NeoMedia Technologies, Inc (NEOM)

[jonesieatl]

lesnshawn, you CERTAINLY may!

Thanks for the reply Shawn, much appreciated.

After asking those questions yesterday, certainly the Variability feature kept going through my mind as I tried to think through a couple of scenarios where such variability would be a major plus. You give an excellent summary of why a brand manager might choose qode and use a qode-compatible 2-D code, or even just decide to register his standard barcode through Neomedia.

Thoughts .... (and more questions ... to anyone ;) )

- Simplest thing for the brand manager to do perhaps, in terms of ease of printing information on product/packaging, is stick with the old barcode and pay to have it registered with Neomedia so that it resolves onto the URL of the manager's choice, a URL which can be changed by the brand manager simply by ... what ... emailing Neomedia? Online data change on a customer-only part of Neomedia's website? Anyway, however it would be done, it would be simple, and the brand manager could change the URL to match up with a new promotion for that product. AND .. if he wants to stick with the standard barcode, and have it resolve to a URL after being shot with a camera phone ... he HAS to go through Neomedia because of the patents, right?

Note: To me, sticking with the standard barcode is just going to be SO "2000's" one day LOL, because long before 2010 I think brand managers are all going to want the 'neat-looking' 2-D codes on their products to show they are 'with it' ;)

- Another choice for the brand manager is to use the Static 2-D code with the Static URL information already embedded in it, bypassing Neomedia's patents/system, taking him straight to a specific URL owned by the Brand and related to that product. NOW if he has a second promotion (as in your example) on that same product, he has all those 2-D codes printed on his product already (whether it be QR, Data Matrix, whatever), so he's stuck with his original embedded URL. He's going to have to change what's on the webpage which the URL takes the consumer to. Okay, so how hard is that going to be for the Brand Manager to do? If the URL was always something 'product-specific' and not just the company's Home Page or something, he was going to have to do some webpage work for the second promotion anyway. He simply changes the content on the webpage, keeping the same URL which is embedded in that Static 2-D code. Even if there is a promotion involved, and the first promotion is going on concurrently, he can have a link to the first promotion on the newly changed webpage. His webpage content becomes the Variable in that equation, as opposed to the URL being the Variable.

As you can see, even after all this time I still might not know exactly 'what I own' (insert embarassed chuckle here), but also as you can see I am seriously trying to get my head around it. I am seriously trying to get a lock on exactly why Neomedia is going to rule this space.

Thanks again Shawn.

jonesie