Introduction
Perhaps you’ve never heard of QR codes, and most certainly haven’t given them much thought, but they’re a fantastic innovation that is only now beginning to gain traction.
People rapidly recognized the value of barcodes when they were first introduced in the 1970s, and they have since become widespread. Every product in every supermarket is bar-coded, so all a checkout needs to do is scan it, and the item’s data is logged as a sale. This allows the checkout slip to detail what was purchased, as well as the purchasers to observe the daily product turnover and plan their re-stocking accordingly.
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When boarding an airplane, one’s luggage is bar tagged, allowing the item to be scanned by an automatic baggage sorter and assigned to the appropriate flight. A bar code is placed on one’s passport, a bracelet with a bar code is placed on one’s wrist if they are admitted to the hospital, and so on. Universal Product Code is one of the systems of Barcoding although everyone can design their own so that on one’s system that bar code is readable.
Bar codes have the disadvantage of being able to carry a limited amount of data (usually 20 characters) and requiring sophisticated readers to scan them.
Since around 1996, a new coding system known as the Quick Response Code (QR Code) has been in use. It is much more than a bar code, and its applications are only just getting started. It’s a two-dimensional matrix code that can store a lot of information. Furthermore, no special reader is required because any camera connected to a PC running the decoding software can quickly read the code.
One of the most beneficial recent uses is that the recognition software will automatically recognize a QR code, scan it and direct the device to a website where the data for that code is held. So, if you put a QR code that has been generated from a qr code creator on a billboard, the camera will recognize it and decode the data quickly, giving the reader all of the data (up to 7,000 characters) on the code.
A well-known example is guerrilla marketing by a well-known lingerie chain, which uses billboards with models and a QR code carefully placed. Many smartphones will immediately scan that code, go to the website, and view those models that do not have the code; also, while on the page, users may be tempted to browse.
Furthermore, the QR code generating software is now freely available from a qr code creator and being distributed. Businesses can employ unique product code identities for a variety of purposes, such as tracking the history of a product, who it was sold to, and when its validity or guarantee expires, among other things. In June of last year, 14 million QR codes were scanned in the United States, with more than half of those readers using a smartphone. The more one considers it, the more one realizes how useful a QR code generator may be.