You’ve seen them in the newspapers, in magazines, on posters, maybe even on tee shirts and advertising billboards. So what are they? The answer is they are “Q.R. Codes”. The Q.R. stands for “Quick Response”. Basically, if you have a mobile phone with a suitable application, you can scan these and they will give you certain information.

  • In their simplest form they give you a website address
  • They can give you contact details as a vCard
  • They can give you information regarding upcoming events
  • They can give you straight forward text information

QR Code poster giving the website rochesterjazz.com

You get the picture? Well (I hear you ask) what use are they? Well a QR code is a two-dimensional bar code that can store up to an amazing 4300 characters. That means it could hold the entire content of this page and some! If you have a Blackberry phone or any other phone running Google’s android system then (with the right app) you can scan them and get the info. Many other phones can be set up to do this too including iPhones.

Sorry – if I lost you there for a moment. You point the “camera” of your phone at them, take a picture and the phone automatically reads the code.

In their simplest form, they give you the address of a website. More complicated information such as the festival information mentioned on the poster in the photo above, could also be given to you. Mind you, the whole poster merely generates the code http://qr2.it/Go/24356 which when you enter it becomes “rochesterjazz.com” – one wonders if there aren’t simpler ways of getting that information across rather than using a HUGE poster to do it??

Love this one! The website generated by this code is http://www.qrazystuff.com/QRTag.php?id=QRS0281 Click the picture to visit!

In other words it could give you directions to an event, what time it’s on, who’s going to be there. Alternately I have seen them used in tourist situations to give you information about a landmark. There’s even a tattoo parlour in Arizona specialising in tattoos with people’s websites “QRd” on them.

Just quite what their future will be I’m not sure. OK it saves you typing a website address, but is it little more than a gimmick? Only time will tell. There’s one lesser known fact about QR codes. They can be “messed around with”. By careful coding this BBC logo was inserted inside the code for their own website.

A certain amount of the code can be ignored by the scanner. That means you can “customise” the code to a degree. I would like to end with one of our own codes, showing a certain well known person, advertising a new website. Enjoy! And if you don’t have a mobile that can read it – just click the picture – it’s MUCH easier!

(Oh and if you don’t have an Android, an iPhone or a Blackberry or even don’t really know what I’m talking about look at the second video below – it will amuse you)