AR for Business Cards: Barcode Becomes iCode

I love augmented reality (AR)*. I love the unseen potential and the mind warp of converging realities. While I readily confess to being a tech-nerd, I am not particularly well-versed at the really technical end that drives all this new technology.

I have been trying to figure out an easy way to get AR onto my business card.  (Easy means something that I can do myself.)  I’d love to have an icon allows me to appear like Princess Leia; a mini-me talking away earnestly about how much I love the psychology of media experience and why that’s important.  However, so far I haven’t found that capability without either spending money or getting more education.  There are people doing some interesting things in this area.  I tried VisualCard but I couldn’t get it to work.  Stickybits is also cool, but I didn’t really want to take the chance of someone adding files to my barcode. (I know sharing is good and part of the social media experience, but I’m not ready to relinquish control of my business card.)

Now, however,  I have a new favorite experiment thanks to the folks at 3GVision and the free smartphone app called i-nigma. The mobile barcode generator at barcodelink.net allows you to create a barcode (duh) from a web link of your choice. It works with a website, but it also works with a linked file like a YouTube video. Using the barcode reader i-nigma, I can trigger the link from my cell phone.

Check it out. Here’s the barcode for my blog on Psychology Today.  Or maybe I should say iCode?

The barcode triggers a link to the website on Internet-connected phone. It is fully navigable using phone's browser.

I can think of all kinds of swell things to do with this beyond to embedding live information into your business card.  As long as the url doesn’t change, the content can be updated.  Fore example, I can see teachers using it to engage students in a topic or provide homework updates in a James Bondian kind of way.  I can see therapists creating carry-along cards for their clients to provide on-demand video support for things like phobias, anxiety and depression.

A barcode on a business card may not seems like it really counts as AR.  The website stays in the phone and does not hover deliciously over the card through the lens of the iPhone or Blackberry.  But it’s another indicator of the tectonic shift happening in information delivery.

This may not be the only way for a mere mortal on a shoestring budget to get started using AR on a business card, so if you know of other solutions, I’d love to hear!

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* My last post describes AR and some of the current and potential applications.