

Russ Cox puts images into QR codes. Here's how - gghh
https://plus.google.com/116810148281701144465/posts/htgyJ4pMhna

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leephillips
This is a dupe of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3833850>, except this
points to a useless G+ page rather than to the guy's actual article.

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jameskilton
Link to the guy's actual page: <http://research.swtch.com/qart>

Really cool stuff!

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gghh
duckduckgo's Gabriel Weinberg isn't missing the beat:
<https://twitter.com/#!/duckduckgo/status/191926962120425473>

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kbaker
Nice work reusing the ECC data in QR codes to hold the image, unfortunately it
is still a bit noisy due to the limits of Reed-Solomon.

I use a similar technique (just the center part, though) on
<http://www.qrpixel.com> .

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leephillips
If you're going to do this, I would suggest configuring your webserver to
redirect the hashed URL to the canonical one. That will make it less likely
for people to bookmark and pass around the URL with the big hash, which is
there just to generate the picture.

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aidos
I'm fairly sure that the hash never actually makes it to the server side [1].
Of course, you could just use a querystring param instead.

[1] <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2396#section-4>

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leephillips
Oops, you're right, the server never sees that.

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dinedal
Sounds like I just found what I'm putting on my next business card!

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fpp
Unfortunately this only works if you put very little data into the QR code,
e.g. only an URL

Then the question is: Does it actually make sense to use an QR code for that
alone?

(for a visualization of that see: [http://www.mobileinc.co.uk/2012/01/which-
one-of-these-billbo...](http://www.mobileinc.co.uk/2012/01/which-one-of-these-
billboards-would-be-better-understood-by-the-average-consumer/) )

If you want to try it out yourself the best QR code online tool I know is
QRHacker.com

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gghh
_Does it actually make sense to use an QR code for that alone?_

for me a QR code is a bookmarking tool. I am at a restaurant with friends, I
like the place and want to keep a note. What's cooler / more practical: (a)
take out a blocknotes, a pencil, and write stuff (b) put the 10434th business
card in my wallet, which by now looks like a watermelon and I can barely put
it in my pocket (c) take my smartphone and "delicious" the URL encoded in the
QR code.

I believe they have a reason to be.

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fpp
What I meant was that if its only a short URL then it might be quicker to type
it in vs scanning the QR code - have a look at the example link then I guess
you know why.

If you put more info into the code then certainly scanning is the better way
but then you're limited with what graphics you can apply to the code.

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sopooneo
I hear you, but if there is an industry trend of showing QR codes instead of
urls, then so be it. No reason to do things two ways. Or at least, you might
as well put the QR code in _addition_ to the text URL if that is what
consumers expect.

However, I do feel that the QR code really is overkill for encoding a URL. At
some point, couldn't we just standardize on some easily OCR'd font in a some
sort of graphical frame and have software recognize/parse that?

