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From: "J. P. Gilliver (John)" 
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Subject: Re: General question about QR code scanning
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2017 16:53:38 +0000
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In message , 
james{at}nospam.com writes:
>On Sat, 18 Nov 2017 21:03:51 -0500, Paul  wrote:
>
>>>>
>>> In practice, are QR codes - at least on products, in magazine articles,
>>> and the like - used for anything _other_ than URLs? I ask because I'm
>>> off and on looking for something that will interpret them for my blind
>>> friends (might well be an iPhone app.), but if all they normally contain
>>> are URLs, I doubt they'd be that useful. (In that most things that have
>>> them also have the URL printed nearby anyway, and OCR can do that for my
>>> friends anyway - and URLs probably aren't much use to them anyway, given
>>> the poor design [for VH/VI folk] of most web pages.)
>
>I dont think they are all for URLs. I've seem them used at fast food
>reataurants in place of coupons. Sometimes they are used as "price
tags"
>on items in stores (in place of UPC bars).

(By UPC bars, do you mean an ordinary barcode?)

> I have seen them at events,
>for example if I am at the State Fair, if I have a smartphone, I can
>scan one of them and my phone will give me the fair's schedule. (this
>use probably is a URL). Another one I saw was a radio station contest
>poster that said scan this QR code to enter the contest. They are

I'd be most surprised if that isn't just a URL too.

>everywhere now. Magazines use them to (I guess) identify the name month
>and year of the magazine.

Like the coupon use, I'd have thought an ordinary barcode would do for 
that.

> I've even seen them on billboards now. I
>suppose you're supposed to photograph the billboard... ???
>
I bet those are URLs too.
>
>One other thing I wonder about, wont they ever run out of codes? There
>are only so many ways to modify those dots before they run out of
>them... And considering how often they are being used, there has to be a
>point in time when they simply run out....

I don't think they're allocated from a list, in the way grocery barcodes 
(I think) are: I think they actually are coded information (such as a 
URL).
>
>I dont remember what website I saw this, but someone made a QR code that
>looked like a horse's head in the middle, with the usual large corner
>squares. I dont know if it would actually scan, or was just someone

I think the error-correcting in them does allow quite a lot to be 
obscured by a logo or similar. Or do you mean they made it so the little 
square dots made the horse?

>being creative, but it made me wonder if they could be made as artwork
>pertaining to their use. For example, can  the radio station contest
>make the QR code look like a radio, or can the fast food place make the
>QR look like a hamburger, or their logo?

I think you _do_ mean the actual dot pattern made the pictures!

Not quite the same, but I have seen them hand-assembled out of mosaic 
tiles: there is a craft shop (it's in the Old High Street, Folkestone, 
Kent, England) that sells assorted materials, including those for making 
your own mosaics, and I have noticed that several of its neighbours (and 
I think the shop itself) have tiles - I assume made by the shop owner - 
on their front that are clearly QR codes.
>
>I recall when they first started using them QR codes (not too many years
>ago), and I began seeing them everywhere and had no idea why they were
>putting those funny looking boxes on stuff. Since I did not know what
>they were called, I tried to google them, with no results, (since I did
>not know what to search for). I finally used google/images and searched
>for barcodes and found a QR code and then I was able to search for that.
>I always wonder how average people are supposed to know about this
>stuff, unless they are tech savvy.
>
Yes, there is definitely a gimmick aspect to them! It's mainly 
smartphones that this aspect is aimed at, I think, though they do have 
serious applications in industry, where the necessary precision of 
scanner placement can be better controlled.
-- 
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar{at}T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

.... the greatest musical festival in the world that doesn't involve mud.
- Eddie Mair, RT 2014/8/16-22
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