While the use of mobile barcodes has been widely adopted over the past few years in other countries, particularly Japan, the technology has yet to break through in the U.S. The New York Times (NYSE: NYT) Company expects that will change within the next 2-to-3 years, says Michael Zimbalist, the company’s VP of research & development operations. To prepare itself for the day when consumers and marketers signal their collective acceptance of technology that sends a signal to open up an application when scanned by a user’s cell phone, the NYTCO is now trying to figure out ways to position itself to take advantage of mobile barcodes’ use for editorial and advertising. In an interview last week, Zimbalist, whose role is to manage the company’s “futurist” practice, discussed the company’s approach to mobile barcodes as part of an overall NYTCO mandate to explore ways to adapt the newspaper for mobile technologies. More after the jump…

The Big Idea - Barcodes: For a front page story on mobile barcodes in Japan that ran back in April, the R&D unit collaborated with the Times’ reporter and also created a functioning barcode to go along with the article. Zimbalist: “Something like 45 percent of all cell phone users [in Japan], at least once a week, invokes a barcode using their cell phone ...There are several reasons we’re optimistic that this will take hold in this country. You see this topic coming up across a whole variety of industries. In consumer packaged goods, these bar codes are turning up as a form of inventory control. In manufacturing, they’re turning up to help with logistics… You can imagine reading a movie review, punching in the code and watching a movie trailer. You could read a story about something that happened in Darfur and get a link to Nick Kristof narrating a set of photos from his column. There’s a host of applications for content companies both in the service realm and in content delivery.”

He noted that there are a number of dissimilarities between Japan and the U.S. when it comes to transferring the zeal for mobile barcodes here. For one thing, Zimbalist noted that Japan has few cell phone carriers, making it easier to get them to agree to its use. Secondly, several years ago Digital Convergence Corp. tried rolling out a barcode reader called CueCat, which died after consumers avoided it for a number of reasons, including privacy concerns.

The Marriage of Print And Mobile: The uses of print and mobile tend to be more complementary as opposed to print and TV. Because people have been so used to carrying their daily paper around with them, Zimbalist believes that the Times can go further in exploring the natural affinity that exists there. “We’re looking at how to extend our print product via SMS and, then, potentially MMS and beyond that. The first practical example was when we mobilized real estate listings two weekends ago. You can send a listing to your phone and then open up a whole presentation… That suggests a host of possible new directions for us.”

The recording of our conversation, which includes other R&D goals and initiatives, is here. (MP3, 11.5 MB)

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