QR Code Facts You May Not Know About

So, we all know (by now) that the QR Code wave started in Japan and it took the rest of the world more than a decade to surf the wave. But here are some interesting facts that you may not know about the QR Code technology. You may or may not find it informative or relevant to your everyday life but you can most definitely impress some friends. 

QR Codes were created by Tokyo-based Toyota. Yes, the very same Toyota that makes cars. More accurately, QR Codes were created by a subsidiary of Toyota and that is where the name Denso Wave comes in. The technology was initially created to identify car engines. Because of how quickly it can be scanned and how useful it others, why waste it on just car engines?

Yes, all you need is your phone and a reliable QR Code reader. No? Well, maybe. You see, most of the time (if it is an advertisement or commercial), the QR Code will resolve to an online link. For example, a preview of a new movie, a mobile website for a product that they are promoting, an image that a company wants you to download to your phone, etc. So, with that said, it is obvious that the other thing that we may need to have is…unlimited internet access on our phones. 

The technology is free of ANY license. That is amazing news for developers and I am wondering why wasn’t a license required. Anyway, good news for all, then. It is said that QR Code was designed as an ISO standard with Denso Wave holding the patent rights. The company’s, up to the point of this article, not exercized their rights. 

QR Code is not as dead as some people think it is. You CAN customize it, pretty it up, color it and round up the squares without altering the information that the code contained. That is what some companies are doing, trying to give their own QR Code a more appealing look. Which is not a bad thing for advertisements and commercial. 

What can a QR Code hold. The list is quite long really but the capacity of a QR Code can contain a maximum number of 7,089 characters in numerical form. If the content is alphanumeric, the QR Code can hold up to approximately 4,200 characters. Binary-wise, nearly three thousand bytes. As mentioned, in most cases, people make use of QR Codes to ‘link’ online content up but lest you don’t know, you can encode complete sentences or even your business card in the code so that people can scan it and download the ‘business card’ onto their phone without having to manually do it.