Mobile Behavior: an Omnicom Group Company

The trend is clear: Digital is breaking free. The tethered desktop is old thinking; interactivity is everywhere now. At SXSW Interactive 2010 we saw this trend continue.

Barcodes were everywhere; seen on t-shirts, stickers, and flyers, in all shapes and sizes. Upon checking in at SXSW, attendees were given a name badge with a QR code printed on it. When you met someone at the event, you could let them scan your badge using an app like i-nigma or bee tag, and they would automatically be following you on my.SXSW, a social network set up for the event. There they could message you or access your contact information, essentially replacing the business card.

Several startups were there promoting new platforms and use cases for barcodes. Qyoo provides a new breed of barcodes which, when scanned, can pull up video and other media. Stickybits essentially hijacks the world of barcodes, letting users scan and attach social media to everyday objects. Where there aren’t barcodes, the service provides generated codes. Users can purchase stickers online or print them for free directly from the website.  Through a partnership with SimpleGeo, Stickybits can detect and map when and where barcodes are scanned. Scanners can even "check in" on Foursquare through the barcode.

While there are currently no standards, the intersection of all these platforms lies in the idea of a connected, annotated reality. Maps, Books, Spimes, and Paper: Post-Digital Media Design was a panel about fusing the Internet with traditional media. Through mobile paths such as barcodes, a new dimension is brought to the permanence of a physical book. In the book "Baked In," Twitter hashtags are included at the end of each chapter. With this, readers are connected in ways like never before. Digital is not killing print, but rather it is freeing up physical media to play a different role. Mobile phones are an important piece of this puzzle, enabling users to plug-in to the annotated world.