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Show HN: A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative

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Re: Show HN: A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative

#81

Post by ansgri »

csbrooks wrote: post #73
pavedwalden wrote: post #70

Damn, whole lot of hate in these comments. Chill out guys, nobody's trying to kill QR codes here. samfpetersen, you made a cool thing. Expiration of small tags is an interesting way to solve the landgrab problem. I think these would be fun to use and I hope I see some around.

All the snarky and negative comments on anything that gets created here is really turning me off. Been using HN for a long time, but it might be time to move on.

OT On snarky and negative comments: you haven't seen habrahabr.ru, a site that fills the niche of HN for Russian speakers almost exactly and is sort of most respected here in tech. It has good articles and often publishes Russian translations of top HN items with about a week's delay. AND it feels like you're walking into a prison cell full of uncivilized criminals cursing at each other when you get to the comments.

The HN culture is very very good.

Re: Show HN: A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative

#82

Post by drzaiusapelord »

pnut wrote: post #66

I mean this honestly. Do people actually even use QR codes? Filling up your phone with a bunch of hi-res pictures of bar codes, not to mention having to load: 1. QR code app 2. camera app 3. browser app These things are 100% in the gimmick column in my life.

QR codes are things that techies think non-techies actually use. "Grandpa doesn't want to type in some URL, he just wants to scan an image and be taken there!" Then marketing gets involved asking for the QR code that the techies told them "everyone uses" and its now a requirement on all posters and advertising materials. Now here we are.

Re: Show HN: A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative

#86

Post by pnut »

theon144 wrote: post #74
pnut wrote: post #66

I mean this honestly. Do people actually even use QR codes? Filling up your phone with a bunch of hi-res pictures of bar codes, not to mention having to load: 1. QR code app 2. camera app 3. browser app These things are 100% in the gimmick column in my life.

Well, it kinda does show that you've never used QR codes, otherwise you'd know that all of this is pretty much handled by the app. Which means: No need to store the hi-res pictures of bar codes; no need to load up camera ap, as that's handled by the QR code app; no need to load up the browser, since a small embedded one appears to open the link, as a rule. That said, yeah, it's 100% a gimmick. I have only seen one or…

Guilty as charged!

Re: Show HN: A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative

#87

Post by robomc »

jmount wrote: post #37

Hand drawn alternative to QR codes? Writing the URL down in letters?

Yeah, if only modern humans had a rich, widely understood, system for presenting strings of data visually, which we spend millions of dollars each year teaching everyone we can, and which is already a pre-requisite for using 95% of all online media.

Re: Show HN: A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative

#88

Post by codingdave »

pnut wrote: post #66

I mean this honestly. Do people actually even use QR codes? Filling up your phone with a bunch of hi-res pictures of bar codes, not to mention having to load: 1. QR code app 2. camera app 3. browser app These things are 100% in the gimmick column in my life.

Yes, they are extremely useful if you actually need to pull data off a physical object. We use them at all of our conferences to scan badges. I embedded a reader into a web page, so my coworkers can just open a web page on their tablets, and they have a fully working system that can scan a QR code from a badge to log attendance at sessions, or assist people on the fly, without having to send people over to the registration desks for help with scheduling or other questions.

That is just one use - but anywhere that you see a barcode, a QR code would serve the same purpose. Really, that is all a QR code is - a fancier barcode.

You may be thinking of the marketing gimmicks where when you scan a code, an embedded URL is opened. That use case does feel gimmickky. But that is not their most practical use.

Re: Show HN: A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative

#89

Post by discordianfish »

I think this is a great idea. I'm surprised to see so many negative feedback. To me the great thing about it compared to a QR code is that you can draw it by hand which also means you can cheaply make it as big as you need it.

The aspect that it depends on a central service make it less dependable than an QR code and I'm wondering if this could be fixed. Still, I think it's a really interesting idea.

Re: Show HN: A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative

#90

Post by ytdht »

gbl08ma wrote: post #52
kazinator wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately, and unlike a QR code, the data is not encoded in the drawing itself. Obviously, there is data in the drawing. Just that data is a symbol which is resolved through some proprietary app, which maintains the association in a private database where it is subject to expiry and such. Just some third party has to develop an independent app to open up access to the data in the drawing and use it outside of t…

> Obviously, there is data in the drawing. I know this, and one can think of it as the numbers encoded in a plain old EAN-13 barcode. But as with these barcodes, the numbers by themselves don't usually have any meaning, they are just the key of a key-value pair. In this case the key-value database is in the Meshtag servers. Like you said, the "raw numbers" can still be useful for small-scale labeling, but once you ar…

there could be much more data if you did a scribble, and it could translate to some specific data that could be useful (to stop by a third party number or code that doesn't mean anything by itself. is only useful to promote the cloud or to represent large amounts of data)
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