Angry White Boy has an interesting post about the city putting QR codes on its new "Wayfinding" signage as if it's a big innovation when, in fact, QR codes are now outdated and mostly unused:
QR codes are now being replaced by NFC Chips, (Near Field Communication). Instead of pointing your phone at some weird looking image, scanning it, and waiting, you’ll simply be able to hold your phone up near a sign with an NFC chip and get exactly the same results, no app required.
Looks like Fort Wayne missed it on this one.
I was a big fan of the QR codes early on and even included them in a lot of editorials. It was kind of cool to let readers read, say, an endorsement editorial for a local election and put up a videotaped interview of the candidates involved that could be accessed by smartphones. But after scanning a lot of them at first (USA TODAY let you get to dozens of unpublished photos for a particular day), I started checking them out less and less, which I hadn't even noticed until AWB's post.
I'm a big fan of NFC, too, and I think they're going to be a much bigger deal that QR codes ever were, especially when they start putting the chips in a lot of other things and we'll be able to do just about anything with our smartphones.
