As people have pointed out, this tag is reliant on the service operating. What about using Bitcoin's blockchain to store URLs/bytes? Make the tag a digest of a public key. Physical and digital graffiti.
Show HN: A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative
111–120 of 140 posts
Re: Show HN: A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative
#112I think everyone here who's pointing out that this is equivalent to a link shortener is missing something: the majority of QR codes in existence right now... are encodings of link-shortener URLs.
There's a big difference between QR codes ("Quick Response") - which I agree are mostly encodings of links and shortened links - and Data Matrix encodings of generic data. Both look like black and white squares, and can often be read by smartphones.
Either way, you make a valid point!
(As an aside, I don't know how many QR codes are out there, but for one of my products we're intending to print 10^8 data matrix codes this year, of which there'll be perhaps 1000 batches, i.e. only 1000 different codes.)
Re: Show HN: A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative
#113Unfortunately, and unlike a QR code, the data is not encoded in the drawing itself, which means an Internet connection is always needed. For URL sharing the Internet connection requirement is not so much of a problem (you'd always need that connection for browsing to the URL, unless it's a local or data URL), for everything else it may be. Also, once the Meshtag service goes down or closes for good, all tags become i…
I'm less worried about the requirement for an internet connection than I am about the single point of failure. When the centralised service goes down, all your tags are useless squiggles.
It's a pretty simple back-end - cheap and easy to run. I don't plan to take it down!
Re: Show HN: A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative
#114One word: graffiti.
Re: Show HN: A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative
#115Even though everyone else is talking about this as an impractical solution, I think it's clever at least. I don't know that I would ever use it, but I like the novel concept of it. If this was just a for-fun kind of project, I'd think it was pretty awesome. If you're trying to market it as a business, you're going to run into all the problems everyone else has already mentioned.
Yes, I think people are missing the point. It's not like the author is proposing an IETF standard or claiming this fixes some inherent problem with URLs. It's a novelty and is aesthetically pleasing.
I could see someone making stuff on Etsy stitching/drawing this in as a signature that links to their homepage.
Re: Show HN: A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative
#116I really like this - I think it would be an awesome way for people in cities to leave ephemeral easter eggs with chalk on a brick wall, for instance. Just because a lot of folks don't see the business value or purely technical use doesn't mean it's not awesome.
Or maybe make a meshtag scavenger hunt, with each tag leading to the next clue. Sure, you could do it with a QR code, but these look cooler, are ephemeral by nature, and have more of a fun feel to them.
The image processing code was probably really fun to write, too. Kudos on a really awesome project.
Re: Show HN: A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is a huge problem. A better solution would have been an app which takes a url and shows a sketch of triangles or squares which the user can then write out. Such an app could work offline as well.
How many shapes would you need to draw to encode even basic data like an 64 bit string of text? Serious question...would it be something that a person could sketch out quickly by hand? Or end up being a massive diagram? I've been reading the book "Code" where they start getting into the combinatorics side of things, but still relatively new to it.
We already have such a system, it's called letters and numbers..
Re: Show HN: A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like a more durable solution would be making an encoding of the alphabet that's easier for machines to read.
Like the one we've used on bank cheques* for all of time MICR E13-B: http://www.micr-fonts.com/MICRfont/micrfont.html (*British. )
Or on snail mail.
Re: Show HN: A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like a more durable solution would be making an encoding of the alphabet that's easier for machines to read.
Like the one we've used on bank cheques* for all of time MICR E13-B: http://www.micr-fonts.com/MICRfont/micrfont.html (*British. )
I meant one that could be created by hand, but that works for ones made by printer.