Recently, new SMS sending rules came in India and it seems that various services and industries would be affected by it. I would try to highlight few aspects on what ways to adopt to have less effect from new SMS rules.
SMS Messages from various sites majorly worked in following 3 ways:
- Sending Message to yourself (one time activity)
- Sending Message to others (one time activity)
- Subscribing to Message alerts (regular activity)
Now for the case of Sending Message to yourself, when a user wants to send a message or some information he either copies it and paste it in some SMS sending service to send it to himself or if the website uses online services which send the selected message as SMS from a web page, he uses such a service to send the message to his cell phone/mobile phone. But now according to new rules a mobile user may not get an SMS message depending on his/her DND settings.
So, what will boom and should you be a part of it?
The QR Codes is the answer for this. QR code is a 2 dimensional graphical image (generally black in color) like a Bar Code with an encoded message, this message can be read by mobile camera to decode the contents. The content can be a name, contact address, phone number, email address, website and context related information etc. There are numerous services to create QR code and one can also create it dynamically for dynamic content. Various decoders i.e. QR Code Mobile apps decoder are available for Free to download. You can read more about it on Wikipedia.
There are certain GAQs (Generally Asked Questions) for QR Code like
- What are QR codes..explained above
- How to create a QR code..explained above
- Can I generate QR code for Free..yes
- Can I change the dimensions, size of QR code..yes
- Can I change the color of QR Code..yes
- Can I dynamically create QR code..yes
- Can a QR code be customised..yes, upto some level
- Can a QR code be printed..yes
What is the future of QR Code? Unlike bar codes which can be read only by scanners and ISBN codes QR code can be read simply by using camera of your Mobile Phone. Very soon, products would be carrying QR Code Stickers on them which would have 2 way benefits. Firstly, you can scan it, get identifying information and search on web various details like product name, detail, expiry date etc. and secondly, after scanning it you can SMS the details.
And it also controls SPAM as scripts won’t be able to scan email addresses, contact numbers etc.
So, what already is existing and should you be a part of it?
The Email, we already use it. But after changes in rules regarding SMS Messages, emails are once again going to be more integral part of communication.
So, is there any other way and should you be a part of it?
Changing Images, is the next revolution. No, we aren’t talking about animated images but the Changing Images based on time. You can have a message displayed in an image (image being rendered using dynamic scripting) and image displays most relevant message at that time.
Users will be connected to internet and they would be able to access latest message using that same image.