On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 12:46 PM, Aaron Zirbes <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Dan, > Yep, almost all QR codes these days are encoded URLs. > -- > Aaron Almost - but we're doing something a little different with ours. The College of Science and Engineering produced a series of posters that promoted our majors, with the idea that faculty would staff booths and discuss their departments and majors with students. The idea of QR codes came up, but like it has been mentioned here, I thought it was odd to produce a code that just contained a ULR when a vanity URL would be easier to produce and remember. So instead, I set up the QR code to contain contact information for the department/major being visited as an encoded Vcard. I included department name, email, web and mailing address, so if the visitors wanted a take-away, they could scan the code and put the department info in their phone for later reference. Size of the QR graphic was important - I tested our using my first-generation iPhone, which has a (relatively) poor quality camera. Given that students might be several feet away from the poster, with potentially no ability to zoom, the image needed to be large (8" sounds about right) and sufficient white space needed to be around the image so as to not confuse the camera. On a related note, we're currently looking into using digital signage/displays for our new building and I've been exploring best practices for content and presentation. I've seen some digital signs that use QR codes and it always makes laugh. Because the majority of displays around campus are mounted at least 7-9 feet high, the size of the code graphic isn't large enough to make phone capture even possible. And usually in those cases, they are acting as a Web link, so a vanity URL would have been a better way to go. I think there are more useful ways to use QR codes than URLs. For example, I recently put a QR code on my personal business card. It contains my Vcard info, so contacts can scan it to capture my contact info (provided they have the right reader) Pete -- Peter Riemenschneider Electronic Communications Manager College of Science and Engineering University of Minnesota Phone: 612-624-2929 [log in to unmask] U of M Student Dashboard: For Web, for mobile, for you. http://dashboard.umn.edu