[HN Gopher] Show HN: I open sourced the QR designer from my fail...
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Show HN: I open sourced the QR designer from my failed startup
My designer is somewhat special, if I do say so myself, as it
allows you to put arbitrary designs in the middle area of the QR
while still being totally scannable.
Author : koch
Score : 162 points
Date : 2023-05-30 17:53 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| phoenixreader wrote:
| Why did your startup fail?
| karolist wrote:
| What product was your startup building, how did having a fancy QR
| designer benefited your product? Was QR designer the product? Why
| did it fail and what are your plans next?
| koch wrote:
| Great questions!
|
| Basically I was working on a link shortener. However in
| addition to a link shortener that took you to another page, I
| wanted users to be able to create a mini website that could
| host apps. Like you could create a small page that had photos
| of your business and a menu/ordering app and an "IM with staff"
| app etc.
|
| The fancy generator was kind of an added bonus, I always
| thought the QR codes I'd see around were so dull and
| unidentifiable! There was very little in traditional QR codes
| themselves to make them "human-scannable", so to speak. A QR
| codes is essentially a sign; it should have some information in
| it that you, a person, can parse. A little logo in the middle
| is weak at best.
|
| It failed because I didn't sell it. I needed to sell it. I
| needed to talk to people. I needed to like cold call people,
| restaurant owners without websites. Annnnd I always came up
| with an excuse not to.
|
| As far as next plans, I'm working on something else these days
| - https://markwhen.com
| davidktr wrote:
| >markwhen
|
| you are building crazy cool stuff
| bombcar wrote:
| This sounds interesting and if you're really "giving up" on
| the idea, perhaps you could "open source" everything. People
| could take it and make a "restaurant website in a box" that
| could deploy directly to GitHub pages, even.
| dylan604 wrote:
| hasn't UberEats, DoorDash and their ilk already done all of
| this all while being super helpful to the point the
| restaurants were totally unawares it had been done?
| bombcar wrote:
| They've helped in some cases but in others it's entirely
| confusing (or nonexistent).
| xfalcox wrote:
| The add image feature is not working for me.
| koch wrote:
| Ah sorry about that, I'm not surprised... I think I uploaded it
| to a server first but now that it's all shut down there is no
| server for it to be uploaded to.
|
| https://github.com/kochrt/qr-designer/blob/420adea59e617659f...
| willsmith72 wrote:
| This is really cool. If you fixed the image upload, removed the
| 25 character requirement (less would be fine), and made the link
| customisable in the site, I think you could have a really neat
| product/business. I'd definitely send it to my startup's founder,
| we're already using QR codes and these would be way nicer than a
| plain one.
| TechTechTech wrote:
| Thanks for open sourcing this.
|
| Reminds me of halftone QR codes
| http://vecg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/Projects/SmartGeometry/halftone_QR/...
| lucb1e wrote:
| I've been looking for this for years but did not know the right
| keywords to search for. Saw an Anonymous/Guy Fawkes styled
| sticker on CCC in 2018 or something, on and off I've been
| looking for how it was made. Now I know.
| krasin wrote:
| Very cool! Years ago, I was also inspired by
| https://research.swtch.com/qart
| 4rt wrote:
| I've been looking for that for quite a while, thanks for the
| link
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Such a lovely and easy to read webpage
| Prickle wrote:
| Man I really wish I had access to this functionality ~ 5 years
| ago.
|
| Thankyou for open sourcing this! Always nice to see stuff like
| this. I will definitely pass this onto some underclassmen.
| david422 wrote:
| > In order to maximize designer space, the url that the QR codes
| links to is expected to be exactly 25 characters long
|
| Seems like a cool QR code, but also limited for general use.
| codeflo wrote:
| I could imagine this being part of an offering that includes an
| appropriately customized URL shortener (or if necessary,
| lengthener).
| koch wrote:
| Yeah like the other replies said, it's meant to be part of a
| link shortener; or maybe you have a short domain that you can
| use short urls with. Like surprisingly enough I could fit a
| link to my github page in there as plaintext (although all
| caps)
| wlesieutre wrote:
| For shorter URLs you could pad it with unused query strings
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(page generated 2023-05-30 23:00 UTC)