Storing More Data With Next-Gen Barcodes

The India Times has a story about how videos files could be stored in a simple barcode. It’s likely that you have seen something that looks like a QR Code. It’s a black and white 2D barcode that can contain 4096 ASCII characters ( or 4KB) of data. Upcoming barcodes use a denser version of the code, along with colors, which is probably another way to increase the density of the barcode. The story does say what the effective storage capacity would be (that’s also a function of how big the barcode is), but if a video file can be encoded, that means hundreds of kilobytes or several megabytes – that’s a lot.

This could be used as a mean to receive data, without downloading it over the air. Think Ringtones, Music, or even games. That said, unlike Japan, most of the western countries don’t even use the basic QR Codes and there’s one more thing: wireless carriers just hate anything that’s not under their control…