QR Codes & Mobile Tagging Apps Emerge In U.S.

It's a link.  It's a bar code.  It's Pop Art.  It's a QR code!

And it's another mobile technology that caught fire in Japan years ago and is still finding its way to the States.

On the one hand, this is a very promising mobile technology, on the other, just another way to pass a link.


Content is king, as always.  If the website or other content you are whisked off to is useful, valuable, and/or entertaining, then you have something.

If your site is lame, and/or you are lame in referring customers to it and then dropping the ball, you will remain lame (just a more geeky lame).

1stBank in Colorado is one of the first movers on QR codes, providing reading material and puzzles for a virtual waiting room in the Denver International Airport. QR code posters inside the airport (photos courtesy of The Financial Brand) are headlined “Free Books,” “Free Crosswords,” and “Free Sudoku” and link to a selection of classic novels, crosswords and Sudoku.

Microsoft has its own, color version of QR codes, aimed particularly at mobile tagging applications, called Microsoft Tag.

You can create QR codes to your own content at sites like this- the technology is free of any license, easy to use, and offers some very interesting opportunities.

Here's a QR code to the ESRI Financial Services SIG, which is open to all, and deals with GIS, mapping and location services for banking and financial applications.