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Wouldn’t it be nice if you could make a physical object in the real world, like your car door, a street pole, your office front door, your product or your business card clickable so that it opens a link on the web when you click it?

Well – now you can – with mobile phone technology and these:

See below / full article for more.

What …
… you are looking at is a QR barcode … more on the technology here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code

These barcodes can be printed, projected on screens and televisions or attached to anything in real life you would want to make clickable to a mobile phone. A mobile phone user needs simply to walk past, hover his phone camera over it and his phone browser will open the link contained in it. It’s true, I kid you not! No really! It will even make it clickable from a distance, if you print the barcode big enough

But why?
Why not just print a http://www.somesite.com link on your delivery truck? Well that one is easy – what if you want to link to a specific discussion or content on a website that has a long URL? Something like http://www.somesite.com/articles/may2010/qrcodes/? Who would remember that or want to type that into his cellphone?

Besides – you want to interact with your customer now – not when they get home and they are at a computer, if they then actually remember your link or remember to visit your site. People don’t want to type addresses in browsers. They want to click.

So how does sticking this barcode on your business card or product packaging make it clickable.
Enter the modern cellular phone. Modern cellular phones have cameras. Modern phones are now coming out with 2D barcode scanners as standard.  Here comes the magic: You hover the phone camera over the barcode, it scans the barcode and then opens the link in your phone’s browser. Fact. Done!

QR stands for “Quick Response” so it is almost effortless to “click” that lamppost

Including QR code scanner software in new phones by default (as is the case) is also going to quickly push the adoption of 2D barcodes becoming part of mainstream society. Should your existing phone not have a 2D scanner, no problem, many free 2D scanners, that integrate with your phone’s camera, are available for free. I personally like http://www.i-nigma.com‘s solution.  Simply point your mobile phone browser to http://www.i-nigma.mobi to detect your phone and install i-nigma. I like i-nigma because it scans all formats of 2D barcodes, not just QR codes, asks permission to connect, is easy to use and keeps a history of scanned items. Ask the great google if i-nigma doesn’t suit you. Come on, try it! Install that barcode scanner on your phone and scan the 2D barcode above (effectively clicking it with your phone) right of your screen now!

Creating QR must be a pain?
No!  Just ask google again for QR code generators Easy.

There’s more!
QR barcodes can also do more when scanned with a phone  than just open a website in the browser. Exchange of information is just not limited to text being displayed on the phone, but it could open a URL, download standard contact information to the phone and generate a pre-filled SMS message to you (the business / the owner of the QR code) on the user’s phone and they just have to hit send.

Can you see it?
2D barcodes have been all the rage for quite a while in Japan. With Western adoption taking place it is just a matter of time until they become as common as the barcode on the baked beans being scanned at the local supermarket.

QR barcode on a business entrance that can be scanned from the street. You are effectively clicking their building with your phone and then browsing their website.

Imagine scanning that loaf of bread to get to a product detail website with nutritional information. Imagine scanning a barcode at the entrance to a mall to get walking directions in text (so you won’t need an internet connection) to the store. Imagine scanning that code on the for sale sign on a house to get the text info onto your phone to peruse later … imagine!
Can you imagine?

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