Following Duane‘s lead, I decided to go ahead and generate a QR code for haggaret.com using the link that Duane referenced in his post. Will it ever get used? I can’t imagine what for so probably not, but there it is anyways. I think the first time I heard about these things was from Chris Foo, who was talking about using them for HungryTable. He was thinking you’d have one for each restaurant that would be visible in the window or whatever and it would link back to the reviews on HungryTable. That way you’d be able to scan it with your phone, and then quickly check out the reviews before deciding if you want to go inside or not – a cool idea if you ask me.
That’s really neat! At P&G, we’re just starting to incorporate these 2-D barcodes (I don’t know if they’re actually QR codes or something different, but they look a lot like that one) on all our packaging. They’ll be quite small and not really noticeable to anyone, but we’ll have scanners on the line to read them – all to make sure we have the right packaging on the lines. Anyway, many of our competitors already use them. You can see them on Dove products, some cereal boxes, hand-dish soap bottles or all kinds, some shampoo bottles… Cool!
I’ve also noticed that Canada Post has QR on their bulk letter-sized mailings too.
Btw, I’ve noticed several other trends that started in Japan and then slowly made their way here: text messaging, 3G, QR, VOD.
Now, if we could only buy beer from vending machines!