
You are seriously going to see the explosion of these things over the next couple of Years - they are called QR codes and they are coming to an advertisement near you!
QR Codes are a really funky way for Mobile Phone users to quickly get information (such as a web page address) into their mobile phone from a physical medium i.e a print advertisment, business card or banner advert (such as in a bus shelter).
How does this work?
A mobile phone user takes a picture of your QR Code (let's say that you've placed in your Advertisement) using their phone camera. The mobile phone recognises this as a QR Code and translates it into a piece of information (i.e a web address like: http://www.tmdesigns.com.au/).
Example of how this could work
Let's say Seaworld (a tourism attraction on the Gold Coast), runs advertisments in a number of bus shelters along the Gold Coast Highway. In this advertisement they could offer a discount of say $10. To redeem this voucher the mobile phone user has to "scan" the QR Code using their camera phone.
Now let's say Seaworld's Agency is really clever ... and they recommend that Seaworld has different QR Codes for each bus shelter. From this, Seaworld could quickly track which bus shelters are working the best! (Tracking is tops!).
A bit of history
Originally developed in 1994 for use with tracking parts in vehicle manufacturing it has now expanded and is becoming a popular method of inputing information into a Mobile Phone. You can think of a QR Code as a barcode. Wiki has a tonne of information on this here.
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