codes

Deciding on a tattoo pretty much means you're stuck with an image for life. To combat staleness, Fred Bosch chose a tattoo that will never look the same twice.

Bosch had a QR code inked onto the inside of his forearm. Scanning it is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get.

The code may pop up with a GIF of a couple of headbangers swinging their hair around, or a recent tweet, a phrase, a video, or a weather report. Bosch calls it the first-ever random tattoo.… Read more

It seems a mural sponsored by the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, as a deterrent to graffiti, wound up attracting a little instead. But someone came up with an interesting temporary fix for the defacement.

A tipster named Jason informed street-art site Wooster Collective that a giant QR code had been placed over the offending, spray-painted tag.

And when passersby scan the code with their smartphones, they're served up an image of the original, undamaged mural, along with information about its origins.

That's a nice idea. But in describing the fix as "temporary" a few paragraphs … Read more

QR codes are cool, but they haven't quite caught on en masse yet, because finding cool uses for them have been challenging.

One popular use for QR codes is printing them on business cards. Sharon Vaknin also showed you a clever way to make a personalized QR code gift tag. In this tutorial, we're going to show you how to add a QR code to a digital photo.

Digital photos contain lots of data in them, like locations, dates, and camera type, but once they're printed, you're left with just the photo. With a QR code, … Read more

QR codes make life easier for everyone these days, but that just means it also makes life easier for the bad guys. There may not be that many QR scams out there--yet--but it's still prudent to keep from scanning codes from sources you don't trust. Chrome users can check things out before scanning with QRreader, a nifty extension that will let you know what lurks beneath the pixels. Here's how to use it: 

Sometimes, it seems that Google is just much more imaginative than Apple.

Well, when it comes to naming operating systems, that is. Google offers the sweet inducements of Ice Cream Sandwiches and Honeycombs.

Apple, on the other hand, seems to cling to a certain BMW-ness-- just a few letters and numbers and there you have it.

I am about to turn that world view upon its nostrils. For, thanks to the Cult Of Mac, I have received wind that Apple keeps its cute little code names clutched to its secretive bosom.

It seems that a developer called Steve Troughton-Smith decided … Read more

Handwritten gift tags might be a thing of the past.

This holiday season, JC Penney is offering Santa Tags, a new option that allows gift-buyers to record voice messages for their recipients to play back upon unboxing their gifts. And it's all done with QR codes.

The voice message is attached to a QR code, which the recipient scans with a QR scanner on a mobile phone, and the voice note is instantly played back.

Pretty cool.

But you don't have to go to JC Penney to make this happen, because there's an even better DIY option … Read more

Google is no longer the only employer that wants to recruit via tough-to-crack math questions.

Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) intelligence agency has launched a Web site challenging visitors to crack a code, according to the BBC. The purpose is to find potential candidates to fill its posts dealing with cyberthreats, which the U.K.'s spy chief recently identified as a disturbing threat.

The competition started November 3 via an unbranded Web site at canyoucrackit.co.uk that displays a visual code resembling a grid of random numbers and letters. Visitors have to first crack that code before getting redirected to GCHQ's Web site, which further directs them on the types of jobs that they can apply for. … Read more

This week's post is a special early edition of my weekly iOS app collection. Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year, and though I can't help you beat the lines or navigate through the crowds, I've rounded up a few apps that might make your holiday shopping a tiny bit easier.

These apps are made for price-checking on the go, so you know you're getting the lowest price for the item in front of you. The best apps in this category are the ones that locate the item online and in nearby stores, but even apps that are only strong at scanning will definitely help to organize your holiday shopping and will hopefully result in fewer Black Friday headaches.

This week's iOS app collection is all about tools for holiday shopping. Get quick access to a huge database of products and prices and some helpful shopping tools.… Read more

With a tap of your finger, Amazon's Price Check app for iPhone lets you cross-check prices against those on Amazon.com. Big time shoppers should definitely consider adding it to their download queues.

Using Price Check is as simple as it gets. Just fire it up, and point your phone's camera at the bar code of a product while you're out shopping. The app will then pull up the matching product (if available) for you to see its price on Amazon.com. If you can't access the bar code, you can also search by typing or … Read more