My local bus company has failed to grasp QR codes in a mind-bogglingly thorough way.
Every stop has a poster with a QR code on it, advertising that you can now look up when the next bus will be here by scanning the QR code. The first thing you might notice is that the poster is actually a photo of a QR code on a poster, and is taken at an angle sufficient to render scanning the QR code impossible.
The second thing you might notice is that all the posters are identical - they are, in fact, an advert for the QR code you are meant to scan and not the QR code itself.
So where are these QR codes? Somewhere else on the bus stop? On the post for the sign? No. Reading the smaller print on the poster reveals all: You simply visit their website on your PC and go to a specific URL, which delivers you a page full of QR codes. You then scan the QR code corresponding to the bus stop whose schedule you wish to view.
Maybe they got the idea from Google Code, which helpfully shows me a QR code for the tarball I'm about to download, for all those times I'm using the browser on my desktop and the IDE on my phone.
uh what? So I download the file, hash it, then pipe that into some program that's going to show me another QR code? And then eyeball that for differences? Who does that? I already have programs to compare two text strings, easily, accurately, remotely. Comparing two pngs is way more work. I was just assuming the QR code was the URL, but hash QRs make even less sense than my IDE on the phone scenario.
Actually, looking at the URL of the QR code image itself, it is for the download URL.
Lothian Buses in Edinburgh has done the right thing: they've stuck QR codes to each of their information signs, which direct you to the correct page on their mobile site, and the official Android app is registered for the URLs too.
Every stop has a poster with a QR code on it, advertising that you can now look up when the next bus will be here by scanning the QR code. The first thing you might notice is that the poster is actually a photo of a QR code on a poster, and is taken at an angle sufficient to render scanning the QR code impossible.
The second thing you might notice is that all the posters are identical - they are, in fact, an advert for the QR code you are meant to scan and not the QR code itself.
So where are these QR codes? Somewhere else on the bus stop? On the post for the sign? No. Reading the smaller print on the poster reveals all: You simply visit their website on your PC and go to a specific URL, which delivers you a page full of QR codes. You then scan the QR code corresponding to the bus stop whose schedule you wish to view.
Couldn't be easier!