You may have noticed the little Aztec-ish-looking squares appearing on direct-mail pieces, affixed to products or being used as window clings at retail stores. They're called Quick Response (QR) codes. The codes were invented by Denso Wave in 1994 and introduced by parent company Toyota for tracking automobiles through the production process. Basically, a QR code is a two-dimensional machine-readable barcode that is easier and faster to read than traditional, single-dimension barcodes. Recently, these little codes - known for their small size and large information-storage capacity - have become readable by smart phones and popular for consumer marketing. Free QR-code reader apps for the Android and iPhone drove some 20.1 million mobile-phone owners to scan at least one code during the third quarter of 2011 (according to a study from Corn-Score). While not massive by today's Facebook- and Google-sized numbers, the use of QR codes is on a growth curve.
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