Though QR codes are very interesting technically, they were designed to be used by devices with orders of magnitude less computational power than is currently the norm, and much lower resolution optics as well. This is a good thing from an error-prevention perspective, but I wonder if a more modern QR code could be designed for today's smartphones.<p>I think an interesting new standard would take advantage of higher resolution cameras and OCR functionality to make data transparent to the consumer. I personally wonder what the hell is going to pop up on my phone every time I use a QR code... Text? URL? Link to an app store? Who knows. A standard which marks text as "data" would let a user know what they're saving, and let them point a camera in the general direction of some text, and all the relevant info be extracted and organized. (Think addresses, receipts, etc.) I already use my phone to remember lots of things - like I take a picture of the back of my DSL router for the access codes printed there, or take a picture of my bike tire to remember the size of the tube I need, etc.<p>Or if transparency isn't important, given we have 4K cameras now, imagine if there was a popular standard using steganography! I can imagine movie posters having showtimes, director and actor info, URLs for streaming it online, etc. all baked into the image.