Whilst passing through Waterloo station, I usually buy some fresh fruit juice from the Marks&Spencers (M&S) store. This time I noticed my bottle had some sort of 2d barcode on it.

I spent a few uncomfortable minutes trying and trying again to scan the code with the "Barcode Scanner" application on my Android G1. Didn't work.

Later I found out that this a Data Matrix code and not a QR code. ARGH!

Unsurprisingly 'Data Matrix' support is 'alpha' quality according to the ZXing library powering the Barcode application on the UK T-mobile Android G1.

WAP is CRAP

In the small print it says WAP enabled mobiles only. Eh? Have I gone back in time 8 years? To add insult to injury there is a link to the T&Cs: http://www.mands.mobi/ftg worryingly using a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DotMobi address!

http://www.mands.mobi reveals some suspects to this crime: Incentivated

Welcome to Your M&S
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Site built using Incentivated's WAPsite Publisher

OMG. How piss poor M&S.

2d codes suck too

Regular barcodes are OK in my book, because they have a human readable 13 digit fall back (036000291452) running along the bottom. I remember when 'Checkout dollies' (as we call them in the South West), typed in that that number in case the barcode failed to read.

Where is the fall back to 2d codes??

As a 2d-code fallback I suggest clearly printing a short (hopefully meaningful) URL e.g. m&s.co.uk/oj (12 characters) and markup your content in HTML5.