Scott Hanselman 👸🏽🐝🌮I am SHOCKED that QR Codes actually happened. I would have *never* bet on this ridiculous tech, but as soon as all phones built it into the camera app, then restaurants decided that a QR code pointing to a freaking PDF in Dropbox was a valid menu, it was over. The avalanche had begun, and it was too late for the pebbles to vote.
Adam Fields@shanselman it’s almost like standards are useful
@fields this wasn’t a standard. It was apple and google putting it in the camera that moved the needle. The pandemic was the “no touch” push that caused restaurants to make the move.
@fields (yes it’s a standard but standardization isn’t why it popped last year)
@shanselman I mean standard in the sense that it’s an easy free way for anyone to offer a page that can be easily opened by scanning with the camera. The relevant thing here is that it’s built in to the camera and doesn’t require an app, so by default everyone has it and businesses know that if they use it anyone will be able to take advantage of it. The restaurant menu thing was a useful application of it, but far from the only one.
@fields right, my point is that the technology is literally almost 30 years old and it was bumping around for years and people were trying to force it to happen, then the pandemic happened, then restaurants picked it up, and the whole thing blew up in literally a year and a half.
@shanselman Certainly there was a confluence of factors, but if it had still required an app to download to scan codes, no way would it have taken off in the same way.
@shanselman I don't think there's anything particularly special about QR codes. It could have been any sort of bar code reader that could encode a URL, and restaurants would have used whatever that was as long as it was built in.
herchenroder@fields @shanselman yeah there were QR codes at places like outdoor market vendor tents or business cards, but you had to install a separate app. Once the phone OS camera could do it, there was no stopping it. My boss even started a company trying to make it easier to manage your own QR code content. I’m not spamming so I won’t link. But we have thousands of retail “Smart Shelf Tags” in natural food stores. All because the camera does it. Crazy.
A:\lex 
@shanselman @fields Wait, year and a half? I swear I've been seeing QR codes everywhere for at least a decade if not more at this point.