Mobile Barcodes Flops With Students-DUH!

This is so infinitely infuriating. While in the UK I-Nigma is getting down to business and generating mobile barcodes left and right on every magazine and billboard (good on ya!), the US is still mastering at taking a good piece of innovation and making it fail. Miserably. Every vendor and operator has a different view on the symbology, architecture and how the ecosystem should be built.
It's enough to read the comments on this post to understand the level of these discussions are the US.

Why does I-Nigma and their users get it, and we can't get a solution in the US? Why do US companies invest in existing technologies that don't require new ecosystems (evolution vs. revolution)?

Because technologists are making the decisions in the US. And they don't understand that the mobile market needs to be owned by marketing focused people. They need to stop thinking about technology, symbology and patents, and start thinking like Google would think of it. How would ad agencies deal with it.

To read now how barcodes failed at a very-visible Mobile Discovery trial, who did not setup the required arrangements with the operators beforehand, didn't setup the expectations correctly, and then used a topless woman for the promotion...well...what can I say?

End with a very old joke:
The Polish invented the toilet seat. The Americans swept the world with their design, based on the Polish one and adding a hole in the middle.

Good innovation can happen in the US, but the UK folks will succeed with it.

Congrats to Andy Letting, a friend who is moving into the right space in the right time.