New York, USA – May 18th 2009.
Mobile marketing company mobiLead has launched a mobile bar code service to connect companies with consumers using optical and radio frequency identification systems.
For consumers, the service acts like a universal access key to brand information, while the solution enables marketers to increase their interaction with consumers. MobiLead has designed an interactive service by unifying siloed technologies such as unique optical code, unique radio identifier and unique radio URL on the same technological platform.
“Due to the lack of convenient access, the mobile Internet is not as used as it should be — have you ever tried to type a URL on a phone?” said Laurent Tonnelier, cofounder of mobiLead, Paris, France. “A radio-based NFC shortcut read from a mobile phone is a promising emerging technology, but unfortunately, there are only few devices available.
“An optical shortcut read from a mobile phone is an interesting approach, but unfortunately, Datamatrix, other QR-Codes and EAN/UPC codes are not available on a large number of existing products,” he said.
“In order to serve brands, we’ve decided to gather technologies into a unified solution to maximize the number of access to their content.”
As a proof of concept, mobiLead designed a universal loyalty card in which the radio identifier, radio based URL and optical URL are unique.
“Through specific technical and business partnerships, we ensure brands that the card-holder will be guided to the very same place whatever the channel is, from a mobile phone using either optical or radio-based reading, an NFC USB reader or a Webcam,” Mr. Tonnelier said. “The very same technology may be used in a sticker, a paper-based document … even a business card,” he said.
mobiLead was founded in April 2008 by Mr. Tonnelier, former principal product manager for Oracle Corp.’s mobile and embedded products division, and Ludovic Lebas, former software architect for Oracle France’s advanced technologies division.
mobiLead is a member of the GS1 Solution Partner Program and the Mobile Commerce”Extended Packaging Group.
The company seeks to provide consumers with more channels through which they can access brand information from objects. It embraces the concept of the “Internet of Things”, where objects can be identified, managed and engaged with via mobile devices, according to mobiLead.
mobiLead, in partnership with Paragon Id, has demonstrated a convenient and unified access to online content using optical (EAN/UPC, Datamatrix, QR-Code readers) and radio-based NFC compliant devices (Violet mir:ror, Alcatel-Lucent Touchatag, Airtag, Nokia 6212 Classic) .
“As a member of GS1, we do work on leveraging existing EAN/UPC barcodes,” Mr. Tonnelier said. “MobiLead is an ‘Internet of Things’ enabler — we do create shortcuts from the real world to the digital one, and we may be seen a hub, an ‘Internet of Things’ hub.
“Each object, loyalty card, flyer and coupon is unique,” he said. “We do use that feature to deliver specific content.
The “NFC by mobiLead” commercial offer was launched in April during WIMA.
“Prior to the ‘Optical/Radio-based’ initiative, mobiLead created the very first 2D bar code in a video clip available on TV and YouTube, the first animated Datamatrix and the first watermarked Datamatrix,” Mr. Tonnelier said.
http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/software-technology/3268.html