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| QR Code to quickly access my blog. |
QR (Quick Response) Codes were invented in Japan in order to store more information than possible with a normal bar code in order to make people's work at cash registers simpler (see: http://www.qrcode.com/en/history/ for more information on the history of QR Codes). However, they have only become really popular in the past couple of years. This increase in usage is due to the fact that smartphones have become the most popular type of cell phone for users to purchase. And so armed with this advance gadget people are able to do things they would never have been able to do with their older non-smart cell phones by downloading apps to bring new features to their device. And one type of app that can be download is a QR Scanner that allows a person to scan in a QR Code using their smartphone's camera in order to quickly access material.
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| QR Code on the side of a building. |
But that brings us to the question of what the person is scanning in, as QR Codes can basically be made to do anything. And so one simple addition that people should make to promote the usage of their QR Code is to include a short caption under their QR Code like I did for the first image on this post to let people know what it is for. Because as you can plainly see from the next image is that some people do not include any kind of caption or image customization to give the people who are looking at them any idea of what they are for. And this is extremely important to do when you have a whole bunch of QR Codes next to each other as they are impossible to decipher by look alone. And so the above QR Codes on the side of the building could be for any number of things ranging from directions to the nearest public parking lot to how much it costs to rent a room there. This leads to them not being used as nobody wants to waste their time trying out each one to see if any deals with what they are interested in gaining knowledge about. And thus the creation of your QR Codes was useless as nobody scanned any of them into their smartphone even though they might contain information that a ton of people would find very handy to have on hand.
Hi Luke,
ReplyDeleteNice to meet you today. You should not hot link to other websites when writing your blog. It is very possible that in the future their server will go down and you will be stuck with a bunch of dead images. Or even more maliciously, they can replace the original image with something else, perhaps even an obscene or disgusting image. Your point about adding a caption is relevant and should be taken into consideration for some uses of QR codes. However, sometimes it is better to leave off the caption because it makes the QR code more "mysterious" and likely to pique someone's interest.
Tim K
Thanks for the comment Tim.
DeleteIn the future I'll be downloading copies of images from other people's site to upload to mine so that I don't get another hot linking thief message which should hopefully be fixed now.