I’m sure some of you have seen these little boxes posted at various places no? They’re popping up more and more. I saw one posted on a poster at the mall and scanned it (out of curiosity). I was pleasantly surprised that a 25% Coupon popped up for some various store. A neat little marketing tool eh?
Well, just in case you’re not sure what I’m talking about, this little box is called a QR Code… It’s basically a barcode that can hold a ton of information. You can scan them with any cell phone barcode scanner (most new cellphones have these built in, or you can download one from the iTunes or Android Store).
So yeah, if you pull out your cell phone and scan this, it shows some of my info (I left out my mailing address intentionally, but you get the idea). Right now, these things are pretty hip…and geeky-fun. As a musician trying to promote a CD or a Facebook/Twitter Page, Website..etc… I will find uses for this. So far, the biggest use has been adding a smaller version of the QR Code as a signature on my emails [People can scan it and have whatever info I want to give them automatically added to their cellphones-without them having to enter it manually].
So a few options to do this… one is just to search your app store for “QR Generator“… Android has a free one called QR Droid and iTunes has a QR Maker (free version and some for $0.99).
Also, you don’t even need a smartphone or an app to do this. There’s quite a few websites that can generate these for you for free. One I think is SUPER EASY to use, is the TEC-IT website. Here’s the link…once you’re there, just fill out little form and it’ll generate the QR Code. Their site has some other goodies as well.
There’s other sites that do this too…just thought I’d pass along the info in case anyone wondered what this was all about.
Oh… on the back of new T-shirts I’m selling, I have a QR Code linking to my website. Silly, but fun.
