swiss post is issuing a rather special stamp these days — no, not the einsiedeln stamp, though that is special as well (and i need to get a couple of those if just for the christmas post ;-), no, it’s a stamp with a beetagg on it: turns out that swiss post has been secretly posting beetaggs on hiking trail sign posts — by scanning with the beetag reader application you can look up the nearest postbus bus stop along with timetable! quite nice that!

the beetagg system works like tinyurl with 2D barcodes: the tag itself does not contain the URL but rather a unique ID that needs to be resolved via the beetag server — very much like a tiny URL (the tinyURL for this post is http://tinyurl.com/2f9gm9, for example). beetaggs are only available from beetagg themselves — and there is a currently limit of 20 free ones per person :-( not enough by far if i’d like to include the URL of a photo with each photo itself… also, if you read the wiki entry about tinyurls you find in the “criticism” section that

TinyURLs are opaque, hiding the ultimate destination from a web user. This can be used to send people unwittingly to sites that offend their sensibilities, or crash or compromise their computer using browser vulnerabilities. To help combat such abuse, TinyURL allows a user to set a cookie-based preference such that TinyURL stops at the TinyURL website, giving a preview of the final link, when that user clicks TinyURLs.

it seems like beetagg is currently not providing such a feature, so an easy hack would be to paste your own beetag over an already existing one (say, in a shop or so) and send the user’s mobile phone to the JAD file of a surprising application and have it installed…

…or just use the URL used to crash the Apple ipod touch® and the Apple iPhone® >:-)

looking a bit around, i came across QRcodes (as in quick response codes) that have been popular in japan for quite some time it seems, as david harper remarks on his blog:

You might be asking yourself about now, “Gee. I don’t know if people will actually do that?” Well the short answer is – people already do, lots of them in fact. In Japan, for example, QR codes have become part of everyday life, available on everything from business cards, id cards, magazines, newspapers, flyers, posters, stickers, food products,puzzles, web sites, billboards, more billboards, CDs, confectionary delights, calling a cab, vending machines, coffee cups, advertisements, and tickets –- even including the occasional booth-babe […]

QR codes as it turns out are standardized and software to generate them is freely available. it also looks like QR codes are not 2D barcoded tinyURLs but instead carry the data itself — seems like a better and more open deal then beetagg. there are mobile phone readers available as well (for example, from kaywa, another swiss company — what is it with the swiss and tagging???)

here are the beetagg and the QR code for this blog:

now, if only that new mobile phone would get delivered…(my old motorzr v3 just doesn’t like any of the readers, sigh)