Ever see one of these and wondered what the hell it is?

It’s a QR Code! (One of the more common two-dimensional (or matrix) barcode types. Benefits of the format include fast decoding speed, holds more data than traditional barcodes, and error correction.)

While a variety of software packages exist for generating QR codes, one of the easiest was to generate one is through the Google Charts API.

The QR code at the top of this post is generated using just that, via the following URL:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=100x100&cht=qr&chl=http://mark.biek.org/blog&chld=L|1&choe=UTF-8

You can see that the information being encoded is simply a link to this blog (http://mark.biek.org/blog).

QR Codes support encoding of digits 0-9, letters A-Z, and the characters space $ % * + - . / :

There are also different versions of the QR Code standard ranging from 1-40. Each increasing level allows for more data to be encoded but also limits which devices will be able to decode it. Levels 1-4 are the most commonly supported, especially on mobile devices. The Google Charts API documentation has a nice table of how many characters are allowed at each version for the different levels of error correction.

For example, here’s the breakdown for Version 4:

• EC level L (allows 7% data loss) holds 187 digits or 114 Alphanumeric characters.
• EC level M (allows 15% data loss) holds 149 digits or 90 Alphanumeric characters.
• EC level Q (allows 25% data loss) holds 111 digits or 67 Alphanumeric characters.
• EC level H (allows 30% data loss) holds 82 digits or 50 Alphanumeric characters.

It's worth mentioning that the Google Charts API will pick the version for you, based on the amount of data you're encoding so all you have to worry about specifying is pixel size and error correction level.

There are interesting possibilities for using QR Codes (like these Calvin Klein billboards) but, unfortunately, the last-mile is a bit of a problem.

There are barcode scanning programs for most mobile phones (lots of them for iPhone and Android) but you are reliant entirely on the scanning program for what happens when the QR Code is scanned. Double-unfortunately, there are no real standards yet for handling encoded data.

What little, unofficial, standardization of encoded data is described in this wiki article entitled BarcodeContents.

Most/many scanners handle support for the obvious things like http://, mailto:, and even sms:, but there’s no real guarentee. Plus, since it’s not built into the device (requiring a download from whichever App store you’re using), the person with the phone has to take some additional steps to be able to do anything.

The end result is that you can't control how smooth the end-user experience is, although it will definitely be neat for the people who can use it successfully.