QR codes May 19, 2011
You may or may not have seen one of these funny looking bar-codes. The first time I saw one of these was in Paris earlier this year on my long-distance train tickets. I thought "wow, these are funny looking/shaped barcodes compared to Australia". However, when I returned to Australia I started seeing these things all over the place. They're at uni, on shop windows and all types of places. I started to get a little curious and confused on what they are actually used for.
Turns out they are called QR codes and there is an application for the iPhone called i-nigma that one can use to scan them. Once scanned, the mobile instantly does one of three things: Loads a specific website; Creates a new SMS message with pre-defined content; or displays a specified message of text. Much faster and easier than having to manually type the website address.
An interesting and simple idea that I thought would be cool for my website. Just for fun I did a quick Google search on creating one for myself and about 20 seconds later I have one (pictured).
If you have an iPhone, download the app for yourself and start scanning them. I did an image search on Google for QR codes and scanned a whole bunch of them to get a good idea of what people use them for pretty quickly.
Download i-nigma: http://itunes.apple.com/app/i-nigma-4-qr-datamatrix-barcode/id388923203?mt=8
Make your own QR code: http://qrcode.kaywa.com/
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code