QR Codes Explained: What’s with the Dots?
You’ve probably noticed strange hieroglyphs, like the one below, popping up on billboards, magazine ads and even t-shirts. It may look like a weird attempt at modern art, but it’s actually a two-dimensional bar code, known as a “quick response code,” or QR code.
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| QR Codes |
These blocky-looking images carry information much like bar codes do; the black and white pattern encodes up to several thousand characters. When you use your smartphone camera to scan the QR code example above — which I created in a couple seconds using a free online code generator — you’ll be taken directly to The Technology Lounge homepage. These easily scannable images are an ingenious way to link real-world objects and places to virtual spaces. A quick scan might reveal a link to a webpage, a phone number, an address or just a simple message. Print a QR code with your personal website and contact info on your business card, or print stickers with hidden QR messages and slap them up anywhere.
Once you’ve saved a QR code to your phone, you can email or text it to a friend. Others can even scan the code themselves from your phone’s screen. If your phone doesn’t already have QR code software, you’ll find several free apps on both the Android and iPhone app markets that will let you scan or create your own codes.
So, the next time you see one of those little boxes with the black and white squares, give it a quick scan. You never know what’s hidden inside that code!
