The State of apps: Mobile Technology is the Future

Posted on December 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

Here is my article that I wrote for Holyrood magazine…

Mobile technology is the future. Even on the biggest political stage this fact is being acknowledged. Earlier this year, when faced with a nation dealing with economic uncertainty, President Barack Obama in his State of the Union Address delivered a vision of how mobile technology investment will benefit the American people.

“This isn’t about faster internet or fewer dropped calls,” proclaimed Obama, “it’s about connecting every part of America to the digital age…It’s about a firefighter who can download the design of a burning building onto a handheld device; a student who can take classes with a digital textbook; or a patient who can have face-to-face video chats with her doctor.”

There is little doubt that new smartphones are changing many aspects of our lives from how we shop, socialise, to finding our way around. There seems to be an app for everything. With nine out of every ten people in the UK owning a mobile phone, a recent Ofcom report highlighted the obvious fact that we are a nation addicted to these devices. If mobile technology represents the future, then the big question is how can the UK public sector tap into these developments to deal with the serious issues that we face right now?

To find answers and inspiration, I travelled to the United States, a country whose products have continually redefined the smartphone market. With its history of intense political activism combined with an eagerness to experiment with public service delivery, America seemed like the perfect testing ground to see how the government is using mobile technology to engage with citizens and make efficiencies. From Boston to San Francisco, this SOCITM-sponsored research trip allowed me to traverse the length and breadth of this vast country.

My journey began in Washington, DC. Overlooking the distinct US capital skyline, from the US Department of State offices, I met Tim Receveur, Innovative Engagement Foreign Affairs Officer. He told me about Apps@State, a project that he claimed will “usher statecraft into the twenty-first century” by engaging global audiences through mobile devices. Apps@State provides US embassies around the world with a toolkit to develop smartphone apps that will be tailored to the culture and needs of that country. From an app that would allow a person in Brazil to apply for a US visa to an app that will aid people in the Philippines to learn English. This push by the State Department towards maximising the mobile phone channel is not surprising given the three billion mobile phone subscriptions in developing countries.

The high mobile phone adoption rate is also allowing US organisations to engage with domestic minorities that were traditionally hard to reach. Last year US Nielsen research shows smartphone take-up is higher amongst mobile users who come from ethnic minorities: 45 per cent for Asian and Hispanic users, 33 per cent for African-American users but only 27 per cent for White Americans.

One nonprofit organisation that believes that mobile technology can bridge the digital divide is the Washington, DC-based One Economy. They created an apps contest called Applications for Good. It challenged software developers, game designers and students to develop fun and engaging mobile applications that would help families in daily tasks. The winners of the contest included a mobile phone app that could help find the nearest nutritious food shop and an app that helps immigrant workers to safely send money back to their home countries.

I met David Saunier, Senior Vice President, Media at One Economy who explained to me that the “main aim of this process was to bring app developers together with the wants of the low-income population.” He added: “Mobile apps have the flexibility to give people the right tool for the right job. For instance, you probably wouldn’t want to write your family budget on your phone but something like tracking your expenses would be a good use of mobile.”

App contests for social good are appearing all over the globe. Proving the adage that everything is bigger in New York was Big Apps 2.0 – one of the biggest apps contests in the world that used 350 new city data sets and a $20,000 cash prize. Fifty-eight applications (24 mobile apps, 2 SMS apps and 32 web applications) were submitted earlier this year with categories ranging from getting around, eating out and exploring. The public voting round saw tremendous participation with over 9500 votes.

Winners included Roadify, which alerts users to the latest subway, bus, or driving conditions by adding real-time updates from commuters on top of official transit data, Sportaneous, which harnesses location-based technology to organise sports games at short-notice and DontEat.at which delivers a text message when the user checks into a restaurant at risk of being closed for health code violations.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg explained why the contest in 2011 was an exciting opportunity: “NYC BigApps combines two of our administration’s important priorities,” he said, “making civic information more readily available to New Yorkers and promoting innovation and entrepreneurship in New York City.”

Mobile innovations are evident throughout New York. Just walking around the busy streets, I couldn’t help notice Quick Response (QR) codes on building permits and on the side of garbage trucks. Taking a picture of these QR codes using my smartphone seamlessly took me to details of a building’s progress or recycling tips.

This new type of interaction is becoming more common with Google reporting that they are seeing a 30 per cent increase in mobile search queries every three months. This gave me a great excuse to go to Google’s famous New York offices. Everything you’d expect to be there was there from people riding on scooters to a Lego building area. It’s really a slice of California dropped right into the middle of Manhattan. I met Eric Obenzinger from Google’s Public Sector team. “For a section of the population the smartphone is their first experience of high speed internet access,” said Obenzinger, “which speaks a lot for the proliferation and the usefulness of these devices to connect the vast majority of citizens.”

Last year New York Senate was the first State Legislature to release a smartphone app that made political and senatorial data accessible for the very first time. The team behind the project explained to me that the app ‘real-time constituent mobile dashboard to the legislative process’ allowing the user to connect with a senator, comment on a bill or give a freedom of Information request directly from their smartphone. This type of engagement is beneficial to both politicians who are now seen in the Chambers holding iPads and citizens who are increasingly mobile.

What became clear in my travels was that developing an effective mobile strategy for government is much more than producing a small website or a shiny new app but questioning who your demographic is and how they access your services or information. It’s important to make sure that these apps are focused on a specific need that also takes advantage of mobile technologies’ unique characteristics of being personal, quick and tailored. If these principles are followed then the true potential of this technology can be fulfilled.

North America has pockets of mobile innovation but in many respects, the UK is uniquely placed to lead in this field. Many of these developments are beginning to get adopted and pioneered in the UK, such as the North Ayrshire Council app that allows councils to receive geo-tagged photos of a pothole, graffiti or fly tipping from the camera on a citizen’s smartphone. However, even with the existence of millions of consumer apps and mobile websites, government is still at the beginning of a long journey to exploit these developments to their fullest potential.

So when I was in America I never expected to find the so-called ‘killer app’. But I did find a lifesaving app. In San Ramon an app exists that allows 911 operators to send an alert to nearby citizens when someone is having a heart attack. On average, it takes ambulances seven minutes to respond to an emergency call but if assistance is given to a victim before that time then the survival rate rises to nearly 80 per cent.

This app illustrates that the real power of these developments lies not necessarily with the technology but with its ability to connect people. These connections will be essential to how government will deliver services and engage with citizens in this new digital mobile age.

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Android and Privacy Rights in a Digital World

Posted on September 14, 2011 | 1 Comment

The Internet and mobile technology have empowered people to share, express and engage opinions online, creating one of the most powerful environments to enhance democratic ideals. However, this same technology can and has been used by many regimes around the world to spy on, censor and suppress their people. The battle between these two competing forces will shape civil liberties in the 21st century. It is against this backdrop that Nathan Freitas, the founder of the Guardian Project, explained to me while I was in New York that his organization plans to use technology to ‘empower individuals to safeguard their right to privacy in the digital mobile world’.

To strive toward this goal this small company has built a suite of personal security apps and modifications to the Android operating system from the ground up with security in mind. It is an open-source project, developing fully transparently and licensing all of its code freely: https://github.com/guardianproject

This presentation explains everything that you need to know about the Guardian Project:

The Guardian Project

The initial focus for the Guardian Project was to aid overseas activists and journalists.  ‘Corporations have all the money in the world to protect their data through encryption’, explained Nathan, ‘individuals have that same right but don’t have the means’. These are the current apps created by the Guardian project:

  • Orbot: Mobile Anonymity and Circumvention
  • Orweb: Privacy-Enhanced Mobile Browser
  • Gibberbot: Off-the-Record Instant Messaging
  • Orlib: Android Library for Application Traffic Routing

In some of the most politically inhospitable places in the world these tools are helping mobile journalists expose everything from human rights violations to encroaching censorship. It is also gives ordinary people the opportunity to access potential blocked social media sites, which might seem trivial, however, the events earlier this year in the Arab Spring showed the power of online collaboration against oppressive governments.

Guardian in Action

Given the sensitive nature of this work Nathan wasn’t able to give a specific example of how these tools have been used but he did provide a hypothetical situation to give you a better idea of how the technology works. ‘A undercover human rights researcher could be traveling through a remote region without mobile data service is now able to use their Guardian phone to document local conditions (via camera phone or audio recording) while seeming to just seeming to send a text message. Data captures can be stored encrypted on the device and if a local militia captures the researcher then it would be (almost) impossible to breach our software without significant computing power’.

This interview occurred before the London riots, however, this recent event proved a timely reminder of how encrypted technology such as the Blackberry messenger could be used to organize unlawful activity. When asked his general feelings about the potential of his technology being used for covert illegal communication Nathan replied that the Guardian Project would ‘improve the world more than it will hurt the world’, he continued, ‘people always bring up the argument about criminal or terrorists using this technology to conceal their actions, however, robbers use road paid for by tax payers to escape the police’. 

Government and Mobile Open Source

At the heart of the Guardian Project lies the ideal that open source software can make the world a better place. The aim for the organization is for this technology to trickle upwards from small non-profits to government and corporations. There is big potential for open source software in government as Nathan stated, ‘the beauty of Android is that each government agency could build their own version of the software…the State Department could build their own distribution called StateDroid for instance and if there was any security problems then they could patch it themselves’. The problem with other platforms such as iOS, Windows Phone 7 and Blackberry Nathan thought ‘was they’re big black boxes in which you have no idea how they really operate’.

Conclusion – A Tale of Two Guardians

While initiatives such as the Guardian Project try to protect individual’s privacy through mobile technology this compelling article from the Guardian newspaper highlights the potential risk mobile devices may have on internet freedom. Technology has the power to both help and hinder our civil liberties and the path were heading down is still undefined. What is clearer is that the battle for securing those universal rights in a digital age will be long and hard as demonstrated by Rebecca MacKinnon in this recent TED talk.

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Can Mobile Tech Bridge the Digital Divide?

Posted on August 1, 2011 | 1 Comment

How to bridge the gap between the technology haves and have-nots is a major consideration when trying to maximize the benefit of using mobile technology for public good. The digital divide in the United States is huge with tens of millions of Americans not currently connected to broadband. However, around 85% of US citizens own a cell phone with one recent Nielsen report indicating that the highest smartphone adoption rates in society are low income and ethnic minorities. So maybe mobile tech may offer the first opportunity to close the digital divide…

One non-profit organization that works directly in this area is One Economy. Their goal is to use Internet technologies to bring every citizen into the economic mainstream. While in Washington DC I met with David Saunier, Senior Vice President, Media, to hear his thoughts on their recently sponsored apps contest, Applications for Good.

Applications for Good Competition

This contest challenged software developers, game designers, students, and other innovators to develop fun and engaging mobile applications and games that help families in the following areas:

  1. Trim the fat
  2. Connect learners
  3. Bank the unbanked
  4. Find jobs

The competition was presented as a superhero theme to inspire civic venture within the developer community. David explained to me that they that the ‘main aim of this process was to bring app developers together with the wants of the low-income population’.  Mobile apps have the flexibility to give people the right tool for the right job. ‘For instance you probably wouldn’t want to write your family budget on your feature phone’, David stated, ‘but something like tracking your expenses would be a good use of mobile.

Last month the winners of the competition were announced and I’ve included videos at the end of this piece.

Lessons Learnt

This was One Economy’s first foray into the area of apps contests and David gave some lessons they’d learnt:

  • Money was not necessarily the best incentive for developers. David described how One Economy hosted three ‘hackathons’ at the same time as their apps contest. These ‘hackathons’ brought developers together for a weekend to build apps for fun with no monetary incentive. As David explained ‘what came out of the hackathon was as valuable if not more valuable that what came out of the contest’.
  • A major focus should be on how best to co-produce solutions with citizens and involve them in every stage of design in order produce apps that assist with specific problems…so any future apps contests will focus on more specialized issues.
  • The ultimate goal would be to help foster a robust self-sustaining collaborative community between developers and citizens.

International Mobile Developments

One Economy’s focus has geographically widened in recent years with initiatives now in 13 different countries. As with all of One Economy’s endeavours they try to make their international content bilingual and localized in focus.

In India for instance they are using predominantly (SMS) text messaging to push out material. Nevertheless, one unexpected issue in their campaign was that the Indian people they targeted received so many text messages that many locals began treating them like spam. One Economy soon realized that their campaigns need to have more personal messages and meaningful conversations. As a consequence they’re now thinking of developing some form of menu so that the user can decide what they want rather than information just being pushed at them.

Conclusion – One app at a time

Apps and mobile technology are not a panacea. Nevertheless, what becomes clear is that it doesn’t matter if the mobile service is in India or Indiana it is important to make sure that these programs are personal and tailored to a specific need. If these guiding principles are followed then the true potential of this technology can be fulfilled…changing the world slowly one app at a time.

Application for Good Winners

Grand Prize & People Choice Awards: Remás

Banking Prize: MobileSaver

Gaming Prize: NutritionMission

Health Prize: Snapfresh

Image: www.one-economy.com

Graph: Kozuch

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The day I went to Google New York

Posted on July 25, 2011 | 2 Comments

In almost every area they compete Google dominates…mail, maps, search and mobile. With over 500,000 Android devices being activated everyday there is little doubt that Google’s mobile operating system will continue to be a giant contender in the field. So while in New York I popped into their offices to talk with Eric Obenzinger who works in Google’s Pubic Sector division.

Mobile Engagement

We began our chat with how the mobile platform is uniquely placed to engage with the biggest segment of the population. As Eric explained, smartphone penetration among Hispanics and African Americans is comparatively high which aides many US government agencies attempts to reach out to minority groups. ‘For a section of the population the smartphone is their first experience of high speed Internet access,’ argues the Google employee, ‘which speaks a lot for the proliferation and the usefulness of these devices to connect the vast majority of citizens.’

Eric’s personal view (not necessarily that of Google) is that the government should invest more in mobile sites before they invest in mobile applications due to ubiquity, cheapness and openness of HTML. Furthermore, a lot of what the US government does can be classified as information awareness and basic data exchange in which case mobile sites are the best fit for that situation.

Government mobile examples

Eric also highlighted that if you want to see the cutting edge in social media or new mobile technology then you should look at the developments coming out of the US military. They’ve recently created their own app store and are currently building custom versions of Android for soldiers to use in the field. Given the open source nature of Android Eric says these initiatives are exciting for the company but also tempered this with stipulation that this system can’t get too fragmented. He goes on to highlight that Google likes competition and that its better having more than one platform.

When I asked about other good government mobile examples Eric featured the IRS mobile app (IRS2Go) which assists you in checking the status of your tax refund and a mobile website for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in there annual flu awareness campaign.

At a federal level the US government is considering very deeply about mobile access to its services but as Eric explained, ‘there hasn’t been a huge ground swell of mobile engagement so far but that is more to do with scarce resources and the pace at which government adopts these new technologies rather than a lack of enthusiasm to move in a mobile direction.’

Mobile and Flexible Working – Google Apps

More and more government agencies are using Google apps. We talked about Wyoming as the first US State switching completely to Google apps to improve  their 10,000 staff’s mobility and collaboration while also saving the State over $1 million every year. This promotional video gives more details and some nice facts about Wyoming that you probably didn’t know…

Future of Mobile

Just to wrap up the interview Eric gave some thought on the future direction of mobile:

  • The basic answer is more…mobile is the fastest proliferating technology that Google has ever seen. They are seeing a 30% increase in mobile search queries each quarter.
  • Mobile devices are becoming complementary to desktop computers…for example desktop Google map searchers are higher during weekdays, however, during weekends mobile map search spikes as more people will be off work…so these devices will increasingly allow you to live your life in a more flexible manner.
  • It will inevitable that these devices will become cheaper, as cell phone companies will want to market them more aggressively and the device manufactures will have free platform options such as Android to build off.

With that my day at Google ended. Everything you’d expect to be in a Google office was there from people riding on scooters to a Lego building area – it’s really a slice of California dropped right into the middle of Manhattan. The only souvenir from my day at Google was that bottle of H20 in the picture above but maybe the secret of Google’s success might have something to do with what they put in their drinking water…fingers crossed.

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A chat with Alex Howard from O’Reilly Media on mobile Gov 2.0

Posted on July 20, 2011 | 4 Comments

When it comes to reporting on new developments in the Gov 2.0 world, there are few more influential than Alex Howard. Based in Washington D.C., Alex writes for O’Reilly Media on everything from social media to new technology developments. He’s known to many by his Twitter pseudonym, @digiphile. I sat down with him while in the U.S. capital to hear his thoughts surrounding mobile developments…

What are the benefits of mobile apps to government?

  • The future is mobile but anyone who makes that prediction doesn’t get any points for saying as much in 2011. At the end of 2010, smartphone penetration stood at nearly 30%, with massive projected growth of smartphones over the coming 12 months.
  • The introduction of Android into the market has changed the game… as people with lower income levels can now get a smartphone.
  • The clear benefit of mobile is that you are able to find people where they are…reporting incidents is a underutilized capacity that is becoming more common with initiatives such as Citysourced and SeeClickFix.
  • Government, has not been good creating applications that allow people to push information back. Mobile will go some way to creating a meaningful conversation with citizens.

Should government focus on the mobile web rather than native apps?

  • If you want to serve the greatest number of citizens, you’ll find them via text (SMS) or a mobile site.
  • This is a crucial consideration when in the context of scarce resources. Many parts of the population still can’t afford broadband access, but some 85% of US adults have a cellphone. Mobile sites are a way to send them crucial updates and gather feedback.
  • There are also around 24,000 registered federal .gov domains. Most are not optimized toward mobile and there is now a movement towards consolidation.

You wrote about shiny app syndrome last year do you think that it’s improved within that time?

  • This is one of the most important areas that I wrote about last year. It keeps coming up.
  • Having an app is still very attractive within popular culture and in the commercial space.
  • Apps are often seen as a signifier of progress without full deliberation of the development costs that are also associated with creating native apps.
  • What platform should you develop for? …Apple and Google are by far the biggest right now. BlackBerry has not executed on a platform strategy to attract developers to date, though they still are the default phone in government and business. The Microsoft/Nokia partnership is one to watch out for in the coming years.

Speaking of Blackberry, how can mobile devices affect Mobile and Flexible working?

  • Due to its integration with email and enterprise systems, Washington DC is a Blackberry town. Over the years, this revolution in communication has also created a culture of constant work.
  • Allowing employees to have access to apps, social media and the Web from government desktops still faces a cultural barriers and security concerns.
  • Right now, there still appears to be more of a focus on face-to-face intereactions than giving people the opportunity to be creative wherever they are. That may be changing with the passage of a recent telework law. There’s still a lingering fear that full Internet access will mean that employees will be too distracted to get their jobs done.
  • I feel strongly about that, as it’s basically a trust issue. This has more to do with people rather than the technology.
  • Knowledge work tends to thrive in a more results-based environment. It’s also an important element to retain talent within government and boost productivity.

How do you see the unique mobile represents security issues for government?

  • There are definitely many people that want to hack government workers. There have been numerous sophisticated attempts to do so in the past. There will be more.
  • Government is a highly regulated industry, although security and privacy concerns are trump cards that often prohibit change.
  • Having said that, the weakest part of any security system is the human element. Many people don’t even put a password on their work mobile phone.
  • Risk needs to be carefully thought through, and contingency plans put in place like the ability to remotely wipe the mobile hardware if the device is lost or hard disk encryption on laptops.
  • That is not to say that you can’t use mobile securely…it’s user behavior that is the primary issue.

What is the best way to engage mobile third party developers - Apps Contests, hackathons or other methods?

  • Apps contests are more than just creating the apps themselves, although ideally the apps themselves are useful! Some contest have suffered because of unfocused goals.
  • With these contests, success lies in more than the number of apps…its about the community that you build that will assist entrepreneurs to create jobs, or in the problems they help a city solves.
  • If these contests are going to be useful in the future, they need to be have more citizen centricity and fix specific and unique problems.
  • We are not in the same place that we were years ago with the original apps contest here in the District, Apps for Democracy.
  • Many of the apps haven’t survived online or in people’s phone, but it’s also really good to have failures. The code for the best of them is still around. Experimentation and a tolerance for failure will be critical to how government deals with the challenges of a mobile tomorrow.

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Countdown to North American App Research

Posted on May 16, 2011 | Leave a comment

After months of careful planning there is now under a week until I head over to North America, on the 23rd May, to conduct my research project into how Government can best use mobile technology, specifically smartphone apps, to engage with citizens. More information about the Socitm’s Graham Williamson Challenge can be found here.

Before I cross the Atlantic I just wanted to share some thoughts about what I’m hoping achieve from this endeavour.

Research Areas

I want this research to be as relevant as possible for the UK public sector and after much deliberation these are the key areas that I will investigate:

  1. Citizen Engagement & Community Building – How this new wave of mobile technology could redefine the relationship between the public and government
  2. Open Data – How best to harness Open Data to act as a fuel for app creation
  3. Security – How to achieve the right balance between adopting innovative technologies without compromising citizen data
  4. Apps Contests – Whether these competitions are a viable method for capturing innovative ideas from third party app developers
  5. Enterprise 2.0 – Learn from developments in the private sector and tailor it for public sector use
  6. Mobile & Flexible Working – How apps and mobile technology can assist in the creation of an agile workforce

Who I’ll be Meeting

To aid in my GWC research I will be speaking with people spearheading this innovative trend in apps, mobile technology and open data. I’ve identified a diverse group of contacts that range from large corporations and public sector organisations down to small app developers. A list of those who I’ll be meeting can be found here.

Washington DC, Toronto, New York, Boston and San Francisco are the hubs that I will be visiting to gain a comprehensive picture of North American technological progress.

Central Aim

There are few certainties when predicting future IT trends, however, there is little doubt that the computing landscape of the next decade will be shaped by mobile technology. This project offers a unique opportunity to get a broad overview of developments and extract the best ideas to aid the UK public sector embrace innovation to deal with consistently reduced budgets. I intend to combine my app research with the unique expert opinions in order to (hopefully) discover a consensus on how to maximise the potential of this new mobile trend.

Feedback

Given the pace of mobile technology developments, this research is meant to be dynamic so it would be great to hear you thoughts. If you’re interested in the project then you can see the findings and this site and I’ll also be putting snippets on my twitter account @jamie_kirk

Picture Source: Scazon

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Have QR codes died before they lived?

Posted on April 4, 2011 | 3 Comments

Here is a question that has baffled many…what does a block of cheese, a Toy Story 3 DVD and an Improvement Service leaflet have in common?

The answer…they all include a QR code…

These squares are becoming increasingly visible from supermarkets and magazines to local government conferences. However, despite enjoying popularity in Japan for over a decade will they ever enter the mainstream in Europe or North America? Also how can the public sector take advantage of this technology?

Benefits of QR Codes

Easy to use: Delegates who now pick up an Improvement Service leaflet from our stand at an event can be taken automatically to our website for more relevant online material simply by using a free QR code reader app on their phone and pointing camera at the code. In short, the device recognises the data embedded in the square and instantly brings up the information. More information on how they work can be found here.

Free and Instant to Create: QR codes can include a short piece of text, a website, an email address or a phone number. If you want a try at creating one then just click here.

Being Creative: If you mix the flexibility of QR codes with some imagination then you get some interesting results. For instance this link outlines 40 ways that QR codes could be used in the classroom.

So why the blog title?

You might wonder why I’ve asked in my blog title whether QR codes are already dead despite having so many benefits. Well last week many commentators began writing that Google had reconsidered support for their business QR code initiative and looking for an alternative. The search giant commented that, “We’re exploring new ways to enable customers to quickly and easily find information about local businesses from their mobile phones”.

One of the “new ways” they’re likely to be investigating are Near Field Communication (NFC) chips that are being built into the latest phones. NFC will enable customers to pay for items or look up information simply by placing their phone near an embedded NFC receiver at a pay point or a poster.

QR codes in the Public Sector

Initiatives from New York, however, are showing that QR codes are not dead yet.

In the last couple of weeks New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a program of putting QR codes on all the cities planning permits. “The QR codes will provide more efficient access to government data,” stated Bloomberg and “it will allow people to make more informed decisions about things from renting an apartment to making a complaint”.  The Big Apple has also seen QR codes placed on their rubbish trucks (taking you to recycle information) and public transport signs (providing dynamic travel updates).

The Future

When used in the correct manner QR codes can provide a comparably low-tech solution that will often enhance a user’s experience. The black and white square will not last forever but they can be created for free and used for a whole multitude of purposes – all that is needed is a little imagination. Whether people use QR codes or NFC in the future is a side issue as they both represent (in different ways) a growing movement that is enabling people to quickly access information and services on the move. This movement provides a great challenge for the public sector in how best to harness this trend but it will also allow an opportunity for innovation.

What do you think?

How best can the public sector use QR codes?

What unexpected places have you started seeing QR codes?

Do you think QR codes are just a novelty?

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