You may have noticed the small, black and white square codes that some companies are now including in their magazine ads, on their packaging and even on billboards and movie commercials. These boxes are known as QR Codes, which is short for Quick Response Code. These codes are much more powerful than standard UPC barcodes, which can only store a 12-digit number. QR codes can store numbers, letters, binary digits or even Kanji digits for Japanese coding.
The amount of data the code stores depends on the size of the QR code, but the ones you see in magazines and on products are large enough to store a Web address. You can scan QR codes to obtain more information on a product or company using your smart phone’s camera and an app designed to decode QR codes. Free apps are readily available on both the iPhone and Android platforms. The apps will decode the QR codes and direct you to the Web site or phone number encoded in the image. Some Android phones and Blackberries come with the necessary software preinstalled, all you need to do is launch the QR reader app and capture the QR code with your camera.
QR codes were originally developed by a subsidiary of Toyota to track vehicles throughout the manufacturing process. The codes are quickly decoded and contain much more information than traditional barcodes, which only store data horizontally. QR codes store data both horizontally and vertically, and they can be scanned from any angle, which is not possible with a traditional barcode.
While you can certainly type a company or product’s URL directly into your smart phone’s browser to view their data, QR codes offer a quick and easy workaround to typing URLs, which are sometimes very lengthy and difficult to type on tiny cell phone keyboards. You’ll most likely see QR codes popping up on more and more in print materials as well as on packaging. QR codes have even been used in movie previews to provide moviegoers additional information on an upcoming movie.
If you’re interested in creating your own QR codes for use on business cards, advertisements or other materials, there are several Web sites that will generate the codes for you based on data you provide. One such website is our website. Just visit our main page and start creating your free QR code
