Friday, October 26, 2007

Your mobile phone as QR-Code reader



Hello, if you liked this post, please consider subscribing my RSS news feed. Thanks.

QR-Codes, the popular Japanese 2D bar code technology, can now be used on mobile phones. For those of you who don't know what a QR-code is, I'll give you a little example:
qrcode
This strange-looking figure is in fact a complex storage system that allows to encode data in a picture. In this example, reading this QR-code will give you access to this blog. How? Simple, the disposition of these black dots on the diagram can be scanned and translated to text, which in this case, translates to a URL: http://tonyvirtual.blogspot.com
This kind of technology is quite common in Japan and it can be seen in the manufacturing of cars (to allow robots to identify the parts that need to be assembled), in supermarkets (to allow people to read more information on the products they want to buy) or in museums (to allow visitors to have access to more information on an exposition).
This technology is now available for mobile phones and it's incredibly fast and easy to use. I tested with my Nokia N80 and it worked perfectly.
If you want to install a QR-code reader on your cellphone, check this site (make sure your cellphone is supported, remember this only works for camera-enabled phones)
Once you've installed the software on your phone, test it with this code I have here:
qrcode
I can only say it's a funny joke :-)
Are you wondering how I created the QR-codes for this post? Easy, there are a lot of QR-code generators available here, here, here and here.
Enjoy!
UPDATE: it has come to my attention that RSS readers may not be able to see the pictures on this post (depending on the RSS reader that you're using), so just in case, use the direct link.

5 comments:

Célia Jordão Alves said...

As coisas que eu aprendo com este rapaz...

Anonymous said...

You misspelled Kangaroo...

António Lopes said...

So I guess you read the joke, then :-)
Thanks for the correction

Anonymous said...

Kangaroo not Cangurus

Marcus said...

http://yeblon.com/vcard-on-business-card-with-qr-code - Great way to share your contact card as a QR Code