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Staff Reporter
LJ Hooker claimed it will be the first business in Australia to roll out a new photo recognition application that will render QR codes a technology of the past.
The 700-office strong real estate group said consumers will now be able to point their iPhone or iPad camera at a property photo and see the entire listing pop up on their screen.
LJ Hooker, which referred to the feature as 'VR Codes', for 'visual recognition', claimed the new technology was superior to QR codes.
Photo recognition technology is much simpler and easier to use, according to LJ Hooker CEO, Georg Chmiel.
"QR Codes are too off-putting and confusing to ever be successful," he said. "They were destined to disappear as soon as photo recognition became possible."
“Marketers wanted QR Codes to succeed, because they allowed them to track the source of every single lead. Our photo recognition technology, by contrast, is designed to make things easy for the consumer.
“We leapfrogged directly over QR codes to the future. We are the first real estate company to make property hunting easy with photo recognition technology in our smart phone app.
"Just use our app to take a snapshot of any of photo of an LJ Hooker listing, and you will go right to the webpage. It's that simple.
“This technology is so obvious and easy that I doubt any portal or major agent network will still be using QR Codes by the end of 2013. They may resist because of the money they have invested, but eventually they will give in to the obvious.
"It's not possible yet, but one day we hope you will be able to just point your camera at any building in the country and have information about it pop up on our website for you to use.”
The updated LJ Hooker app with VR Code photo recognition technology is available in the Apple app store. An Android version is coming soon.
