Andreas Gohr: Weblog [splitbrain.org]

11 iPhone QR Code Readers Tested

Andi — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:50:30 +0200

I'm a fan of 2D barcodes and of course I wanted to have a decoder for them on my iPhone. The appstore has a nice selection of tools available. But which to use? I downloaded all free ones I could find (and one payed one) and tried to test them.

To be honest, these tools have a really hard job because the camera on the iPhone sucks (unless you own the brand new 3GS model). For testing the recognition skills I let them decode two codes in three different sizes. I used one very simple code and one very complex one (the more data is encoded the more complex the code gets). I gave one point for each code that was easily recognized by the tool. So there were 6 points to reach. If I managed to get a code recognized after several careful tries, I assigned 0.5 points. None of the tools was able to recognize the blurry mess the iPhone cam made from the small versions of the codes, so the highest score reached was 4.

All tested tools understood at least QR Code, some recognized additional 2D barcodes like DataMatrix.

But it's not only important to recognize and decode the code. It is also important to interpret the data correctly and let me easily use it. URLs should open in Safari, E-Mail addresses should open the email application, and phone numbers should be callable. Ideally the App should also understand vcards embedded in the code. For phone numbers some applications needed the number to be prefixed with TEL: while others did not like that prefix at all .

Well, here are the results in a shiny table:

	Recog	Tel	Codes
2D Sense	3	¹⁾	6
Snappr 2D	4		1
UpCode	4		2
NeoReader	4	²⁾	2
Barcodes	4	³⁾	1
Barcode	4	⁴⁾	2
Camclic	4	⁵⁾	1
BeeTagg	3.5		3
dood me co	4		1
QuickMark lite	3.5		2
QuickMark	4 auto	⁶⁾	3

My favorite is “Quickmark” (prized at $2) because the ability to add new contacts to my address book by using vcards is the killer feature for me. The missing telephone number support looks more like a bug than a missing feature to me, so I'm hopeful this gets fixed soon. And the automatic scanning (no need to take a photo - just point the camera in the right direction) makes scanning much easier.

What's your experience? What application works best for you? Did I miss one? Let me know in the comments please.

Tags:: 2dbarcode,; semacode,; qrcode,; datamatrix,; iphone,; apps,; comparison

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¹⁾ without TEL:

²⁾ , ³⁾ , ⁵⁾ with TEL:

⁴⁾ “call number” opens email

⁶⁾ recognized with TEL: but not callable

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More Vacation Photos - Prague

Andi — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:51:52 +0200

You can never travel enough. Just a week after returning from our Iceland trip we did another short trip – this time to Prague. It's still a very fascinating city, even though I've been there for about 6 or 7 times now over the years.

Here are a few select photos.

Tags:: vacation,; photos,; prague

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Microblogging Iceland

Andi — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 13:56:46 +0200

Yes, I'm back. Kaddi and me were on vacation again. This time it was two weeks in Iceland. We had a rental car and toured around the whole island. Of course we had no Internet most of the time, but I didn't miss it much. However I missed something I didn't expect: microblogging.

It's interesting how lifestreaming has become a part of my life and somehow helps me to keep track of the things that touch me in a way. So instead of microblogging live, I just jotted down some notes in my Palm and now post them below as a very abridged summary of my Iceland vacation. Of course you'll find a selection of the over 1500 photos we took, too.

arrived at Kevlavik. got our car. missing the voucher for tonight's guesthouse. uh-oh

good morning Iceland. guesthouse owner was a lovely old lady. missing voucher no problem.

crossed a river on a log #adventure #glymur

huge lava fields. we should have rented a moon buggy!

hehe. hotel and breakfast remind me of my childhood in the GDR.

just refilled our water bottles at a natural mineral spring

petrol is cheap here. gas stations are actually gas automates accepting credit cards. #convenient

gas station shop was run by a pair of Paris Hilton / Nicole Richie clones #simplelife

climbed into a narrow gorge/cave following the river. had to stop for lack of rubber boots.

sat in the (replica) house of Eric the Red and listened to #viking tales. awesome

building houses out of grass? Icelanders!

w00t. best hotel so far. our own bath, TV, WiFi and wonderful view at the fjord

watched the sunset at midnight. sunrise expected in a few minutes

woah we just climbed into a cave with a hot stream. @kaddi lost her sunglasses

climbed the world's largest explosion crater. #exhausted #greatview

had a bath in a thermal bath - that was better than it smelled

our 1st #whalewatching ever. saw several humpbacks and a blue whale! #epic

penis museum guestbook: was happy to see museum, but museum seemed even happier to see me

Myvatn - icelandic for “being driven insane by insects in a beatiful landscape”

hours on gravel road is no fun in #suzuki swift but the waterfall was worth it #dettifoss

photographers dream: blue hour lasting several hours #arcticsummer

watched (and smelled) volcanic steam and bubbling mud. #fascinating

lots of rain today but we had #waffles, yeah!

built a playing card deck from a car rental prospect #diy

I'm cheese. Cottage Cheese.

@kaddi so: uargh, da kommt einem ja gleich der Hummer wieder hoch. #dekadenz

learned: glacier ice makes good ice cubes because it melts 5 times slower than usual ice

#puffins are cute!

this country is full of frickin' Germans!

Icelandic restaurants aren't exactly cheap and portions aren't huge, but boy are they good! #gourmet

walked behind a waterfall. sounds like a thunderstorm

dammit. missed our hotel by 80km. Eddar hotel postal addresses do not match their location.

Oh mein Gott! Ich habe Spülhände!

had WiFi. read about German politics. now thinking about #unabomber lifestyle (sans the bombs)

drying my socks on the dashboard, but we where just a few steps from a raven!

finally seen a #geyser. they are not as common in iceland as you might expect

I rode a horse and survived. even when it got scared by some cows

“we recommend a minke whale pepper steak today” - no thanks, we prefer to eat somewhere else

just had to climb out of a toilet stall because the door wouldn't unlock anymore

holding your yearly viking parliament/feast on a tectonic fault line? okay, why not

there seems to be some protest flash mob in front of the parliament #cantreadthesigns

bought “The Sagas of the Icelanders” this should keep me busy for a few weeks #book

the audio guides in the Reykjavik national museum are really slick. #design

the breakfast room is full of Germans. do we really need to go back to where they reproduce?

spent our last day with #geocaching and having lunch at #ikea

1 2 3 4 5

@-replies with comments and questions are welcome below of course

PS: Still not enough? I uploaded some videos to my Youtube Account.

Tags:: vacation,; photos,; iceland,; microblogging

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PanoView DokuWiki Plugin

Andi — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:01:44 +0200

Over the last few days, I built another DokuWiki plugin. It's called PanoView.

The plugin allows you to embed really large images into your wiki pages without clogging people's bandwidth. The feature works similar to Google Maps. The large original image is sliced up into several smaller tiles. Only visible tiles are downloaded. The image can be panned and zoomed.

This might be useful to display construction drawings or medical photos, but works great for panorama images, too.

For better understanding, just have a look at the example below (RSS readers need to click through for the JavaScript version).

The image shows San Francisco after the big earthquake in 1906. The original scan is a 156MB TIF which I converted into the 13MB JPEG shown above. The image dimensions are 11709×4716 pixel (about 55 Megapixel).

The image tiling is done on the fly when viewing an image in the PanoView plugin for the first time. Subsequent view are served from cache.

The plugin is available here: plugin:panoview.

Tags:: dokuwiki,; plugin,; panoview,; panorama

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