The QR code is a popular two dimensional barcode which has already stepped over the trade market boarders and has become actively used in everyday life. Mobile phones equipped with cameras capable of scanning and decoding a 2D barcode as successfully as specialized scanners. The popularity of such mobile phones began in Japan and then spread to other continents and countries and together with this popularity the fashion for QR-code has spread as well.
The QR code first appeared in magazines, on bus stops, business cards and simply on any object about which you may need information. A barcode is only coded information. It can be about everything and not only about goods at the market. The maximum volume of QR code data is about 3 Kb, which allows coding of small images. Mobile software specially developed for QR codes decoding will easily reflect the corresponding image.
It is not surprising that the first who started using the QR code were quirky marketing specialists. They used it in advertising where an address, phone number and other information about a company were coded. For example, a simple situation: the advertising billboard with the QR code square. Inspired by the advertisement and wishing to buy the product or service of this company, the consumer simply focuses the camera of his mobile phone on the barcode, the gadget decodes it and the phone numbers and other requisites are automatically saved into the address book. The user needs just press the green button on the phone and he doesn’t have to dial the number himself.
There is one more example. The barcode can be used for meeting the opposite sex. You need to place the QR code with your personal information somewhere on the foreground. And then the interested person can focus his mobile phone on your barcode and get all the necessary information for further relationships.
Recently the usage of the QR code has been acquiring more and more global and cultural character. Mobile phones a re becoming the most common tool for getting the access to the Internet, which opens new horizons of using barcodes on mobile phones as the so-called ‘physical hyperlinks’.
Together with the web the QR code can easily contain the data for searching the information on the Web, i.e. having decoded the content of the barcode, the mobile phone uses this information for Google searching, Google Maps or various social networks. In this way, the QR code turns to a special hyperlink connecting the real object with the information about it on the Net.
The practical example of barcode usage as a hyperlink from real objects to the internet resources can be the project www.semapedia.org. This project deals with connecting the articles in Wikipedia with the places in the real world. In fact, the QR code usage is limited only by imagination. Thus, all you need is new business ideas on using the QR barcode and mobile apps developers who will be able to help you with the technical issues.
A new Google phones with touch screen is based on Android OS. These gadgets have been already given to the company staff for testing. Google plans to use the popularity of its own brand and make direct retail sales via the Internet.