Aaron Patterson put a QR code into his RubyConf Brazil Presentation.

Aaron Patterson Shows the Way

At RubyConf Brazil last week, Aaron Patterson (@tenderlove) posted his contact information as a QR code as a slide in his presentation. How cool is that? I managed to snap a picture of it while it was on the screen and later downloaded a QR scan program for my iPhone to decode it.

QR codes are 2D bar codes that can easily be printed. You can encode URLs, phone numbers, SMS messages, or even just plain text in a QR code. Check out Wikipedia for more information.

To get started, grab a QR scanner for you phone. The AT&T scanner works pretty well and is available on a wide selection of phones.

QR Code Examples

To get you started, here’s a link to my twitter feed. If you are using the AT&T scanner, just start the program and aim the camera at the graphic below. After a moment, the scanner will automatically detect the QR code and offer to send you to the URL.

Next up, my contact information:

And finally, a little snippet of Ruby code. Does anybody recognized it?

Generating QR Codes

I used this generator site to generate the QR codes seen on this page.

Give it a try and have some fun!

(QR Code is registered trademark of DENSO WAVE INCORPORTATED)