codes

Dog-walking services have graduated from flyers on poles to full-fledged serious businesses. The final coming-of-age moment is the arrival of Pet Check Technology, a suite that brings QR codes, mobile apps, and GPS to the dog-walking experience.

For dog-walking entrepreneurs, Pet Check includes online tools for scheduling clients, billing, and tracking dog-walking employees. That's all well and good, but it's a lot more fun when you look at it from the customer's standpoint.

Customers can look to see exactly when Fido was taken out on a jaunt, where he went, and what time he got back. That can help with scheduling when you need to be home from work. Completed walk reports are stored for future reference.… Read more

Quick response, or QR codes aren't being ignored so much after all.

Approximately 14 million U.S. mobile users in the U.S. used their smartphones to scan QR codes in the month of June 2011 alone, according to a new report from ComScore.

Here are the highlights of the majority numbers from different demographics in the survey: •14 million equates to 6.2 percent of the total U.S. mobile audience •60.5 percent of that audience was male •53.4 percent of that audience were between the ages of 18 and 34 •36.1 percent of that … Read more

On today's show, Google is upset that its competitors are using a giant portfolio of patents to attack Android. Never mind that Google could have joined in the purchase of said portfolio or, more importantly, that it's got the clout and cash to lead a fight against software patents in the first place. Good try, though! Also, our government prepares for the next war on terror--cyber-terror--and will HBO Go ever go a la carte? We hope so!

Tattoos tend to walk a very fine line between the artistic and the gruesome. See what you think about this, perhaps the most technologically advanced tattoo in the world. Allegedly.

One has to use the word "allegedly" because there's an ad involved here--for Ballantine's whiskey.

Still, I fancy that this video will, at the very least, set off rampant urges in the Silicon Valley area to have its intentions duplicated on the bodies of multiple engineers.

What seems to be happening here is that a famed tattoo artist in Paris is inscribing a QR code onto (… Read more

There is a place where technology, Iceland, music, and fashion collide. You might think Bjork would be involved somewhere, but this magic place actually involves Icelandic pop star Kali from the group Steed Lord.

Kali is known for her boundary-pushing fashion along the lines of Lady Gaga. London designer Thorunn Arnadottir recently added to her eclectic wardrobe with a painstakingly beaded QR code dress.

While we've seen QR code fashion and QR code wall art recently, the dress, called "QR U?," ups the difficulty level considerably. The design is inspired by African bead work and executed in Swarovski crystals.

The QR codes link back to sites and videos that relate to Steed Lord. One YouTube video features a snippet of the song "Vanguardian" being sung by an animated QR code (check it out below).… Read more

By sending signals that it's inclined to move Windows 8 coding toward HTML5 and JavaScript, and away from more familiar programming tools, Microsoft has "horrified" developers, according to a post at Ars Technica.

Citing a demo of Windows 8 given by Microsoft Vice President Julie Larson-Green at the recent D9 conference, Ars Technica author Peter Bright called attention to a comment several minutes into the video. Pointing to a new app in the upcoming Windows 8, Larson-Green said that "this application is written with our new developer platform, which is based on HTML5 and JavaScript."… Read more

Quick response codes, QR for short, can be used to store many different types of information. For instance, they can store a phone number, a Web address, and even a map location. If you'd like to add a QR code to your Web site or print one on another product (such as a business card or promotional T-shirt), there are free QR generator sites that will allow you to do this. Follow these quick steps to help you create QR codes for personal or business use.

1. Open http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/ … Read more

QR codes aren't just for boring business marketing. We recently checked out Barcode Gallery, a company that sells QR codes (two-dimensional bar codes that link to messages or Web sites) as wall art. Now you can emblazon those codes on a custom T-shirt for a high-tech fashion statement with ScanMe's shirt-printing service.

ScanMe creates a custom QR code just for you. It links to your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter profiles and can include your latest status message, a way to e-mail you, or even your phone number.

Anyone who wants a modicum of privacy can control how much information the scan pulls up. That's smart, because the people you want checking out your LinkedIn account usually aren't the same as the people you want to be friends with on Facebook.

These T-shirts offer more of a fashion statement than a mere black and white collection of boxes within a square. Some of the designs veer off into Threadless territory with the bar code buried within a Space Invaders-style illustration or coming from the mouth of a blue Twitter bird.

ScanMe is a United Kingdom company, but it offers free worldwide postage on the shirts. Prices start around $22 and range up to around $35 per shirt.… Read more

Modern art is often designed to challenge our sensibilities and push the envelope on the definition of art. Some people may look at a QR code--a boxy type of bar code that often leads back to a URL or message when scanned--and see a jumble of squares. Barcode Gallery looks at a QR code and sees art in action.

Barcode Gallery's custom pieces link to up to 300 characters of text when scanned. That's like having two tweets together. Write your own custom message or choose from ready-to-go college-themed works done in school colors.

I looked up my alma mater, University of Arkansas (Woo Pig Sooie!), and found a bar code that pulls up the words to the school's anthem, a slightly hokey number that mentions the mountains of God and a beacon of hope. No worries, the message can be customized if you wish to make some edits.… Read more