You may have seen these recently in various places, you may have heard people talking about them in the realm of mobile and wondered what the heck they are. Quick response codes (known as “QR” codes) are a very convenient way to display a small bit of information that is easily scanned and processed typically by mobile devices. Allowing physical items to almost become interactive, by providing information that is easily scanned like a website URL.
To make a simpler analogy, most people are familiar with Universal Product codes (known as UPC codes). Everything you buy at the grocery store (and almost any store these days) has one of those that the cashier will scan. The computer then immediately knows what the product is based on the code that it picked up.
Does anyone remember the days of grocery shopping and the cashier had to punch in the prices and codes for every single item you purchased. They had to memorize most of these in their head and if they forgot? They had to pickup the loud phone, make an announcement in the store asking for someone in that department to help them out.
Think of QR codes as UPC codes but instead they’re used in a much broader spectrum, not just to ‘identify’ products but to convey ‘information’ of some kind.
Basic QR Code Usage
The most basic (and popular use) of QR codes is to display website information (a website address). Lets say you’re at a trade show and you’re walking by my booth. You want to find out more information about my company, so you open up your phone and start fumbling away trying to type in some long URL (that is on my display) into your browser, and off you go.
QR Code Generation
Creating your own QR code could not be any easier. There are countless websites online that allow you to easily generate a QR code image. You take the image they give you and print it on whatever you want, place it wherever you want, it’s a ‘label’ so to speak. Here is one to get you started:
QR Content
Though typically QR codes identify URLs you can essentially represent any piece of information you like, here are some examples:
- Website URL
- Send a text message
- Send an email message
- Address Book record (vcard)
- Display some text on your screen
- Any bit of text you like
What determines the success of what you put there is how it’s read and consumed. So that means the scanner has to know what to do with the ‘text’ it reveals after scanning the QR code. So almost every scanner I’m aware of knows what a url is and will open it for you. Most will allow you to ‘start’ a text message (it will not create/send one for you). But when get into more complicated (not as popular) usage, they won’t always work.
I have an app on my iPhone that does not handle address book entries, while the other one does. So even though you can represent many things with a QR code, it’s ultimately up to the scanner to understand what to do with the text and that is why the URL is the most popular, as it’s the most widely used and supported by all QR cod
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