 Hello, and welcome to this podcast by filmsbychris.com. I'm Chris, Chris with a K, as well as the website, filmsbychris with a K. I do thank you for joining me today. Today I'm gonna talk a little bit more about QR codes. I was talking about them last week, but some uses that I wish they would be used for more. And as we know, a lot of QR codes are used on products and in advertising so that you can, usually they link to websites with more information on the products or a company, which is very useful, but they can store a lot of text so you can have multiple things in there and different formats might tell your QR code reader to do different things, whether it be connect to a wifi hotspot or open a web page and there's other uses as well, but it's just plain text, which is very useful and it can hold a lot of text. And one of the places I've seen them and I wish they were, how do I put this? They're using them, but I wish they were using them better is Walmart. If you've been to Walmart in the last couple of years at the bottom of your receipt, there's a QR code. And if you scan it with a standard QR code reader, it's gonna be a link to a website, but when you go to it, it's gonna tell you that the service is not available. I believe that's because they want you to install the Walmart app, which I'm not gonna do, which is sad that they do that because the QR code would make it simple that you wouldn't need the app. But it's supposed to be a way for you to organize your receipts from Walmart. And I love when companies make it easy for you to digitally have copies of your receipt. And I think the best example I have is Home Depot. Home Depot remembers my credit card. I always use the same credit card there when I swipe it. It says, they already have my email address on file. And when I swipe my credit card, it says, do you want your receipt sent digitally to this address? And I do, and that way I can always, if I need my receipt, I can just search Home Depot and I know they about date. And it did send you an email with the plain text of everything you bought. And it's just a copy of your receipt, which is awesome. I wish it was a little more standardized so that companies, where people can grab their data and store it and not only just search through Home Depot, but I can have all my receipts from everywhere I shop in one place. And it actually would be great. I think it would be so great if credit card companies enabled this. Now Home Depot's doing it based on my credit card number, but wouldn't it be great if discovered card or master card or visa card or whoever the banks are, set up a standard so that these POS stations, these point of sales can, when you have something, they send a copy of the receipt to your credit card server and that way you can get a list of things. Another example is Sam's Club. Sam's Club, which is a big box store here owned by the same company as Walmart. And if I use my Sam's Club credit card at Sam's Club, when I go to the credit card site to pay my credit card, it's very horribly formatted. But when I shop at Sam's Club, it's just Sam's Club, it would actually list every single item I bought. I don't think it lists prices, it's not a full copy of the receipt, but it lists everything I bought in that transaction. So it's something. But it'd be so great if at the bottom of your receipt, there was a QR code and there's multiple ways you could do this to make it useful. And I understand that one of the reasons like Walmart wants you to install their app is control. Most of the time when a company tells you to install their app, they want access to your device so they can get information on you, push sales and ads to you. And basically, in my wording, infect your device. But another way to do that is they can still get you to use their service because it could still be a QR code that you can scan and it goes to their website. And I would love that so much more if I had a Walmart account. That way I don't have to install anything but it's on their account. So when I use them, when I buy something from them and I have a receipt with a QR code, I should be able to scan it and it goes to walmart.com, which shows me everything on that receipt. And if I'm logged in, it will give me an option to save that receipt to my account. So at least I have that. That would be a great option, meeting me halfway where I can now go and at least have a copy of all my receipts that maybe I can download from their website but they're still having me come to their website. They're getting me as a customer to view more of their stuff but it's not having to install something on my phone that I don't want on my phone. But other options would be to just have the whole receipt in the QR code. As I talked in the last video, there you can fit it when you're using Alphanumeric. When basically your keys on your keyboard, basic punctuation numbers and letters, it's a little over 5,000 characters can be fit in a standard QR code. That'd be great if it was just a text copy of your receipt. Be even better if it was formatted a certain way like JSON so that I could scan it and have an application pull apart the data and I can store it locally and have all my receipts for everywhere I shop in one database locally. But again, I get that companies want you coming to their website. They want you using their apps when possible. So again, if it just brought me to their website where I had a digital copy, even if it's just plain text on their website and I can highlight and copy and paste that somewhere and save it for my own use later on, that would be great. But having the whole receipt stored in the QR code is also another possibility. And even if, I mean, you would have to buy a whole lot of stuff for it to not fit on the QR code, in which case you could print two QR codes on the receipt. That wouldn't be a big deal. But you could compress that data and then save it as base 64, which you can later decode. It's not encrypted, it doesn't have to be encrypted, but you can definitely compress and get some more stuff on there, I'm sure. But again, I think one of the simplest would be a standard to where it brings you to website and even better yet is if it was a standard to where you could scan it and have it import to your own device. And I'm just kind of repeating myself a little bit, but it'd be so great just to have all my receipts with the list of everything I bought, you know, the receipt numbers. And again, companies in a lot of cases probably want you to not be able to have your receipt in case you have a return or some sort of problem. I remember back in the 90s, I worked for a while for Circuit City and our receipts were printed on thermal paper. So so many people would come in to return stuff, but if you leave that thermal receipt in your car or in your back pocket where your body heats hitting it, it fades very, very quickly. And if you had your receipt, you know, we can very quickly type in the transaction number or even scan it and bring up the whole transaction on our computers, but if they faded, they weren't very useful, which you can look at as, well, that's just that type of technology and they might've been using it for some other reason, but I'm pretty sure that there's a bonus for Circuit City was that a lot of these receipts would basically expire because they had a lifespan that was pretty short. You could also look up your transactions if you knew what credit card you used. We'd swipe your credit card and find all transactions made in the store in that card. If you knew, you know, what credit card used, which a lot of times people didn't, but I just so many times struggling trying to find someone's transaction because their receipt had faded and it was only a couple of weeks old, but there are companies that do work to make, to be consumer friendly. Again, like Home Depot sending me all my receipts and at any point I can go into my email, search Home Depot, find and it lists out all the ones that receipts and as long as I know what date and it's in plain text, so I can also search through the text. So if I bought a saw and as long as the name of the saw wasn't abbreviated on the receipt, which lots of times names of products are abbreviated on the receipts just for space, but I can find those receipts with ease and I just wish there was some sort of standard that people were able to log all the receipts digitally. I mean, it'd be super great again if credit card companies somehow enabled this to where companies, when you swipe your card, it automatically sends a list of your items to the credit card company. Now some people might not like that because now the credit card company knows more about you than the credit card company already knows a lot about you because they track your sales, they know where you're buying stuff, how much you're spending. So now sending them a list of what you bought is just even more information to the credit card company, but balance there. You could also say all these companies know what you're doing. Your credit card company knows where you are, the company you're buying from those, what you're having. So then privacy thing there. So you might prefer if it was Walmart had their own standard and someone else but it'd be great if even if they had their own standards, if it was QR code to where I can go to scan it and even through their services, get a copy of my receipts in plain text. Again, best case scenario for me would be just a plain text, well formatted QR code where your whole receipt, every item is in the QR code and I can scan it and then I can write my own applications to sort through them or even just save the plain text somewhere for later use if I need it. So QR codes are awesome. I wish they were used a little more in better ways other than just advertising for companies' websites and products, although that's useful too to get more information on a product. Lots of times you'll buy something with an owner's manual and they'll have the QR code that you can scan to watch a video on how the product works or something like that. And these companies are using like crazy. I just wish people started using them more for private use. Like I said in the last video, you can use it to set up, so when someone scans it, we'll give them access to your Wi-Fi hotspot and that'd be great to have in your house instead of trying to tell someone your long Wi-Fi password or just be like, hey, there it is up on the shelf, just go scan that. Companies are using it, big companies are using it, small companies are using it. I think we need to start using it as individuals more. So again, thank you for listening to me talk. This is a podcast from filmsbychris.com. I'm Chris, Chris with a K. Link in the description if you're watching this on YouTube, if you're listening to some Patreon, you probably know who I am already. If you're listening to somewhere else, still visit my website filmsbychris.com, Chris with a K. And as always, I hope that you have a great day.