Children may be found more quickly and easily with these mobile barcodes.
A father of children who were kidnapped by their noncustodial mother – his ex-wife – in 2009 has turned his experience in which authorities tracked the woman for over two years through the United States and Europe, has now used technology, in the form of QR codes, to help others to prevent this type of terrifying occurrence.
Stephen Watkins created a custom two dimensional barcode that people can scan with smartphones.
Though QR codes are already very popular with marketers and companies to help to share information about products, accept charitable donations, use mobile payments, and generate mcommerce purchases, Watkins changed things up.
He used the QR codes to provide information about missing children.
The QR codes are created to help to spread the world about missing kids so that people will scan them and see information about their case (the site for his own children is still up and had attracted a tremendous number of visitors) as well as descriptions of the child, photos, videos, news coverage, and even blog updates. There are also telephone numbers for missing children hotlines and other relevant organization so that anyone who has information will know how they can share it with the proper authorities.
The codes can then be printed on fliers, press releases, websites, and anywhere else that they might attract the interest of smartphone users who can scan them. Watkins explained that “My objective was to try to give my sons a fighting chance to be found by littering the Internet world with as many links to their photos as possible.”
In 2011, Watkins sons, Christopher and Alexander, were finally found in Poland. Their father doesn’t know if the discovery was the result of the use of the QR codes, but he does believe that the barcodes have the ability to be helpful in other cases. He is now creating campaigns for cases in other countries. He hopes that he will be able to capitalize on the popular quick response code technology, saying that they “are still probably the best way of getting people off the page and online to a direct site”
