Pick up anything you have bought from a supermarket and you see it has a bar code. It’s used for price and stock control. However, have you checked your France Telecom bill and seen box full of random black and white squares? That is a Flash code, a three dimensional bar code.
It was created by France Telecom as a way to make links between traditional media (magazines, posters etc) and the Internet.
The Flash code can be scanned with a mobile phone, many Orange phones come with an application to enable this. The code itself can contain a web address amongst other things and the application can launch the phones web browser to visit that site.
Though it is seen mainly on utility bills and some advertising posters, Flash Code has great potential.
- Put it on your business card
- On your own invoices, leaflets and marketing material
- Outside wrappings of your products
- Inside a newspaper advert
- Address labels etc
The Orange website has a tool so that you can create your own Flash Code images. The Contact option creates a code that should update the mobile phones address book. There is a code for voice calls and another for SMS.
The official Flash Code site also has a tool that can create codes for links to websites. However, the Flash code reader that came with my Nokia XpressMusic reports it as an invalid tag. It may be because the application needs updating.
Try out Flash Codes for yourself and let me know if you can think of other uses for it.
