Amid the quandry about good uses for QR codes comes two new stories - one quite clever and one blantantly bizarre.
A supermarket chain took advantage of several characteristics of life in Korea to use QR codes to more than double their sales. Cleverly, they replicated the supermarkets' shelves on subway platforms so that commuters can shop with their smartphones and have their groceries delivered when they arrive at home.
http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/koreas-tesco-reinvents-grocery-shopping-with-qr-code-stores-20110628/
On the other end of the scale and demonstrating the potential to be a future Darwin Award candidate, a man has a QR code tattooed on his chest that links to a whiskey company's Facebook page. There are so many things wrong with this, we can't even begin to cover them. After all, how can you focus the smartphone when the QR code's on your chest?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20078153-71/man-has-qr-code-tattooed-onto-chest-really/
The use of QR codes by the supermarket points to one of the better uses of QR codes - allowing the user to collect and use lots of information. For many smartphone users, scanning a single QR code to see a website is more trouble than it's worth. But, being able to scan lots of QR codes to get something done makes the effort worthwhile.
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