I recently got the new G1 phone from T-mobile. Though I’d rather not give t-mobile any credit for the phone, due to the phone’s high quality. I digress, the phone came with a cool little app that can scan bar codes with the built in camera. Though I have yet to use it for anything useful, it does impress my friends. Now I find that the the app supports QR codes which are like bar codes, as in they display information on a 2D surface which is machine readable. But QR codes have much more depth. You can encode text, URLs, phone numbers, and SMS (text messages). All you need to read them is a device with a camera and a decoder.

translation: This is an example of some text that you can see because you have a QR code reader.

I find this cool for a number of reasons. First off, it is kind of like a geek secret code. These QR codes can be but on an surface and only those among us with the right tools can decode them. Furthermore I’ll bet they could be hidden inside of designs, hidden from everyone except the electronic eye. From what I’ve read on QR codes, they are fairly big over in Japan where the cellular technology is able to thrive. Products can literally communicate with consumers, giving them extra information, web sites, phone numbers, even text messages.

Naturally I wanted to get in on this. So I found a QR-Code Generator from kaywa.com. I’ve been making random codes for the past few hours and pulling them right off my screen onto my phone. I’ll be back with more doodles later, I’d like to incorporate this into my business card.