ELCA Web and Multimedia Development Blog

While I was in Austin attending SXSWi, I couldn’t help but notice the ubiquitous use of QR Codes. I mean, they were EVERYWHERE. On flyers, on posters, on stickers, on T-Shirts, on wall paintings, on EVERYTHING. It was, without a doubt, the most popular technology.

Credit: WIRED

But it didn’t work.

Sure, if you stood long enough, and held your phone still enough, you might get a good photo and be rewarded with the link. But most times, you just don’t have the time to spend. And QR Codes on T-shirts? Forget it. Unless you want to ask the person to hold their shirt to get rid of the wrinkles and folds, it’s not gonna happen.

And for a guy to ask a girl to make her shirt taut so he can hold a camera at her shirt for a long period of time, is just a bad idea. Free meal coupon, or not.

But now there is a new player on the horizon of image links…. that actually uses images. Enter Aurasma. Billed as Augmented Reality (AR) technology, Aurasma, created by enterprise software company Autonomy, can change a photo into video or presumably anything else you’d like that image to link to. And it does it right in the camera view. This obviously is steps ahead of the QR Code, and some might argue a completely different technology. But for what we want QR Codes to do, Aurasma just might be a better tool.

What are your thoughts? Is the QR Code dead? Have you had a poor experience with a QR Code? Tell us in the comments.