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"We do QR codes!"
Your vendor may say that but do you they really understand the technology? It seems that everybody (including us) has QR code capability these days. It helps to understand a bit more about what is actually possible with QR codes so that you can decide the best use for your project. Very simply QR codes are written to an open ISO standard that is not proprietary technology. Anyone can write apps that "play nicely" and that are compliant to the standard. The result: many many companies are doing cool things with QR codes. You SHOULD know what is out there. This blog is an attempt to distill things down for a quick 2 minute read.
Very simply - a small app (there are many!) is used to generate the code. It can be any color as long as the scanner (usually a cel phone camera) can see it against the background. Mostly commonly they are in black although we are seeing more and more codes done in color and with corporate logos embedded in the code to dress it up a bit. The code mostly commonly will contain a URL that a company wants to promote. This works well when you have purpose built a mobile website that it nice to read in your smart phone. A great use of this technology I saw last week was a real estate agency that built a little mobile site that will let you key in what you are looking for and it will show you houses in the area that are for sale etc.
They sky is the limit - since the function is so simple - you can really do almost anything. We have also seen QR codes that take you directly to the Apple app store to purchase a down loadable application - no more searching!
We have partnered with a firm that makes a QR code generator that includes a special "redirect" that allows your promotion to be measured and tracked. This is all something that a large company with a go-to IT department could do on their own but for the small business owner - this tool can deliver very sophisticated metrics quickly and easily.
For those with more than 2 minutes....here is a great article in Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code/
Sean
http://deltagraphics.com/
