Tuesday, November 27, 2007

QR Codes

First off, an apology for not blogging for quite a while. I had to go through a lot of personal turmoils dealing with life, liberty and death and eventual rebirth, details of which, I will not disclose here. Needless to say I had to go through a lot of mental purgation to clear my thoughts and be lucid in my writing. Enough of that and on with the show.



I have been seeing this perplexing symbol shown on top a lot lately. I have seen them on shirts, price tags, gift items, posters and what have you. I paid it no attention since: (1) I don't have no idea what the heck they are; (2) I have no interest in decrypting (nor asking) what they are for. I completely dismissed it entirely until...

I bought me a new cell phone, sort of a reward and to upgrade to the new technologies and capabilities offered by the newer models. As with a new phone, we always go back to the basics of what our older phones can offer in terms of software and capabilities and duplicate it in our newer models and then exploit the newer capabilities and learn to use it pronto for fear of being labeled technologically ancient.

After doing what must be done to make sure the new "toy" conformed to what I usually do with a communications device, like texting, calling, MMS, data storage, Internet capability, etc., I proceeded to research more on the new capabilities it has to offer. Then I came across a free program from my phone manufacturer and decided to upload it. It said it was a barcode reader. Well, having an almost bare "toy", might as well give it a try. That's where I found out that it is indeed a barcode reader. Well a lot of good that will do me, but I noticed its "twin" icon. The familiar symbol I see everywhere on almost everything. Upon further research, I found out they are called QR Codes or Quick Response Codes. Developed in Japan and has been in circulation for several years now. Virtually unknown in the west, these 2D codes store data in two dimensions. How they do that is beyond me. As of yet, I have limited knowledge of the subject. But I promise myself that I will research further on this fascinating modern hieroglyph.

What's fun is that you can make your own QR codes like the one I generated above which is the link to this blogsite. I even tried it with colors and it still works. As I said earlier it has been quite popular in Japan for sometime now. And almost all cell units are equipped in reading and writing this codes which they can send through MMS messages. Well, I for one find QR Codes more interesting than the flat barcodes of old.


Ah the beauty of technology. Now grab your QR code equipped phones and scan this.