What are QR codes?

A QR code looks like the image on the right. It is a technology developed in Japan by a Toyota subsidiary in 1994 for tracking parts used in vehicle manufacturing. Today, it finds use in many areas such as commercial tracking purposes, information encapsulation and consumer mobile phone applications.

QR codes are becoming more and more pervasive with its appearance in magazines, web pages, t-shirts, billboards, business cards, to name just a few. Compared to the traditional barcode, QR codes can store much more information and of different types such as URLs, geo coordinates and text. With the ability to scan QR codes using a camera on a mobile phone or smartphones, it is much easier than needing to carry around a specific-purpose barcode scanner.

QR stands for "quick response" owing to the rapid speed of scanning and decoding the QR code.

QR codes can be featured on billboards along with other advertising information.

http://goo.gl/rlvt is a shortened URL for http://This1That1Whatever.com as further explained in my blog entry Google URL Shortener.