QR code or Quick response code is a two dimensional code which was first designed by a subsidiary company of Toyota Motors in 1994. I’m sure code or picture like the bottom are a familiar sign these days. I see them almost everywhere.

The code is comprised of black modules in square pattern on a white background. The QR code was first limited to its usage in automobile industry but later it became popular and was widely used. The QR code contains information encoded in four different forms namely numeric, alphanumeric, and binary and kanji.

Better than barcode

The merit of this code that makes it different from other barcodes is its fast readability and capacity to store large information. The amount of data which can be stored in a QR code varies with the form of data. That is way it is better than barcode.

If the data is numeric, one can store as much as 7089 characters; if the data is Alphanumeric i.e. A-Z and 0-9 then maximum of 4296 characters can be stored. In binary characters i.e. fractions, square and square root approximately 2953 characters can be stored and finally in Kanji maximum of 1817 characters can be stored. Kanji is a blend of Chinese characters ‘hanzi’ with modern Japanese katakana.

QR code as business cards

Initially, it was used just by Automobile industry to track parts during the manufacturing process. However, nowadays due to its growing importance it is being used in other processes such as marketing, networking and advertising.

Following are some of important uses of QR codes for your online presence:-

1. Create a business card in QR code format and encode all you contact information and your website details. As soon as one scans your QR code through their cell phone you will be automatically added as a contact.

2. Encode all the necessary details of a particular product as to features, price, availability etc into a QR code. It will save you space and as soon as a person scans that QR code he will come to know about all the details of the product.

3. Increase your sales by printing a discount coupon in any advertising media and any Iphone or android phone users can scan the discount coupon and available discount offer.

QR Code Generators

To make a QR code is not a difficult job. I made the above QR code which contains the url of this blog via http://goqr.me/ You can generate you own QR code by following few simple steps:-

1. Select from a variety of QR code generators that are freely available but be sure to select the generator which is compatible with most of the QR code readers.

2. After selecting the QR code generator you should create or customize the code to suit your needs. Attach all the required information related to your work details, contact details and product details and link them to URL.

3. The last and the most important step is to check your own QR code to see that whether it works or not.

QR codes can be decoded using different QR code readers namely kawya, quickmark for PCs, both windows and Mac. Nowadays, Apple iphone, Blackberry smart phones and many android phones with a camera also enables you to decode QR codes.