What is a QR barcode
You certainly should have seen images on walls or advertisements
like the this:
These image is not an old school arcade game screenshot as you
might think :)
In reality it is a graphical barcode which can encode information
which later on can be red easily by QR barcode reader, PCs and
Mobile phones equipped with a camera device and a piece of
specialised software.
Many mobile phones day like the Google's HTC mobile support the QR
barcode reader as an integrated part of the Android operating
system.
These fun technology has been invented in 1994 in Toyota, in
reality it's a two dimensional graphical barcode.
The
QR is actually an abbreviation of Quick Responce as the
objects tagged with this code are really quick and accurate to scan
and therefore track.
Today the
QR barcodes can actually be seen on many magazines
and even newspapers. With the QR technology all kind of information
can be encoded.
Thus the QR is used for variety of purposes like encoding URL
addresses which can be easily opened with Mobile phones without
typing the address in the URL bar.
Nokia's phone Operating System (Symbian) does also support the QR
technology out of the box.
Many of the Blackberry mobile phones nowdays also had integrated
support for the QR code reading.
Weirdly enough the IPhones and IPods lack the native support of the
QR barcode reader, however this kind of mobiles could be equipped
with a third party software which enables the phone to read and
decode QR images.
QR is one step further in technology development and it does
support encoding even metadata information through which a mobile
device can easily be connected to a wireless network.
Thus QR barcodes enables one to link objects in the physical world
to hyperlinks on the net the so called
hardlinks
This kind of technology gives many opportunities for future
development, so I'm quite sure this technology will become
essential part of IT world in the short future!
The deployment of QR in marketing nowdays seems to also grow, it's
used on many business cards, billboards or in ads in public
transport.
The potential of this interesting technology is really enormous,
only future will show how it can improve our daily
lives!