You may have seen one of these QR Codes in the pages of your favorite magazine, promotional mailer or just around town. The codes are increasing popularly has customers are more reliant on mobile smart phones for information on the go.

What are QR codes?

the Quick Response Code for this web page

A QR code is one of the most popular types of two-dimensional (matrix) barcodes. QR is the abbreviation for Quick Response, as the creator intended; the code allows its contents to be decoded at very high speed. The QR Code was created by Toyota subsidiary Denso-Wave in 1994. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background.

Although initially used for tracking parts in automotive manufacturing, QR codes are now used in a much broader context, including both commercial tracking applications and convenience-oriented applications aimed at mobile phone users known as mobile tagging.

QR codes can be used to display:

• Plain Text
• Website URLs
• Email Addresses
• Phone Numbers
• SMS with a message
• Connect to Wifi Networks

QR codes storing information and website URLs may appear in magazines, on signs, buses, business cards, or on just about any marketing material or object about which users might seek more information. Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader application can scan the image of the QR Code to display text, contact information, connect to a wireless network, open a web page, or send a SMS message without type having to use the devices small keyboard. This act of linking from physical world objects is known as a hard linking or physical world hyperlinks.

Who is using QR Codes?

Billboard Advertisement in Japan using a QR code

Marketing
QR codes have become prevalent in marketing circles and have been integrated into both traditional and interactive campaigns. Media where QR codes have been deployed include: billboards, in-store displays, event ticketing and tracking, trade-show management, business cards, print ads, contests, direct mail flyers, websites, and coupons just to name a few. QR codes are of particular interest to marketers, giving them the ability to measure response rates with a high degree of precision by using different URLs for each campaign. This allowing for easier ROI (return on investment) calculation, thus helping to determine which marketing is working and justifying spending budgets.

Tourism
QR codes are also widely used in the tourism. For example in Augusta, GA they launched “The Digitrail “.  The signs have bar code on them and with a quick scan by smart phone owners they get info on the canal’s history and wildlife. QR codes can help tourist easily get the information on the city.

Real world limitation of QR codes

A QR Codes can store up to 4,296 alphanumeric characters of text. In our testing for mobile tagging, 60 to 80 characters are feasible limit with a reasonable image size of 150 x 150 pixels. You can add more text, but it requires an increased amount of detail, which requires a larger image size for the average phone to detect them. For example a 250 character text required a 350 x 350 pixel image in our testing with several mobile phones.

Simply Works recommends using the QR Code to store a website location (URL). This way you change the information at the web location (page) while the code image remains the same.

QR code readers for your device

Google’s mobile Android operating system supports QR codes by natively including the bar code scanner (ZXing) on some models, and the browser supports URI redirection, which allows QR Codes to send metadata to existing applications on the device. In the Apple iOS, a QR code reader is not natively included, but over 50 free Apps are available with reader and metadata browser URI redirection capability.

To find the reader for your device visit:  www.mobile-barcodes.com/qr-code-software/

License
The use of QR codes is free of any license. The QR code is clearly defined and published as an ISO standard. Denso Wave owns the patent rights on QR codes, but has chosen not to exercise them. The term QR code itself is a registered trademark of Denso Wave Incorporated.