Show HN: A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative

http://www.meshtag.com

by samfpetersen • 11 years ago

270 135 11 years ago

meshtag.com

vessenes2• 11 years ago

I love this!

For it to be compelling, it needs to be readable in a bunch of iOS / Android barcode scanners, though. Any plans there?

samfpetersen11• 11 years ago

That would be cool; they'd have to interact with the meshtag database in order to retrieve the data. I can dream though!

vessenes2• 11 years ago

You should get in touch, offer to provide code and cut them some stock options. It would help solve the big question of uptake for an investor.

gbl08ma2• 11 years ago

Unfortunately, and unlike a QR code, the data is not encoded in the drawing itself, which means an Internet connection is always needed. For URL sharing the Internet connection requirement is not so much of a problem (you'd always need that connection for browsing to the URL, unless it's a local or data URL), for everything else it may be.

Also, once the Meshtag service goes down or closes for good, all tags become impossible to read, which pretty much puts me off of using this for any permanent purposes. I suppose it will also have to deal with copyright infringement issues (and there would need to be a mechanism for submitting DMCA notices), but don't take my word for it. Related: it's easier to censor.

Whether these disadvantages are enough to make up for the fact that the codes can be drawn by hand, and can expire, only time can tell.

By the way, if this could be made to use squares instead of triangles, I guess it would be easier to draw on grid paper.

samfpetersen11• 11 years ago

Very true. And I steered away from squares due to the "swastika effect". Also because the information is slightly more dense with a system based on triangles - 6 bits at a given vertex versus 4 bits.

art-w• 11 years ago

Ha, you got me for a second. The bits aren't "stored" inside the vertex, but in the segments: It would be like saying that the space between bits "{0,1} {0,1}" contains 2 bits of information, and that we could encode more compactly by disposing bits around a circle, hence maximizing the number of bits in the center space. So given a triangular/square grid, the number of traceable segments is what matters (and that's where the ink goes too.)

I agree that triangles look a lot better than squares (to the point that the "swastika effect" is indeed a problem, even though the drawings are generated by a human, and not randomly.) However, they are also very hard to draw properly.

To recover the QR code decentralization, have you tried to encode data inside your triangular grid? You would loose the "drawable" property (due to the size), but the result would still look more interesting than the pixel junk of QR codes (and you could enforce "connectivity" for aesthetic and error correction.)

aikah• 11 years ago

the data is not encoded in the drawing itself,

if that's true then it doesn't really solve anything. The other obvious issue is how people are going to remember complex shapes like that. What about using a combination of 3 basic shapes instead (triangle,square,circle).

Yet the idea is still quite interesting. The OP is definitely on something here.

Vexs3• 11 years ago

I suppose you could rework this to actually encode the message in the shape much like a qr code. You could do it by having the first 9 characters be done by just moving around the 3 sides of the triangle, then the next set would have a dot in the middle, and then the next set would have a line through the middle, etc. You could then write that line-by-line or in a spiral or something.

Neat to think about though. And, unlike QR codes they look sufficiently sci-fi.

VT_Drew2• 11 years ago

once the Meshtag service goes down or closes for good, all tags become impossible to read

That is my concern as well. Also, what problem does meshtag solve? Why wouldn't I just use QR codes? I mean meshtag is neat and all, but seems like a novetly to me.

mFixman• 11 years ago

This is more like an URL shortener than like a QR code.

rgawdzik• 11 years ago

A URL shortener that requires a proprietary app instead of a web browser.

kazinator• 11 years ago

Unfortunately, and unlike a QR code, the data is not encoded in the drawing itself.

Obviously, there is data in the drawing. Just that data is a symbol which is resolved through some proprietary app, which maintains the association in a private database where it is subject to expiry and such.

Just some third party has to develop an independent app to open up access to the data in the drawing and use it outside of the original system.

There might not be enough data in the drawing for it to satsify the same use cases as QR codes.

For private labeling, it could be good enough.

For private labeling, though, I'd prefer something that just scans alphanumeric labels, and not some silly triangles. I don't want to rack my brain inventing a triangle code for my Lady Diana collectible #153 that is different from those which I tacked onto 1 through 152. :)

gbl08ma2• 11 years ago

Obviously, there is data in the drawing.

I know this, and one can think of it as the numbers encoded in a plain old EAN-13 barcode. But as with these barcodes, the numbers by themselves don't usually have any meaning, they are just the key of a key-value pair. In this case the key-value database is in the Meshtag servers.

Like you said, the "raw numbers" can still be useful for small-scale labeling, but once you are at the point where you're just using the drawing to record a simple ID, it may be just easier to write the ID alphanumerically and have the computer OCR it or even just type it by hand (with a checksum digit, this can be more practical and effective than having to deal with camera scanners - "oh where is that app again/where did I leave my phone again...").

honestcoyote• 11 years ago

That is a huge problem. A better solution would have been an app which takes a url and shows a sketch of triangles or squares which the user can then write out. Such an app could work offline as well.

shostack• 11 years ago

How many shapes would you need to draw to encode even basic data like an 64 bit string of text?

Serious question...would it be something that a person could sketch out quickly by hand? Or end up being a massive diagram?

I've been reading the book "Code" where they start getting into the combinatorics side of things, but still relatively new to it.

davidbanham• 11 years ago

I'm less worried about the requirement for an internet connection than I am about the single point of failure. When the centralised service goes down, all your tags are useless squiggles.

samfpetersen11• 11 years ago

It's a pretty simple back-end - cheap and easy to run. I don't plan to take it down!

joeld42• 11 years ago

This is really clever, and solves a lot of the problems with QR codes. Not just the hand-drawable-ness, these also look a lot better aesthetically.

VT_Drew2• 11 years ago

and solves a lot of the problems with QR codes. Not just the hand-drawable-ness

Who is trying to hand-draw QR codes? Why would you need/want to hand draw a QR code? The aesthetic thing for me is just a personal preference. I don't see how meshtags solve any problem that isn't already solved.

CJefferson• 11 years ago

It adds one huge problem -- there is no central authority I need to rely on for QR codes. My QR codes can't get sold out from under me to someone with more money, as these can.

Retra• 11 years ago

That's the same disadvantage with a URL. If you just wrote "whatever.com" the main problem is that you probably don't want to go to whatever.com, but some child page. But the main reason the child page isn't it's own site (like "whatever-child.com") is because you'd have to buy a new domain or go through some registration mechanism to make it act like that.

But if you're willing to pay and register, why wouldn't you just write the URL of the site you paid for and registered? Not only is it writable, but it's human readable and type-able, too...

So the big advantage is that it's probably cheaper, (and maybe splashy and fun.) And unless these get popular, nobody is going to know what it is, so you have to write "Go to www.meshtag.com and download meshtag so that you can see our message!" Which is a bit like hiding your product in someone else's store.

(But that's probably why I'm an unimaginative cynical clod.)

transfire2• 11 years ago

Funny, not long ago I created a writing system that worked on the same principle. It proved a bit too unwieldy for writing but it was a fun exercise.

Vexs3• 11 years ago

Have you heard of elian script? This reminds me a bit of it. Also, elian script is fairly easy to write once you get the hang of it, if you were very good at it it could be faster than the latin alphabet, as it takes less movements per character.

transfire2• 11 years ago

Just looked it up. Interesting. Thanks.

Vexs3• 11 years ago

Have you heard of elian script? This reminds me a bit of it.

fuzzywalrus• 11 years ago

QR codes and such I imagine will fade as more applications support live OCR. Its only a matter of time before phones will ship with the native app using text detection to make hyperlinks clickable from the camera app. There's already text grabber and the like on iOS/Android. This seems like a stop-gap. It's cool but I just can't see using it.

CPLX• 11 years ago

It's a confusing solution for a problem that does not exist, which is how to use a pen to draw readable shapes, a problem many of us learned how to solve in elementary school.[0]

[0] http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/lette...

samfpetersen11• 11 years ago

Very informative!

542458• 11 years ago

I could maybe see a use case around a human labelling objects for machine recognition, but that's not how the service is being marketed.

sherjilozair• 11 years ago

Sorry, but the problem is how to use a pen to draw machine readable shapes. Machines find reading QR codes and OP's triangles easier than reading letters.

DannoHung2• 11 years ago

Seems like a more durable solution would be making an encoding of the alphabet that's easier for machines to read.

IanCal3• 11 years ago

If you wrote numbers or letters as precisely as the triangles are drawn in the example, I doubt computers would have much of a problem reading them. We've got fast algorithms for digit classification that are pretty much perfect on the MNIST dataset with just 0.21% error (and I'm pretty sure there are errors in the dataset itself, which brings the real error rate down). MNIST is an easy image recognition task compared to others but it's not done with clearly written numbers.

Here's an example of some that were misclassified by an algorithm: http://www.concordia.ca/content/concordia/en/research/cenpar...

foofoo55• 11 years ago

I much prefer QR Codes as there is nothing to buy and their embedded data makes them standalone. Meshtags seem more like a graphical version of bitly or tinyurl.

chncdcksn• 11 years ago

A problem I see with this is recognition. A QR code can be printed onto a piece of paper with no further information attached, and even some less-techy people will know what to do with it, because it's clearly a QR code. These drawings are pretty ambiguous, and unless it catches on with the less-techy crowd you'd have to add an attached note "Go download the Meshtag app to read this!", which would probably not happen too often.

They are however, much prettier than regular QR codes. :)

qqueue• 11 years ago

This is cool, though as said in the other comments, it's unfortunate that the readability of the codes are tied to the availability of the service, like a URL shortener, i.e., not very mesh.

Did you do much research onto the actual "serialization format" of the tags? Aesthetically they are nice, but I wonder how deep the rabbit hole goes for drawable-but-not-necessarily-human-readable dense formats, which is a slightly different utility function than regular written languages. I imagine there's some overlap with the psychology of memorizing passwords which are opaque semantically, but still need to be remembered.

lost_name• 11 years ago

Why does the app require a Google+ login? What needs verification?

samfpetersen11• 11 years ago

I used Google+ so that you wouldn't need to create a user id / password. Each tag that you create is "owned" by you, and you probably wouldn't want other people to edit it (though there is an option to "unlock" a tag so that they can). It doesn't user your Google+ info, it's just for verification

anonova• 11 years ago

For creation and updating, I can see why you would want to authenticate and authorize users, but there should should still be a way to have the app go into a read only state if all I want to do is scan.

cwmma• 11 years ago

No. Unlike QR codes, meshtags of any color on any background can be scanned. There just needs to be enough contrast between the meshtag and its background, and the background must be a solid color.

qr codes can be any color, just need to have enough contrast, also depending on the redundancy level of it you can actually omit a significant fraction of the qr code and still have it scan

blfr• 11 years ago

You can even use the error tolerance to embed an image http://research.swtch.com/qr/draw

samfpetersen11• 11 years ago

You are right. However, I think most scanners only scan dark QR codes on light backgrounds, which is not the case with Meshtag. You can draw on chalkboards, pavement, etc.

ryan-c2• 11 years ago

You can take it up to 11 like this: http://files.rya.nc/qr.png

function_seven• 11 years ago

I don't see anything on your blog about how that QR code can possibly work (I just scanned it, it does work, but my eyes tell me that's impossible)

You have any background on how that QR was constructed?

starshadowx22• 11 years ago

QR Codes can actually get pretty colourful and unique -

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/qr-code-artworks/

http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/18/dotless-qr-codes/

andars• 11 years ago

This is really neat! It does seem like it is much more prone to error than QR codes, though. Would a meshtag that is rotated 120 degrees represent the same one or a different one?

samfpetersen11• 11 years ago

Same one!

SchizoDuckie• 11 years ago

So what happens when somebody just defaces one and draws a couple of extra lines?

dsr_2• 11 years ago

It looks like a different mesh, because there's no redundancy built in. What did you expect?

fla• 11 years ago

You get a nice phishing attack :)

LukeB_UK• 11 years ago

I don't really get why I'd use a Meshtag over a QR code.

Pretty much everyone has a QR reader already, whereas this requires people to download a new app (for no real gain on their part either). It also requires them to have an internet connection, which for any thing other than a URL, is really not necessary.

The problem it says it's trying to solve, making them drawable, isn't really a problem at all. I've never wanted/needed to draw a QR code, that's what we have text for.

tyrust• 11 years ago

I don't really get why I'd use a Meshtag over a QR code.

They look cooler. QR codes are obviously computer readable nonsense. Many have complained about how ugly QR codes are. This is a nicer looking alternative.

That said, your criticisms are valid. Meshtags probably aren't going to replace QR codes, but they may inspire a nicer replacement.

felipesabino• 11 years ago

Doesn't it look like a replacement for the (dead) Microsoft Tag [1] ?

[1] https://tag.microsoft.com

kefka2• 11 years ago

As many have already discussed that this is akin to a URL shortener, and not stand alone (like QR is ), I have a different question.

Your app has in-app-purchases. Please provide examples how you are monetizing this?

Also, I notice you use a G+ identity to tie all codes to, yet your pictures shows "Anonymous" as creator. Is that really anonymous, or fakenonymous?

rmhsilva• 11 years ago

It appears you'll be able to purchase tags. No info on how long the purchase lasts for.

samfpetersen11• 11 years ago

As for monetization, I figured why the hell not. If somebody really wants to buy a simple meshtag that they can memorize and reuse (maybe it has their contact info), I'm not gonna stop them :). This isn't really a moneymaking scheme, this is a side project and my first Android/iOS app.

As for anonymity, it's anonymous to other users. If you deselect the anonymous checkbox when editing the tag, other users will see your name, and that's it

kefka2• 11 years ago

Please don't think I'm criticizing on your choice of monetization. Making money to continue doing what you like is a pretty big cornerstone here at HN :)

I was more curious what you were charging for.

Also, you're being discussed over on https://www.reddit.com/r/occult/comments/3esa6n/drawable_alt...

You really hit it with triangles / sigils and the occult. Perhaps a pivot? Too small a market?

rootedbox• 11 years ago

I've never in my life wanted to draw a bar code or QR.. Also I can hand-write a URL which both a human and OCR can read. So this all seems pointless.. outside of it possibly being a fun exercise to par take in.

jmount• 11 years ago

Hand drawn alternative to QR codes? Writing the URL down in letters?

dsr_2• 11 years ago

If the problem is machine recognition of handwriting, the Graffiti alphabet is both human readable and writable and easy enough for a 32MHz 68030-ish CPU to recognize in realtime.

puetzk• 11 years ago

Graffiti is recognized by observing the strokes (direction, turns, etc) as it is drawn, with each pen lift/touch marking the characters. This is quite a different problem from doing OCR on it in a photograph, where you can (hopefully) see the shapes, but you do not know where the strokes began and ended.

robomc• 11 years ago

Yeah, if only modern humans had a rich, widely understood, system for presenting strings of data visually, which we spend millions of dollars each year teaching everyone we can, and which is already a pre-requisite for using 95% of all online media.

biot• 11 years ago

  "A meshtag is a "drawable barcode" that you can create
   by drawing straight line segments at 6 different angles."

I count only three angles. The entire grid can be constructed via a series of parallel lines extending infinintely: one horizontal, one diagonal left, one diagonal right. There aren't any other angles.

samfpetersen11• 11 years ago

This is what I need you guys for!

x0n• 11 years ago

Methinks you overestimate the ability of people to draw proportionally. Or at all. :)

EvilPopsicleDog• 11 years ago

Very novel, but I feel like its fundamentally flawed; for most people it would easier to remember a URL than it would be to remember a 'meshtag'.

logfromblammo• 11 years ago

So this is a program that can analyze an image for a structured drawing, encode it as a unique bit-stream, and translate that bit-stream into a URL.

I can very easily draw "https://goo.gl/e0aeeD" on a chalkboard. Android users could use Google Goggles to grab the text without typing it in, and paste the URL into Chrome. If I had to, I could leave off the "https://" part, and it could still work.

I get how it's easier to process the triangle-based image into a usable bit-stream than it is to do OCR, but how does that make things easier for the user?

zenojevski• 11 years ago

I still remember how this went.

Connect the dots… la, la, la-la.

http://i.imgur.com/FZrXlee.png

dibbo2• 11 years ago

hey, this is wonderful. it would be great if street painters adopted this to communicate with their audience. i would love to go into a tunnels with cool street paintings and scan these signs and get access to playlists, videos and messages that the painter wants us to visit. these cool triangles could become symbols of an underground movement if promoted in these communities.

pulkitanand• 11 years ago

Except that the meshtags won't last forever by design.

dibbo2• 11 years ago

"Small meshtags have lifespans that depend on their complexity. A simple tag might only last for a week, while a more complex one might last for 6 months or a year. Very complex tags will never expire. This prevents the simple tags from being used up." So the mantra is, i guess, make it complex. Also leave it to the imagination of a street painter, i am sure they will make art out of it.

nadams• 11 years ago

I think it's a mix of QR code plus Microsoft Tag. Tag suffers from the problem of requiring an internet connection but they do provide stats on how many people scanned the tag.

bengali32• 11 years ago

Sam, Cool stuff. I get what you're doing here, but from these comments I think QR code reference really throws people off. While comparing to QR might explain how it works, I would do my best to position this as nothing like QR codes (and highlight use cases that make it unique from QR) to avoid the comparison.

jarofgreen2• 11 years ago

This. All the concerns first parent raised (SPOF, etc) are valid ones, but that doesn't mean the service is inherently bad, and I'd hate Sam to take all this as a completely negative response. It just suits a different use. I get that it's aimed at people who want to hand draw the symbols, and that's pretty cool.

samfpetersen11• 11 years ago

Thanks! I think you're right, I'm going to get rid of the QR code reference in the landing page headline. Maybe just 'Hand-drawn, scannable web links'. I will then have an FAQ box that says 'How is this different than a QR code?' where I list a lot of the feedback I got from this thread.

bengali32• 11 years ago

Agreed. There's still no easy way to get from physical to digital. Be sure to focus on the problem you are solving. Show how many mediums can be used as well to solve the problem. (chalk, toothpicks, box of pencils, bricks etc.) Maybe even one page dedicated to each use case. (retailers, restaurants, street performers, celeb events, app unlock codes, etc) some other thoughts:

How can I get someone walking by my restaurant/store who has a question or is looking for more info to interact with my website and get today's coupon?

Be sure to allow camera photos/screenshots to be used via app. If I can scan a tag i see in a video or on a page then that's one more use case.

Your tag is simple enough, can I draw it myself in your app if it doesn't scan, or correct it if its unrecognizable? Knowing I can sketch it manually in your app might avoid some frustration.

Maybe reach out to some snapchat star and brainstorm innovative use cases you can highlight (xyz was here etc?) good luck!

DiThi• 11 years ago

Does it bother anyone else that the screenshot shows an hexagon that doesn't match the angle of the triangles?

JoshTriplett• 11 years ago

As a tag system, this doesn't seem to have any advantages compared to QR codes, and it has several disadvantages (central authority, possible conflict, only encodes the key rather than the direct value).

However, this system does have an advantage for other purposes: those where the ability to reproduce it from memory is important. QR codes aren't memorizable; meshtags seem more so. Consider how many people prefer Android swipe-unlock patterns rather than PINs or passwords. Many people have good spatial memories, much more so than their memory for arbitrary strings. You could use this in cases where the property of being able to reproduce this from memory is important. Figure out how many bits of entropy this can represent, create and document a perfect 1:1 mapping between meshtags and an encoding, and target use cases QR codes can't handle.

For that matter, how robust is this against minor errors, and how high-resolution can you make it and still reliably resolve it? Can you pack this more densely than a QR code and still reliably read it? If so, you've got something particularly interesting.

alexchamberlain• 11 years ago

Although I agree that this doesn't seem like the most useful idea, I do think it is really cool and it sounds like some interesting image processing.

To the OP, how did you come up with the idea? Is the algorithm from image to URL complicated?

adamkochanowicz• 11 years ago

This is a great idea!

mickdarling• 11 years ago

Has anyone tried anything like this, but instead of posting the information associated with the tag in a private database, to post that info into the Bitcoin Blockchain?

pnut2• 11 years ago

I mean this honestly. Do people actually even use QR codes?

Filling up your phone with a bunch of hi-res pictures of bar codes, not to mention having to load: 1. QR code app 2. camera app 3. browser app

These things are 100% in the gimmick column in my life.

marknutter• 11 years ago

http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com

duck• 11 years ago

http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/

wazari972• 11 years ago

I have a travel book [1] with QR-codes that link to video sequences corresponding to that part of the book. Thay maybe the only time I used QR-code!

1: http://oceans.taraexpeditions.org/m/qui-est-tara/les-expedit...

theon144• 11 years ago

Well, it kinda does show that you've never used QR codes, otherwise you'd know that all of this is pretty much handled by the app. Which means:

No need to store the hi-res pictures of bar codes; no need to load up camera ap, as that's handled by the QR code app; no need to load up the browser, since a small embedded one appears to open the link, as a rule.

That said, yeah, it's 100% a gimmick. I have only seen one or two problems for which QR codes really made sense, and none of them included scanning a URL with your phone.

pnut2• 11 years ago

Guilty as charged!

drzaiusapelord• 11 years ago

QR codes are things that techies think non-techies actually use. "Grandpa doesn't want to type in some URL, he just wants to scan an image and be taken there!" Then marketing gets involved asking for the QR code that the techies told them "everyone uses" and its now a requirement on all posters and advertising materials. Now here we are.

codingdave• 11 years ago

Yes, they are extremely useful if you actually need to pull data off a physical object. We use them at all of our conferences to scan badges. I embedded a reader into a web page, so my coworkers can just open a web page on their tablets, and they have a fully working system that can scan a QR code from a badge to log attendance at sessions, or assist people on the fly, without having to send people over to the registration desks for help with scheduling or other questions.

That is just one use - but anywhere that you see a barcode, a QR code would serve the same purpose. Really, that is all a QR code is - a fancier barcode.

You may be thinking of the marketing gimmicks where when you scan a code, an embedded URL is opened. That use case does feel gimmickky. But that is not their most practical use.

Cerium• 11 years ago

WeChat (A very popular communication app, ~550 million active users) uses QR codes as a way to add contacts. The app will display a QR code and people you have just met can scan the code to send a friend request. People use this feature quite a bit. It saves time over ensuring that the other party is typing your name correctly.

leni5362• 11 years ago

In Hungary the train company sells home printable tickets and they use QR code to ID it. I think it's weirdly encoded, maybe even encrypted somehow. You don't have to print it though, you can just open it in your phone than the ticket control scans it with their own phone and in-house app.

As for personal use, I don't really know. Storing your larger bitcoin wallet on paper could be reasonable.

birdsbolt• 11 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW39Mt5kscQ

Another interesting alternative. Prettier than QR and IMO meshtag.

pavedwalden• 11 years ago

Damn, whole lot of hate in these comments. Chill out guys, nobody's trying to kill QR codes here.

samfpetersen, you made a cool thing. Expiration of small tags is an interesting way to solve the landgrab problem. I think these would be fun to use and I hope I see some around.

csbrooks• 11 years ago

All the snarky and negative comments on anything that gets created here is really turning me off. Been using HN for a long time, but it might be time to move on.

ansgri• 11 years ago

OT On snarky and negative comments: you haven't seen habrahabr.ru, a site that fills the niche of HN for Russian speakers almost exactly and is sort of most respected here in tech. It has good articles and often publishes Russian translations of top HN items with about a week's delay. AND it feels like you're walking into a prison cell full of uncivilized criminals cursing at each other when you get to the comments.

The HN culture is very very good.

samfpetersen11• 11 years ago

Thought I'd clarify generally a little bit. QR codes definitely have a lot of advantages over Meshtag - and they're perfect for what they do. I'm by no means suggesting this could "replace" QR codes.

Where Meshtag fits in is that it's aimed at users and not companies. I think a large reason most people don't scan QR codes is because they assume they're just trying to sell you something. But if you saw a meshtag that somebody drew on a wall somewhere, wouldn't you be curious?

Also, thanks for all the feedback! I have dreamed of being on hacker news since I started coming here. Any UI/UX designers in the Boston area, hit me up if you want to get involved!

lcfg• 11 years ago

Actually, when I see MeshTags I assume "they're" just trying to sell me an cumbersome url shortening serivce.

By the way, the assumption that people don't/won't use QR codes is wrong. Here's one example: Chinese associate QR codes with product information (ex.: scanning a code on a bottle of soda).

Many people don't use QR codes but I think your assumption (QR codes will evermore be perceived as commercials) is totally off base.

mrb• 11 years ago

This is nothing more than a (pointlessly!) complex URL shortener... Meshtags are exactly equivalent to the following hypothetical service which I call "SuperNumericShortener":

1. Pick any random number, say 1234. This is your identifier.

2. Register this identifier and your URL at SuperNumericShortener.com

3. Write "SNS-1234" anywhere you want.

4. Install a fancy smartphone app that can take a picture of a writing and recognize "SNS-1234".

5. The app opens your browser to http://SuperNumericShortener.com/1234 which redirects to whatever URL you chose.

That's it. Oh and you can pay to reserve short identifiers (since they are likely to be claimed by other users of the service).

And for some reason meshtags use triangular shapes instead of numbers. Maybe it makes the concept look fancier than what it really is. Or maybe the author thought it would be easier to recognize a meshtag than detecting the shape "SNS" and do OCR to extract the following identifier? Either way, "SNS-1234" is easier to memorize, faster to draw, can be communicated in writing and speech. All advantages that meshtags lack.

Edit: here is something I would really want: in my Android Chrome address bar, next to the microphone icon, I want a camera icon that lets me snap a picture of a written URL, and opens it directly. No obscure QR code, meshtag, or whatever.

starshadowx22• 11 years ago

Google Goggles will open up a written URL just from a picture. For handwritten ones I think it just has to be really legible but for printed ones it works easily.

camillomiller2• 11 years ago

What a great idea!!!! Thanks! I'll send you a check when I'm rich.

femto113• 11 years ago

This could be useful for dead-drop style communications. Should be easier for two people to memorize how to draw a reasonably complex shape than an arbitrary string of bits, numbers, or letters. If you can do that there's no risk of leaking the drop location: just draw it, scan it to check the drop, then destroy the drawing.

blinks• 11 years ago

If the system was namespaced, it'd be even better -- essentially make Meshtag just the translation layer (drawing to id), and then pass that identifier into any backend you like.

jclancy93• 11 years ago

fk the haters. its a cool idea.

meta_AU• 11 years ago

Or you can colour a QR in by hand (I did this to test the concept of storing 128bit salts on custom credit cards). http://imgur.com/ClCeHAj

discordianfish• 11 years ago

I think this is a great idea. I'm surprised to see so many negative feedback. To me the great thing about it compared to a QR code is that you can draw it by hand which also means you can cheaply make it as big as you need it.

The aspect that it depends on a central service make it less dependable than an QR code and I'm wondering if this could be fixed. Still, I think it's a really interesting idea.

jaydub• 11 years ago

There was a Media Lab project that did something similar 2 years ago -- and is open source https://github.com/JeremyRubin/Graffiti-codes

Dru89• 11 years ago

Even though everyone else is talking about this as an impractical solution, I think it's clever at least.

I don't know that I would ever use it, but I like the novel concept of it. If this was just a for-fun kind of project, I'd think it was pretty awesome. If you're trying to market it as a business, you're going to run into all the problems everyone else has already mentioned.

logn• 11 years ago

Yes, I think people are missing the point. It's not like the author is proposing an IETF standard or claiming this fixes some inherent problem with URLs. It's a novelty and is aesthetically pleasing.

I could see someone making stuff on Etsy stitching/drawing this in as a signature that links to their homepage.

ArekDymalski• 11 years ago

After playing with your app for a while, I have following feedback: 1. It could be some kind of niche fun, for example in case of urban/alternate/augmented reality games. 2. Drawing properly recognized tags requires significant skill - about 30% of my drawings weren't recognized at all. 3. Some kind of scanning-progress-bar or other indicator wold be helpful for impatient users :) Taking into account points 2 and 3, it would be beneficial to improve users onboarding if you think about mass adoption.

2muchcoffeeman• 11 years ago

I think a lot of people are missing the point here.

What we basically have is a pictograph URL shortener. This may be complex from the computer side, but from a human side, this could be vastly simpler.

E.g: - Draw a Triforce and go to Nintendos Zelda page. - Draw a big triangle, with a line across the top to make a mountain, and go to some page about Everest or something.

And since it's the segments that matter, the possibilities are endless, spokes of a bike wheel, a pizza, pacman, airplane. It also easier to remember than a url, and if your memory is a bit fuzzy, just start drawing and you can figure out if it looks funny.

Good job Sam!

derefr• 11 years ago

I think everyone here who's pointing out that this is equivalent to a link shortener is missing something: the majority of QR codes in existence right now... are encodings of link-shortener URLs.

Schwolop• 11 years ago

There's a big difference between QR codes ("Quick Response") - which I agree are mostly encodings of links and shortened links - and Data Matrix encodings of generic data. Both look like black and white squares, and can often be read by smartphones.

Either way, you make a valid point!

(As an aside, I don't know how many QR codes are out there, but for one of my products we're intending to print 10^8 data matrix codes this year, of which there'll be perhaps 1000 batches, i.e. only 1000 different codes.)

Torgo• 11 years ago

Is there an API and intents for this?

HappyTypist• 11 years ago

As people have pointed out, this tag is reliant on the service operating. What about using Bitcoin's blockchain to store URLs/bytes? Make the tag a digest of a public key. Physical and digital graffiti.

ctdonath• 11 years ago

One word: graffiti.

wrigby• 11 years ago

I really like this - I think it would be an awesome way for people in cities to leave ephemeral easter eggs with chalk on a brick wall, for instance. Just because a lot of folks don't see the business value or purely technical use doesn't mean it's not awesome.

Or maybe make a meshtag scavenger hunt, with each tag leading to the next clue. Sure, you could do it with a QR code, but these look cooler, are ephemeral by nature, and have more of a fun feel to them.

The image processing code was probably really fun to write, too. Kudos on a really awesome project.

amelius• 11 years ago

How many bits can it encode? I bet not many. And I bet it is far easier to just write down two or three characters like "Am3" or "IX8" and use OCR to extract the information.

leni5362• 11 years ago

I would only be interested in the retrieval of the raw data of a meshtag. It's of course smaller than the shortened url. I always wanted to make a simple method to mark my handwritten notes, scan them, then the scanned pages "organize themselves" by the hand drawn tag (in this case meshtag) at the top right corner.

kragen• 11 years ago

So, even though this is kind of fake (it’s more like a hand-drawn UPC barcode alternative), a real hand-drawn QR-code alternative is something I’ve been thinking about doing for a while. In particular, I was thinking that matrix parity codes like the ones schoen at the EFF discovered in printer dots https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/ would be an ECC that’s practical to compute by hand, and then you could draw ECC-correctable matrix barcodes with a pencil.

Has anybody done this?

d-crane• 11 years ago

Personally, I think this really cool and hope it sticks around for awhile. If I saw meshtag graffiti, I would absolutely scan it, and that's the kind of use that's exciting to me. Awesome stuff!

Show HN: A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative

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