I've got a friend named Hans. ( He doesn't know it but he sort of acts as my de facto tech guru. ) I pick up new stuff pretty quickly but I think he's got his sensors out there a few miles ahead on the trail.
I'm taking my fast token scan through Facebook for the day to look over the adventures of all my compadres and run across this fairly ugly little square image he's just posted. There's about 11 comments on it and I've got to stare at it a bit to get just what significance this thing has.
I seem to have missed this so far because I don't carry a cell phone. I use my desktop for most all my communication and very rarely have need for a phone -- so I learn this stuff vicariously as the tech develops.
The image, quite simply, is an Asian bar code technology invented for the car industry several years ago which evolved and grew into advertising and pop culture.
It's called a QR Code. The QR stands for Quick Response. The really brilliant thing about it is that it's a two-dimensional symbology, meaning the code can carry information in 2 directions and carry significantly more information than the linear bar code we're familiar with.
Created in 1994 the Denso Wave technology would appear to be the new standard as the two-dimensionality allows 100 times more information to be carried. The code can be scanned with a smart phone, putting its use into an absolute stratospere of new applications, from pop art to advertising and even - somewhat bizarrely - the cemetary .
You'll begin to notice these popping up in magazine ads, billboards -- basically anywhere you could point a cell phone and anywhere someone is wanting to transfer a large chunk of information.
... Like we don't all have enough information already.
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