Monday, November 24, 2008

How to Get Started




Okay, I'm going to alienate some of you right now by recommending the Scanbuy reader. Other readers may be technically superior and other readers have some whiz-bang features. Remember, I'm US-centric here, and I want to be democratic. The Scanbuy reader works on more phones than other readers in the US. The big reason for this is that Scanbuy is getting the carriers involved. In the US carriers can prevent readers from working on a lot of phones. Scanbuy is working with the telecommunications carriers to work in as many places and on as many phones as possible.



I'm not saying this will alway be true, but it is definitely true right now. My goal is to get people comfortable using mobile barcodes right now. We'll let time take care of itself.
I'll probably venture to discuss other readers and technologies and capabilities from time to time and try to be fair about them. But just keep in mind: US-Centric, and Democratic.
If you want to scan codes, you need codescanning software. Some will say you don't need software on your handset--and they would be right--but the experience without the software is vastly inferior to the experience of handset based solutions.



To get the software for your phone, send a text message to "70734" with the word "scan" in the body. You can also point your phone's browser to "getscanlife.com." My experience is that the process to download the software from this point on is pretty straight forward.



If you aren't used to using applications on your phone, it's sometimes hard to find it. A lot of times it is under a category called "applications," or "my stuff" or something like that. In the list of presented logos you are probably looking for an image that looks a little bit like this symbol below.




Once you've finished the process, try this code out with your newly downloaded reader!






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