> You need a smartphone to scan them. People without a phone handy can't scan them, so if you see an ad somewhere, and want to check it out later you can't just remember the URL
No problem, just put them both. For smartphone (or at least not-completely-stupid-phone) users (which are very common in e.g. Japan, where the use of these codes is extremely widespread) qr-codes and the like are a godsend: typing a 50 characters url correctly is a pain, scanning codes is trivial and just about instantaneous.
> For example, you might not want to take out your fancy new superphone in the subway.
Not everybody lives in the bronx. That is FUD and a non-issue.
> It's slow. If you have a current top-model, it might be tolerable, but it's easier to just type in a URL on many phones.
No on both counts. Scanning a qr-code takes a few seconds, typing a URL (especially a complex one) and ensuring you get it perfectly right (allowing for a pair of errors) takes at least as long with a full keyboard. Use a 10key, and the qr-codes win handily.
On my 3 years old smartphone (iPhone 3G), it takes roughly as long to start quiQR and Safari, and from quiQR I only have to hit the "Scan" button and aim the camera at the code. In Safari, I have to dismiss the favorites (if no page is loaded yet), potentially create a new tab/page, tap the URL bar, and then copy the URL.
And as you can see in the video, it took 5s from tapping on the qr-scanning application icon to having the Youtube application open, . Would you be able to type a youtube video URL (including the dozen of semi-random characters identifier) faster without any mistake? Outlook not so good.
> You need an app before you can actually scan them.
These apps are widespread, and again in Japan (where these codes are used a lot) I believe phones can scan them natively. Similar spread of codes in western countries would likely lead to phones bundling native support for them (e.g. via image recognition built in the camera software)
> I don't know where the code points to. If you give me an URL, I can already know something about it (e.g. cnn.com/ad2), with a QR-code, anything could happen.
A qr-code is just text encoding, and it often is a URL. It makes no difference. It's trivial to pop up the textual version of the code and prompt for further action. That's what pretty much all code-scan applications I've used do.
> 6) It looks stupid when you're scanning the code.
Oh noes, the humanity. Furthermore, if you believe you look stupid when scanning a code, trust me that's nothing compared to copying a URL from a print to a phone.
No problem, just put them both. For smartphone (or at least not-completely-stupid-phone) users (which are very common in e.g. Japan, where the use of these codes is extremely widespread) qr-codes and the like are a godsend: typing a 50 characters url correctly is a pain, scanning codes is trivial and just about instantaneous.
> For example, you might not want to take out your fancy new superphone in the subway.
Not everybody lives in the bronx. That is FUD and a non-issue.
> It's slow. If you have a current top-model, it might be tolerable, but it's easier to just type in a URL on many phones.
No on both counts. Scanning a qr-code takes a few seconds, typing a URL (especially a complex one) and ensuring you get it perfectly right (allowing for a pair of errors) takes at least as long with a full keyboard. Use a 10key, and the qr-codes win handily.
On my 3 years old smartphone (iPhone 3G), it takes roughly as long to start quiQR and Safari, and from quiQR I only have to hit the "Scan" button and aim the camera at the code. In Safari, I have to dismiss the favorites (if no page is loaded yet), potentially create a new tab/page, tap the URL bar, and then copy the URL.
And as you can see in the video, it took 5s from tapping on the qr-scanning application icon to having the Youtube application open, . Would you be able to type a youtube video URL (including the dozen of semi-random characters identifier) faster without any mistake? Outlook not so good.
> You need an app before you can actually scan them.
These apps are widespread, and again in Japan (where these codes are used a lot) I believe phones can scan them natively. Similar spread of codes in western countries would likely lead to phones bundling native support for them (e.g. via image recognition built in the camera software)
> I don't know where the code points to. If you give me an URL, I can already know something about it (e.g. cnn.com/ad2), with a QR-code, anything could happen.
A qr-code is just text encoding, and it often is a URL. It makes no difference. It's trivial to pop up the textual version of the code and prompt for further action. That's what pretty much all code-scan applications I've used do.
> 6) It looks stupid when you're scanning the code.
Oh noes, the humanity. Furthermore, if you believe you look stupid when scanning a code, trust me that's nothing compared to copying a URL from a print to a phone.