You may have noticed on magazine advertisements, or business cards and product labels, in fact in many places, a small square printed object like the one to the right. The object is a Quick Response or QR code. They are used to take a piece of information from a transitory media and put it in to your cell phone. They have been in use for years in Japan and Asia and are showing up all over the place in the US.
While they sort of look like a bar code they are much more useful. They can store (and digitally present) much more data, including URL links, Geo coordinates, and text. The other key feature of QR Codes is that instead of requiring a chunky hand-held scanner to scan them, many modern cell phones can scan them.
Ok, how do I use them? The uses are almost unlimited. A common use would be to print on QR code on your product advertising and your product labels. The code could take the person scanning your QR code directly to your on-line store or the specific product in your store. One more click and they could be buying the product. A art opening brochure or flyer could include QR codes that link to the images in the on-line gallery. The next time you get your business card printed it should have a QR code that links to your blog, facebook page or contact information on the web. I am sure you can think of more fun and original ways to use them to get people to visit your web site.
How do I make one? Well its easy. There are lots of on-line resources to turn almost anything into a QR code. Here is one http://www.qrstuff.com/. I install software on most of my web sites that as makes your URL human readable and as a by product creates a QR code for the URL. Just download the QR code's PNG file and place in your printed material and your are done. The QR code on this page links back to this article. Try it.
The Wikipedia page on QR Codes
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