QR Codes, here to stay?

By David McKelvey

Are you starting to see these blocky, three-eye diagrams around, perhaps even on some digital signage across our three campuses? They are called QR codes (short for Quick Response code) and are readable by smart phones using an (often free) application to decipher the enclosed data.

Mashable recently posted a story on these codes and their uses, and many others are starting to try them out in well, all kinds of places. At the lowest level, they can be in situ bookmarks, or since you can encode up to 4K of content into them, you can drop phone numbers, email addresses, or even an entire contact. (Don’t believe me, click and scan the QR code at the bottom of my personal site.)

Are they here to stay? Maybe. Like anything it will depend on the ability to utilize the technology (e.g. how many people have phones capable of reading a QR code) and the usefulness of the outcome to the phone owner in comparison to the other technologies like NFC.

My guess, they will persist for some time, in that they require no power, no chip, nothing but a bit of real estate. And there’s always some mystery — what will this QR code hold?