Bar and QR Codes

Almost everyone is familiar with the Barcode, also known as the Universal Product Code (UPC). It was introduced in supermarkets for inventory control 1n 1974. Today, every product has at least the barcode attached for scanning. The image on the right is a QR, or Quick Response code. Both of these codes use OCR, or optical character recognition software to be scanned and read. But that is where the similarity ends. The barcode has space for 20 digits and is read by interpreting the width and space between the bars. But it can only read in a horizontal plane.The QR has a capacity of 7,089 characters and can read both in the horizontal and vertical plane! The three squares in the QR allow the code to be read in any position so that scanning is very fast, in milliseconds!
The QR code was developed in Japan by a subsidiary of Toyota, Denso Wave, for the inventory of automobile parts. Introduced in 2000, the QR caught on and soon smart phones had the ability to take a photo of the code, read it, and allow the consumer to go to a website, a magazine, download an mp3, or find a sale in a nearby store. The concept has been slow to catch on here but with the explosion of iphones, it will not take much longer to be a dominant code. There are code generators available on the web so try it out.
I was doing some exercises in imagination and it may be possible to get even more information in the code by using 3D technology or by using color. Interesting thought. Just another project! Click click...