Bar Code Marketing Misses Mark

A technology that lets European and Asian cellphone users point their phones at bar codes on everything from products to street signs to bring up more information isn’t ready for deployment in the US. At least that’s the indication so far of a trial at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where students have been slow to adopt it, reports the New York Times.

Unlike phones elsewhere in the world, US phones aren’t equipped to read bar codes, so participants must download special software. Students’ lukewarm response may be traced to costs associated with the service, not to mention a campus flap over a classroom discussion of advertising the technology via pictures of “broads” emblazoned with bar codes. (More cell phones stories.)