July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Our good buddies over at Scan have just taken the wraps off the next version of the app, and the QR code scanner didn’t just get a little nip/tuck.

Calling the upgrade a “giant leap closer to our larger vision for what Scan is becoming,” founder Garrett Gee said in a statement on the news that the new version represents a ground-up overhaul for the startup’s flagship product.

In addition to a slick new UI, Scan 2.0 also supports more devices (iPhone 5, check; iPad mini, check; Android, no dice — yet), more one-click login options, and faster scanning for QR codes, UPCs (Universal Product Codes, or bar codes, as they’re more commonly known), EANs (International/European Article Numbers), and ISBNs for books.

“We had to totally redo the backend,” Gee told us via email, “in order to enable future in-app native actions that will directly tie with the business/web side of Scan.”

“We came at it from a design perspective and we were young, sort of native to the iPhone,” Gee said in a recent chat with VentureBeat. “Most people are interacting with QR codes using their phones, but a lot of time that took them to a mobile web site that was poorly designed.”

Also, the company has just announced a big milestone: 25 million users, up from 10 million just 9 months ago. After working with big-name clients such as NBA teams and Lady Gaga, the young team sealed an early-stage funding deal with Google Ventures and Menlo Ventures to the sweet, sweet tune of $1.7 million.

Top image courtesy of gualtiero boffi, Shutterstock

Ernest Cline has a lot to be thankful for. His book, Ready Player One, ranked number 21 on the New York Times best-seller list for hardcover fiction last year, and it slid into the top 20 at the beginning of July this year, a few weeks after the paperback version arrived on shelves. Ready Player One is a success story for more reasons than one. Cline hasn’t been sitting idle, watching his book rise and fall on the charts. He’s transformed it into a platform to share his dream, connect with fans, and launch the marketing campaign of a lifetime.

He’s giving away a 1981 DeLorean to the clever few who can find three keys and open three secret gates — just like in his novel.

“I feel really lucky,” says Cline, realizing that a breakaway hit doesn’t happen to everyone on their first try. “The reception has been pretty astounding.”

Cline celebrated his success by buying a DeLorean of his own, a car he’s wanted since he “first saw one in person at the age of 10.”

He might have written off his purchase as a business expense (“the best idea I’ve ever had,” he says), but the DeLorean means as much to Cline as it does to other ’80s lovers. Ready Player One, which tells a story about legions of dedicated gamers contending for the ultimate fortune, blends classic video game culture with Oingo Boingo songs and movies like Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future. To own a real DeLorean like the one in the film, especially a model built from Cline’s favorite pieces of pop culture, might be the geek equivalent of leaving a footprint on the moon.

“It’s the perfect emblem of my book,” he says.

“I have modified the car so that it matches the DeLorean driven by the protagonist in my book. I’ve added personalized license plates that read ECTO88. I’ve also outfitted the car with a KITT scanner from Knight Rider, an Oscillation Overthruster from Buckaroo Banzai, a large array of Ghostbusting equipment, and a Flux Capacitor” — the component that gives Back to the Future’s DeLorean the ability to revisit any point in history. “So now it’s a time-traveling, knight-riding, ghostbusting jet car. Probably the geekiest vehicle in history. I love it.”

Cline’s decision to give away a second DeLorean shows a sense of community — a true passion that he wants to share with others and a genuine appreciation for what makes nerds tick. He’s the kind of person who relates most closely with his own character Ogden Morrow, a “fun-loving geek” with a love for ’80s music and video games, along with a few “obsessive” traits.

Cline showcased the grand-prize DeLorean at each of his book-tour signings in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, California, Kentucky, and Florida, where people were welcome to view the car in person and even climb inside.

“People at every one of my book signings have freaked out over the car,” he says. “I open it up after every signing and let people sit inside and pose for photos. It’s like a traveling ’80s pop culture museum. People love it, and they love the contest, too. There’s nothing cooler than the possibility of winning a DeLorean time machine by playing video games.”

The contest to win the car consists of three rounds, but participants have to do a little sleuthing to make it to stage one.

“With the help of my publisher, I hid an ‘Easter egg’ in the text of both the hardcover and paperback editions of Ready Player One,” says Cline. “If readers can find this hidden clue, it will lead them to the first of three increasingly difficult video game challenges. The first person to complete all three of these challenges will win the grand prize, a 1981 DeLorean automobile complete with a Flux Capacitor!”

According to Cline’s blog, 931 people have successfully cleared the first gate in the competition. In the book, protagonist Wade “Parzival” Watts — one of many egg hunters, or “gunters,” searching for famed OASIS game creator James Halliday’s Easter egg — conquers the Tomb of Horrors (a reference to Dungeons & Dragons) and acts out John Badham’s 1983 film WarGames line by line to pass the first gate.

The real-world version is a little different.

“The first challenge is the new Atari 2600 game called The Stacks,” says Cline, who notes that the ROM is functional on the Stella emulator and vintage Atari 2600 systems via cartridge thanks to the handiwork of Other Ocean Interactive and AtariAge. “Nearly 1000 people [editor’s note: the number is now slightly higher] have already beaten the game and found the hidden [QR code] inside the game, which leads to the second challenge that launched on July 1, a new Facebook game created by Richard Garriott — the legendary game designer who partially inspired the character of Halliday in the book.”

Cline explains that he knew he wanted to host a video game contest that mimicked the one in the book, but he wasn’t sure how to execute the idea.

“Then the hardcover came out in August of 2011, and a lot of real video game developers discovered it and reached out to me, offering to help me create games based on my novel,” he says. “That was when I realized I might actually be able to do a real contest, with the help of these game developers.

“There are three ‘keys,’ or hidden web URLs that lead to each challenge, and three ‘gates,’ or video game challenges that must be completed to proceed. But the challenges are much easier than the ones in the book, and the prize is much more modest than the one Halliday offers. But readers are still having a blast with the contest, and it brings the book to life in a way that’s hard to describe. I’m having a lot of fun with it.”

Five days into the second challenge — concealed in Portalarium’s Facebook game Ultimate Collector: Garage Sale, in which players collect items to transform a regular DeLorean into a time machine — 100 people earned a place in round three. Now the tally is up to 250 players.

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A few dozen Facebook employees have put their own massive mark, literally, on the social network’s expansive new Menlo Park campus.

The mark in question is a gargantuan, scannable QR code taking up 42 feet of rooftop space atop one of Facebook’s new buildings.

The code was painted by crafty Facebookers during a company hackathon in February. The story goes that chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced a “Space Hackathon,” via Facebook of course, to encourage team members to make the new office space their own. Mark Pike, an associate on the intellectual property team, decided to take the call to action literally.

“Hack yeah! I’d like to paint a gigantic QR code somewhere so we can RickRoll online maps, or point people to our careers site, or send them to a ‘Clarissa Explains it All’ GeoCities Page,” Pike wrote in a Facebook post that became the catalyst for a late-night rooftop painting session.

After several planning sessions, a group of employees purchased the fbco.de domain and came up with a plan of attack. When the hackathon rolled around, they headed up to the roof, determined the best spot for the most visibility, and set about painting the code with, “chalk, twine, paint rollers, a few drums full of black paint, and some cold beer,” according to Pike’s description.

The team’s efforts proved successful. The 42-foot code can be scanned from the skies, and will soon start appearing in satellite captures of the area. What scanners will find, however, remains a mystery. The code, for now, simply redirects to a “coming soon” landing page.

“The next time you zoom in on Facebook from a satellite map or find yourself flying into SFO, take a close look at our roof,” Pike said. “We can’t promise you wont be Rick Rolled, but we can promise something cool.”

Photo credit: FBQRCode/Facebook

Now a startup with the pleasingly direct, almost rude name of Gimme (the founders spell it Gimme!) has a solution: Print a scannable QR code on the coupon and let customers redeem their coupons right on the spot with their mobile phones.

The company announced its product today at Demo Fall 2011, a product showcase in Silicon Valley.

“From a consumer perspective, it’s hard to really feel a sense of loyalty for a business if you’re constantly clipping coupons or printing vouchers,” said Gimme CEO Steve Basmaijan. “Eliminating the need for coupons and vouchers while still providing discounts made a lot of sense.  Plus, who wouldn’t want cash back at places they love to shop and dine?”

The system works for cash rebates, too. Instead of having to mail in a rebate code, you just submit the QR code on the receipt and get cash back on the purchase, right on the spot.

Gimme might sound like just another one of a zillion daily discount services, like Groupon, Living Social and others. But its emphasis on making redemption easy, while encouraging repeat visits, is an interesting twist on the discount model. Basmaijan says that the problem with daily deals sites is that they provide no incentive for return visits.

“Group purchase discounts are great at attracting customers, but horrible at retaining them,” Basmaijan said. “Businesses trying to promote products or services solely through group deals would be the same as building a house only using a hammer, it’s just one tool, and you need more than one tool to build a house.”

The model is similar to DailyGobble, which lets consumers get cash back by snapping photos of restaurant receipts. According to Basmaijan, DailyGobble struck more than 500 partnerships with restaurants in New York and San Francisco just three months after launching, so he’s confident that he can pull off a similar trick with Gimme.

Gimme’s system is set up to let customers redeem discounts using any device with a camera and internet connection. Customers can submit QR codes by scanning them via the Gimme app (soon to be release on iOS and Android), through third-party barcode-scanning apps or by sending in a picture message.

For businesses, the company’s software can integrate with the existing point of sale system. Business customers can also access it through a web portal or a tablet app.  The software communicates with Gimme’s back-end infrastructure to generate a unique code for each transaction.  These codes are printed at the bottom of the receipt upon the completion of the sale.  Gimme’s infrastructure is based on a combination of Java, Scala, Play Framework and MySQL.

The risk is that Gimme’s technology might be too easy for another, larger company to reproduce. If the founders are smart, they’ll be filing patents on some key aspects of their business process or technology right now. Otherwise, it’s just a matter of time before we see GroupOn (or Google) offering QR code rebate redemption.

The company was founded in 2011, has just three employees, and is based in Coppell, Texas, about 25 miles outside of Dallas. It has been bootstrapped so far, with just $10,000 in funding from the founders and their friends and family.

Gimme is one of 80 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2011 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After our selection, the companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective. There’s still plenty to see at DEMO, and VentureBeat readers can get a special discount on registration for the remainder of the show at demo.com/VBDay.

Top photo courtesy Gimme.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Of the 14 million mobile phone users who scanned QR codes in June 2011, a full 60 percent were male.

According to data in a comScore report released today, most QR code-scanning consumers are between the ages of 18 and 34, and around a third are in households making $100,000 or more per year.

And for all the flack the print industry gets for being behind the digital times, almost half of all QR code scans originated with printed magazines and newspapers.

What this means for marketers and other decision-makers today is that QR codes, while rapidly evolving and gaining in adoption, are still far from being a mainstream technology. As a tool for reaching a diverse audience for a range of goods and services, QR codes have not yet arrived. Nevertheless, their popularity is growing rapidly — one report from QR company Jumpscan estimates a 1200% increase in QR code scanning during the last six months of 2010.

For mobile marketing executives and managers, this data represent an interesting guidepost for how mobile QR code campaigns should be targeted and where codes should be placed.

“QR codes demonstrate just one of the ways in which mobile marketing can effectively be integrated into existing media and marketing campaigns to help reach desired consumer segments,” said comScore senior vice president of mobile Mark Donovan in a release.

“For marketers, understanding which consumer segments scan QR codes, the source and location of these scans and the resulting information delivered is crucial in developing and deploying campaigns that successfully utilize QR codes to further brand engagement.”

ComScore’s research showed that in June, more than 14 million U.S. mobile users scanned QR codes. Altogether, these mobile users make up 6.2 percent of the total mobile audience. Of these 14 million, 60.5 percent were male, 53.4 percent were between 18 and 34, and 36.1 percent made $100,000 or more annually.

Around 58 percent of scans occurred while users were at home, with an additional 40 percent of users saying they scanned codes while in retail stores. As previously mentioned, traditional magazines and newspapers led the pack of QR code sources, coming in at 49.4 percent of user responses. Around 35 percent of respondents said they scanned codes on product packaging.

All told, the vast majority of QR code scans came from physical or print sources such as business cards, flyers or brochures. Around 27 percent of respondents said they’d scanned a code found on a computer screen, and less than 12 percent said they’d scanned a QR code they saw on a television screen.

Other stats show that around 30 percent of QR code scans are conducted on Android phones, with 21 percent of scans coming from iOS devices and 17 percent from Windows phones.

Image courtesy of scott blake.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Daqri, which lets any user create bar codes called QR codes that display images, movies and other pieces of content as soon as they are viewed through an iPhone camera, announced today it is launching a private beta test.

The company made the announcement at the Launch Conference in San Francisco.

Users upload a piece of content and associate it with a QR code. The augmented reality piece automatically displays when anyone opens up the Daqri application and hovers their camera over the QR code. That can be an image, a video or just about anything else as long as there is an existing application programming interface (API).

The technology is called augmented reality. Augmented reality applications overlay content onto the real world through a phone camera. There are applications that focus on augmented reality, such as Layar, while popular general interest apps like Yelp can incorporate the technology too. When the camera is opened, Yelp displays relevant restaurant ratings and reviews depending on where it is pointed.

But the service was pretty nebulous, and didn’t really have a specific application. That would end up hurting the service in the long run because it’s more efficient to focus on a niche, said Aarron Walter, user experience design leader of MailChimp. Most people just won’t know what to do with the application because there are too many options, he said.

“Wordlens and these other augmented reality apps are amazing because they only do one thing,” Walter said. “I know it’s going to do this one thing — make sure you say that it does just one thing.”

But it was still a pretty cool idea, said Yammer founder David Sacks. He said that even though the service was a bit open-ended, it would take off once one user figured out a killer use case for the service. Angel investor Dave McClure suggested an augmented-reality-based game that uses the accelerometer — a use case that involves a spacial component.

“The fascinating part to me was using QR codes, which I think is a more exciting space,” Sacks said. “The augmented reality part is too far ahead and a bit of a red herring, but if they’re flexible and they want to thrash around a bit with QR codes, they’ll be okay.”

The service is available for free for some basic services. Daqri charges $20 a month for a premium service that includes more features, and will probably sell the service to companies that want to re-brand it with their own identity and collect subscription fees.