qr codes
October 24, 2008 – 12:29 pm
So, I stumbled upon QR codes the other day and have been having fun playing with them. If you haven’t heard of them yet then you probably haven’t lived in Japan recently - they are all the rage over there.
What’s a QR code you ask? Good question. It is that black and white matrix image at the top of this post. Want to know more? There is a page on wikipedia that provides more details.
Why am I interested in them? QR codes can hold data like website addresses, business card info, or anything that you want up to 4,296 alphanumeric characters. For example, the image above has my business card information encoded in it.
The image below is a link to this blog.
If you have a decoder on your cell phone or computer, you can read the information or they can act as hyper links. Most cell phones in Japan have these encoders built into them so users can quickly and easily get information or link to websites from offline print ads. I have one on my iPhone. If you do a search for QR code in the iTunes App Store you will get several results - all of them are free.
You too can play around with QR codes and even make some for yourself by going to this site.
Might we be seeing and using these more in the near future?
[update] If you want to know more about my secret project, just decode the image below.
