Who cares about QR Codes?

ByDon

By now you’ve probably seen one of those odd-looking white squares with a bunch of smaller square dots that make up a random pattern inside—that’s a QR code. QR stands for “Quick Response,” and a QR code is a form of barcode, just like on the packaging of nearly everything you buy.

Usually QR codes are used to store Web links—URLs—so an ad can display just the QR code instead an unwieldy and hard-to-type web address. But QR codes aren’t just for ads. They’ve appeared on business cards, in magazines and books, on coins and bills, and even on tombstones—any place it would be nice to help someone load a Web link into a smartphone but where there isn’t enough room for a URL or in situations where viewers won’t remember the URL later. And the links? They can display anything that can appear on the Web: text, photos, videos, games, and more.

Only one built-in iPhone app can scan QR codes—the Wallet app in iOS 9—but it can scan only QR codes that are associated with Wallet passes, things like airline boarding passes, concert tickets, and iTunes gift cards. For QR codes that encode any other sort of data, Wallet shows an error. It would be nice if Apple would add general QR scanning capabilities to Wallet or the Camera app, but until that happens, you’ll need another app.
There are numerous QR code scanning apps in the App Store, but if you need a recommendation, give TapMedia’s QR Reader for iPhone a try. It’s free with ads (remove them with a $1.99 in-app purchase), scans both QR codes and traditional barcodes on most commercial products, and displays the associated information within the app. It can even help you create your own QR codes.

To use a QR code scanner, launch the app, allow it to access the camera when it asks, and then point it at the QR code. Good apps will scan nearly instantly, but if not, move the camera so the QR code is centered between the guides. If even that doesn’t work, move forward or back so the camera can focus on the centered code.

Once the code has been scanned, the app will usually bring up an in-app Web browser to display whatever was encoded. For certain kinds of data, like books or grocery items, the app may go right to Amazon or a price comparison site. Good apps will also keep a record of sites you’ve scanned, so you can go back to them later, even if you can no longer scan the QR code.

So download a QR code scanning app and keep an eye out for QR codes. Once you start looking, you’ll find them everywhere—it’s a modern-day treasure hunt!

Similar Posts

  • Black History Month – Thurgood Marshall

    Way before Barack Obama broke the color barrier to become president of the USA, Thurgood Marshall broke that barrier for another of the most powerful and important positions in the country, that of Supreme Court Justice. After graduating from high school with honors he applied to the University of Maryland law school where he was not accepted because he was black. Instead, he went to Howard University and received his law degree in 1933.

    Before being appointed Supreme Court Justice, he had a stellar career from 1934 to 1961 as a lawyer for the NAACP where he won landmark civil rights cases. Beginning in 1940, Marshall won 29 of 323 US Supreme Court cases. One of his first big cases was Smith vs. Allwrite in 1944 which overthrew the South’s “White Primary”. The White Primary was a practice of excluding African Americans from the Democratic Party. It was most common in a state where that party controlled the state government.

    In 1954 Marshall achieved a landmark victory with the case of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka. This Supreme Court decision demolished the legal basis for segregation in the USA. It also made state-enforced racial segregation in public schools invalid.

    In 1961 he was appointed the the US Court of Appeals by President Kennedy. He was the first African American on the Court of Appeals and went on to be appointed to the Second Court of Appeals. President Johnson made him the Solicitor General in 1965 and later in 1967 President Johnson nominated him for the Supreme Court.

    On the Supreme Court he was a steadfast supporter of positive gender and racial action policies and in his 24 years on the court he became a vocal liberal on a conservative-dominated court. He was an ardent supporter of Constitutional protection of individual rights, in particular the rights of criminal suspect versus the government. Marshall’s backing of Affirmative Action led to his strong dissent in the Regents of the University of California vs. Blake in 1978. Justice William Brennan was Marshall’s most reliable confederate who voted with him against the death penalty.

    Citing poor health, Thurgood Marshall stepped down from the court in 1991 and remained a vocal critic of the court until his death in 1993 at the age of 84.

  • 20 Years of Service.

    !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4613.jpg!

    Small Dog Electronics has been your local Apple Specialist for 20 years! Not only do we sell the latest Apple products and have some of the most knowledgeable staff around, we offer some of the best *one on one training* and *consulting* services around. Should Santa put something under the tree this year that your just not sure about how you can use it, do not worry, we have got your back and it doesn’t matter where the product came from. Stop into any of our retail stores or give us a call and we will get you getting the most out of your Apple products.

    “!http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4612.jpg!”:http://www.smalldog.com/macthehalls

    Not only do we have great services to help you get the most out of your Apple product, but we have some great deals going on in all of our retail stores *December 9th through the 15th*! Visit any of our retail stores in Rutland, Waitsfield or South Burlington or visit “www.smalldog.com/macthehalls”:http://www.smalldog.com/macthehalls for these deals or more information about what Small Dog services might benefit you.

  • Airmail for iPhone

    As you may know, I have been using the Airmail mail client for some time and am a big fan of this alternative…