QR codes helping people stay connected.

Ever been to a symposium, workshop or other gathering where you meet intersting people but afterwards have trouble remembering who they were, nevermind how to contact them.

A method to help people get and stay connected is by using QR codes to exchange contact information. At meetings, symposiums or shows where people with common interests gather, QR codes can be integrated into the name badges to facitiltate digital information exchange betweeen participants that can be used later to contact each other.

Examples

Sarasota Bay Watershed Symposium 

The Sarasota Watershed Symposium is an example of a local area gathering of interested parties for a specific topic or objective. In this case the preservation and protection of natural resources.

GODAE COSS-TT workshop 

GODAE (Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment) is a global organization providing global and regional ocean analysis and forecasting systems. For an International workshop GODAE used QR codes to make it easy to exchange contact information between the International participants of the workshop.

In both examples above the QR codes can be scanned by a mobile phone and the contact information saved for future reference and use.

How it is made

Once a design for the name badge has been made, provision is made for the placement of a QR code. The list of participants is then read and using graphics automation in combination with a QR code generator the name badges with QR code are generated at the same time. This method ensures there is never a mismatch between QR code content and the information on the badge.

The examples above were made using graphics automation systems from ODOA in combination with QR code technology from QR4

If you have any questions about QR code name tags or how best to implement QR codes on name badges, please contact us.

Paper cannot animate, play music or show video.

QR codes used as mechanism can, and if you combine this with dynamic QR codes you get an interactive QR code service. Adding onto the success of the URL redirector and vCard+ services, QR4 has launched the 'Video Presentation' QR code.

Interactive QR Code service

This service will launch a video of your choice that you can change at anytime and after the video has played will send the viewer to a  landing page of your choice in a managed and measured enviroment.

This is an ideal way to make paper interactive via a QR code. Scanning it will play your video or presentation and then go to a 'call to action' or 'contact' landing page. Another nifty service for marketing and advertising agencies using value added, effective and efficient QR code services.

QR Code Video Service

Want to know more about how you can make your printed matter interactive, then please contact us so we can show you how easy it is to have a managed and measured video presentation with your own 'call to action' landing page.

QR code symbols and font glyphs

Imagine being able to place your favorite QR codes in any document anywhere at the touch of a key on your keyboard.  Considering that printed QR codes have the most intrinsic value it nearly seems fundamental that these should be available for publishing at a key stroke.

Having your QR codes as a font means you can publish them in any document at any time and at any size. So whether you place your vCard QR code at the bottom of all your stationary, or as a designer put your Facebook like QR code on a giant poster, the same QR font set is perfectly suitable. This is because fonts are scalable to any size, from micro printing to massive billboards the font will always give a perfect sharp representation.

How QR code fonts work

A QR code is a two dimensional bar-code built with square blocks. Each block is made of four lines and then filled with a colour, preferably black. All the blocks of a QR code are placed as a 'glyph' into a 'font' and assigned to a specific letter of the alphabet. Consider placing your Twitter QR code under the letter 'T' and the Facebook QR code under the letter 'F'. In this way it is possible to place any QR code of any complexity under any key of your keyboard.

Even designer QR codes can be used as a font provided the design in monotone (one colour)

QR code font example

Provided is a free downloadable TrueType QR code alphabet font that instead of letters and numbers has a QR code that represents each letter and number (ASCII only for now). I don't think it idea to use to publish your next novel, but does show that QR codes are perfectly at home and usable as a font.

QR Code Alphabet Font PC compatible Mac compatible Linux compatible Usable with any word processor Universally scalable Download as TrueType Font File Download as Zip File

QR Code Font Service

QR4 offers the service to turn your QR code collection into a font to enable you to publish your QR codes anywhere and at anytime. For more information about QR code fonts and what they can do for you, please contact us.

How to put a QR code generator into your website or blog with one line of (cut and paste) HTML.

Just copy and paste the line of code below into any webpage of your site.

<iframe width="560" height="300" src="https//www.qr4.nl/igen.aspx?key=MYKEYVALUE" frameborder="0"></iframe>

Replace MYKEYVALUE with your *free key you can collect at the QR Code API Key Generator, and you are in business and should see a QR Code Generator that looks like this:

Personalizing and translating the QR code generator to meet your needs

With some simple instrictions you can configure the QR code generator to meet your website colours, fonts and even translate the text to the language of your choice. Complete information on customizing the look and feel as well as translation options can be found on the 'Iframe QR Code Generator' page.

What is QR code error recovery

Error recovery in QR codes allows pieces of information in the QR code to be damaged or missing and still have the ability to be read correctly. In a nutshell, it does this by using some very clever complex algorithms to place 'compressed duplicated' information in different places of the QR code, so if some data goes missing it can (try too) reconstruct the missing pieces using the remainder of the existing code.

There are four different settings available that can be chosen from before creating the QR code, Each one allows for a different amount of data loss.

7% Loss Recovery	15% Loss recovery	25% Loss Recovery	30% Loss Recovery

So why not always make QR codes that support 30% loss recovery?

The higher the damage recovery percentage, the more room is needed inside the QR code to encode and store the information vital to recovery. Below is a URL QR code of the same URL and created using the four different error compensation selections.

7% fault tolerant	15% fault tolerant	25% fault tolerant	30% fault tolerant

Scan any of the four codes and they will all take you the same URL. the left QR code is more sensitive to damage then right one. Lets put this to the test by taking the first and the last QR code and 'damaging' them proportionately in favor of the smaller QR code.

Bad QR code	QR code still readable

Clearly the 30% fault tolerant QR code on the right still scans even though a big piece of its data has been obscured, while the smaller code on the left no longer works at all, even though visually it has less data damage.

This same technique is used to create designer QR codes. Making QR codes pretty by damaging the data but at the same time keeping them scannable and working.

How to use QR code error recovery

When creating QR codes for example business cards, the chances of it getting dirty are rather low and you want the QR code as small as possible. Here a standard 7% error threshold is enough and very suitable for cards and other printed matter. However if are going to use QR codes outdoors, on cars and trucks or any place where data may be obscured by dirt then setting the error correction to a higher setting is advisable although chances are you will land up with a bigger image.

TIP: Do not believe everything people tell you about QR codes...ask them to prove it and show you!
Myth: 'you can tear a QR code in half and it can still be read'
Here's what a British 'technology consultant' had to say during an interview on business hub radio...

Should you have any questions or need professional advise QR code use and strategy, please contact us.