Notes From The Cave

With more people using mobile phones to access the Web, developers are trying to make it easier for users to access web sites without having to type in a long URL. Generally speaking, lots of typing is bad on a mobile. A solution for mobile phones that have automatic focus is QR bar codes. The idea is that a web site or printed advertisement displays the bar code, you point your phone’s camera at the bar code and the software scans the code and then opens up the web site.

This idea has been around for a while, but this evening is the first time that I actually encountered such a bar code in a situation that was useful. I learned about a to-do list manager for Android called Shuffle via its web site and after reading about it, I was interested enough to download it. My first reaction was to fire up Android Market on my G1, but then I saw the bar code, and as luck would have it I just installed a QR bar code scanner last night, so I fired up the program on my phone, pointed the camera at the bar code and it focused on the code, scanned it, and offered to open a web site, which I tapped OK. Android Market then started with the program displayed for me to download and install, in all it was a pretty easy process and will keep me on the lookout for more QR codes to use in the future.