Swire email, US banker in Korea from 2001).

However, what struck me was that teenagers / early twenties have ONLY lived in an era with the ability to snap 'n' publish content so willingly. Now these students are looking for a job little realizing that all those photos from yesteryear might come to haunt them.

I do think camera phones, the easy ability to post content will make for a cleaner and more just society - it will certainly make things harder to conceal in public.