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Today's episode is called "Help Me Understand QR Codes". Now you've probably started to
see things like these on product packaging and marketing materials. Now these are QR
codes. The idea behind them is that a user can scan them with a smartphone or let's say
a tablet and it will give them more information about the product. For example if you saw
a box of Cherrios in the grocery store and it had this code on it and you scanned it,
it would take you to probably a website for cherrios with more information.
Here's some quick facts about QR Codes
QR Stands for Quick Response Invented by Toyota in 1994
More popular than Godzilla in Japan
What QR Codes Represent
- Text (a sentence or more) - Web Page Address
- Phone Number - SMS Text Message
- Geocache Location - Contact
- Appointment/Event
The sky is really the limit on what QR codes can be used for. They can be put on many different
types of marketing materials like paper, stickers, signs, tshirts, vehicle graphics and really
a lot more. Here are some real world examples of QR codes in action.
- Realtors are using QR codes in the newspaper to point customers directly to their listings
- Home Depot puts QR codes on trees to give customers instant access to care and planting
information
It's really easy to create a QR code using some of the freely available tools today.
Here I'll show you how to create one.
Ok to generate a code, you want to open a browser window and go to this website address
(http://qrcode.kaywa.com). This is one of the many free QR code generators out there.
Now, this one's going to allow us to do a couple of different things. It will generate
URLs, text, phone numbers, and SMS QR codes. So I'm going to type in http://www.solutionsunion.com/qr.html
and click generate and it's going to generate the code for me. There it is. Now I can take
this and put this pretty much anywhere. And that's all there is to it.
QR codes only make sense if customers know how to use them. So here I'm going to show
you to install a QR code reader and how to scan a QR code using your smartphone.
Ok, so to be able to scan in QR codes what the customer will need is they're going to
need a QR reader it's called. Now most of the time that will be on a smartphone or a
tablet of some kind something like that. What we need to do is install a QR reader on this
phone. So what I'm going to do is click on the market icon down here. Now Blackberry
and Apple also have similar things called maybe the app store, something like that.
But we're going to go to that area and we're going to search for an app with the name something
like QR code reader which is what I have here for the first one, QR code reader. I'm going
to click that and it's going to return to me all the programs or apps that available
for QR code reader. I'm going to try this first one called QR droid. I'm going to click
the install or free button here. I'm going to accept permissions, ok. Now what it's doing
is installing it currently while we wait here. You can see the little icon there. It says
it successfully installed it. So what I'm going to do is go back to my home screen here
and then I'm going to start up this app by clicking this button here, which will take
me to my, all my apps all the apps on this phone. Now here's the QR droid app, so let's
get that started and you can see it's got a couple of different options. On the first
area on the top here, these six or eight icons, it says generate a QR code, so we can actually
use this to generate which is kind of interesting. There's some different options there. But
what I'm really looking for is this decode from which is down here at the bottom. You
can see it says decode from save image here, camera here, image url or history. So what
we are going to do next is we are going to try and grab a QR code and use the camera
to decode it.
Ok so we've got a QR code that's pretty much ready to go here. So what I'm going to do
is bring the smartphone in here so that I can show you how this is going to work when
we scan this. So here's the smartphone right now and what I'm going to do is I'm going
to go ahead and click on the camera icon here. And you can see what it did is it essentially
is just showing on the screen what the camera is looking at.
So I'm going to point it at the QR code and there it took a picture right away and it
captured it. And what it's telling us is that QR code translated into a web address here.
You can see it. SolutionsUnion.com/qr.html. Now there's a couple things we can do with
this: Open, email, SMS, copy or share. I'm going to just click open and it's going to
open that web page for us. And there it is right there. And it says, Congratulations,
you've just scanned your first QR code. So perfect that's how it works.
Well, I hope I've helped you understand QR codes. If you have any questions about QR
codes or you've seen any really good examples about QR code usage, let me know in the comments.
And if you have any ideas for future help me understand episodes, send me an email.