Admission Tickets as Text Messages

lee1 writes to tell us that InfoWorld is reporting that Smartmachine and their partner Skidata have developed a new way to allow customers to purchase and receive tickets to events. The new ticketing system allows users to "have a ticket sent to their mobile phone via SMS (Short Message Service) in the form of a 2D (two-dimensional) bar code. At the gate, they slide their mobile phone display showing the bar code by a bar code reader." The new technology also claims to help combat the counterfeit, pilferage, and repeat use that can be such a problem for paper tickets.

Already in use for years...

[Naomi_the_butterfly]

Dang... we've been using that in israel for movies for years. Just a number in text message, though, no barcode. They type it in and check that the credit card you have with you matches the card that that ticket number is registered under and you're in.

Re:Plan B

[drinkypoo]

HTH: GSM Security FAQ [gsm-security.net]

Re:Combat counterfeit?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.barcodesinc.com/generator/index.php [barcodesinc.com]

Are those SMS?

[Fr4ncis]

Are you sure they send SMS? Short Message Service [wikipedia.org] is used to send just plain text, while MMS [wikipedia.org] (Multimedia Messaging Service) is used to send images as well as music and other nice stuff. I'm not sure you can compose a bar code with an SMS message!

Re:Old news in Korea

[poot_rootbeer]

After a while, I decided that it was hopefully free seating.

Cultural tip for those from outside the US: here, it is extremely rare for movie showings to have assigned seating. In almost all cases, moviegoers are welcome to sit in any free seat in the theater once they have been admitted.

Other types of events -- sports, theater, classical music -- most often DO have assigned seats. Popular music concerts are split: often there will be reserved seating and unreserved standing room in different parts of the vanue at the same event.

Re:Like public transport in finland

[tsvk]

...except that the public transport SMS tickets in Helsinki are normal textual messages, not specialized image barcodes, like in the article.

Re:Are those SMS?

[EricJay]

Mobile barcoding can be done via EMS [wikipedia.org], which is still technically an SMS transmission... however, the linked article mentions that "users must have mobile phones supporting packet-based technologies, such as GPRS or 3G," so they might be sending a web-link to the barcode image via SMS and relying on the handset's browser to display it.

Re:Plan B

[aonaran]

That's assuming no prior knowledge of what constitutes a valid bar code.
I seriously doubt that the bar codes would be completely random numbers.