The QR codes will serve as boarding passes and may be obtained by going to the airport’s Web site.

This is not the first QR codes to show up at airports, but it seems that it sparked a trend wherein airports all around the world are now utilizing QR codes for a variety of reasons.

QRCodeTracking.com has found out that passengers arriving at the Frankfurt Airport can now scan QR codes to buy duty free products. The Heinemann Duty Free has a QR code wall there. The QR code wall is very similar to what Tesco South Korea did with its shopping walls in the Asian country.

Passengers who want to buy a particular item can just scan the QR code placed next to the item’s photo on the wall and then collect their purchases after 15 minutes.

It is also worth mentioning that Tesco also did the same thing at London’s Gatwick Airport in August 2012, albeit for only a very short time.

Virtual Stores

These virtual stores are helping retailers sell more without putting up a huge investment. These virtual stores may be set up in a very small area. All you need to make sure is that the QR codes are scannable and adds the correct item to your customers’ shopping carts. And of course, you should ensure that deliveries are made according to the customers’ preferences.

A Chinese online retailer, Yihaodian, has opened 1,000 virtual stores all across the country. They even put up a virtual store right in front of Carrefour, their closest competitor.

This just goes to show that retailers can take advantage of QR codes to sell more. As a result of the QR coded virtual stores, Yihaodian says that revenues in the quarter ending December 2012 increased 17%.

As part of the Book Trailers project, students at Sayville School have been recording book reviews for the books that they have read. They then create QR codes so that people and fellow students would be able to access the videos.

Book Trailers is a project of librarian Pam Rooney. Ms. Rooney recently received an award from the Eastern Suffolk Board of Cooperative Educational Services for the QR code project.

This is a great example of how to use modern technology into education. However, this is not the first time that we have seen QR codes being used in the classroom.

In fact, BeQRious has also reported on QR codes being used for the exact same purpose at the Pauline Haass Public Library, where they put QR codes on books. These QR codes let people access book reviews written by students at the Woodside Elementary School.

As for QR codes in the library, the University of Texas Arlington Library is also using QR codes to make searching for books and reserving study rooms much more simple.

Other organizations and publishers have even come up with QR codes that help augment a book’s content. Instead of just relying on words to help people imagine what is happening in the books, they are given videos, audio files and photos to make a much more interesting experience. For example, a recent reprinting of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days included QR codes that tell the reader more about the places mentioned in the story.

Meanwhile, physical education classes at Chesterbrook Elementary in Virginia are a lot more interesting now that QR codes show students how to perform different exercises.

QR Code Tracking is glad that educators are finding more and more ways to use QR codes and technology in teaching. We do hope that these modern technologies could make school much more fun for students.

With QR codes, teachers can easily bridge the online resources and their offline materials.

So what are teachers doing with QR codes? Here are some examples.

1. Show the best works from previous students.

No matter what your project is, you can use a QR code to link to online sites showing the best work of previous students. Want them to write a killer book review? Then inspire them with a QR code that would allow them to read the best book reviews from last year’s students. It could be a video, a PowerPoint presentation, or even photos and how-to articles.

2. Teach them to love the environment.

Instead of wasting paper printing out your handouts, why not let them scan a QR code with their smartphones and have the handout downloaded directly into their phones? For those without phones, they can access and print out the handouts in the library. This is a great way to save on paper and teach your students to conserve.

3. Provide interactive labels.

Old school labels are only as informative as telling you what is inside a bottle or which part of the brain it is. But with QR codes, you can create interactive labels.

For example, in the chemistry lab, instead of just using ordinary labels, you could come up with a QR code that links to a Web page that tells the students more about that chemical or substance. You could also link to videos showing them how to handle hazardous materials properly and how to clean up the equipment and materials after use.

4. Share your resources.

If you are assigning a research project, then a QR code is a good way to direct your students to online libraries, Web sites and other resources that could help them with their projects.

5. Teach your students how to build a better resume.

Schools usually teach their students how to write resumes that would help land them a job once they graduate. Why not introduce QR code to your students so that they could use it to link to online portfolios for their drawings, photographs or articles written.

Over the years, however, we have seen a lot of retailers and their mishaps with using QR codes inside their stores.

This story is unique in that it shows how a retailer is using QR codes effectively.

Enter Evans Cycles

Evans Cycles sells bicycles and is owned by Active LLC.

The retailer has recently started using QR codes in-store. They have placed QR codes on the product information tag that they have for every bicycle that they sell. On the tag, you can see the price, a summary of the information for the product and the QR code.

The QR code is very visible and comes with a clear call to action.

When you scan the QR code, it will take you to the product’s mobile Web page where you could read more information about the product and read user reviews. There is also a section where you can leave your own reviews as well.

Mobile Optimized Site

The good news is that the product landing page is optimized for mobile displays. The information you can get from the site is very helpful to potential buyers, as it includes a lot of the product’s specifications as well as the reviews we have already mentioned.

You could also get a gist by looking for the star rating for all the customer reviews on site.

Buy It Online.

If you are in a hurry or still thinking about it, you can just leave the store without buying the bike. Should you make up your mind later, you can just go back to the mobile site and buy the bike. Or let’s say you forgot your wallet, you can just go online and buy the bike with a credit card and have the bike delivered to your house. Or you could also pick it up in-store.

The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities is responsible for KnowLA, a digital encyclopedia about the State. The QR codes would supplement the digital entries.

The organization is planning to come up with mobile barcodes and putting these alongside physical pieces. For example, they will put a QR code to a particular artwork. When people scan these QR codes, they will be taken to the encyclopedia’s entry on that particular artwork, or the artist.

The QR codes, in short, are going to turn static pieces alive with online content.

The LEH now has close to 300 artists in its database.

LEH president Michael Sartisky relates that they think the QR codes will succeed because museums are looking to have less interpretative material on their displays. QR codes can help museums achieve that because of its small size.

This means that museum visitors will be able to get more information about museum exhibits with just a scan of their smartphone.

QR Code Tattoos?

Sartisky also joked that maybe living artists could get a QR code tattooed on their bodies, and have it resolve to their entries in the encyclopedia.

Seriously speaking, the KnowLA project is continuously being updated. Sartisky is hoping that they will soon have their 1,000th entry by the time the year ends.

Sartisky also clarifies that art is only one of the many topics that they cover, so there should be more uses for the QR codes in the future.

This effort reminds us of Wikipedia’s efforts to make QR codes easily available for its various entries. Any museum or organization will be able to print a QR code and display it to anything and have the QR code resolve to its corresponding Wikipedia entry.

The latest to join the trend is an 87-acre conservation land in Danby in New York State called the Eldridge Wilderness Preserve.

The Eldridge Wilderness Preserve is a little-known and little used hiking trail. Much of it is undisturbed to make sure that the various species found here are undisturbed.

That is until recently.

The park is newly reopened and there are some improvements made to it. It now features new boardwalks, a kiosk, a better parking lot, brochures and QR codes. Of all these are the work of The Nature Conservancy, which operates in over 35 countries and in every state in the United States.

When you scan the QR code, it will take you to The Nature Conservancy Web site at http://www.nature.org/.

At the site, you can get more information about the animals and plants present in the park, as well as the different types of forests in existence today.

The renovation at Eldridge Wilderness Preserve started in 2012 and have cost about $25,000 in total.

QR codes have increasingly been used in parks all over the country. Famous examples are the QR codes found in Washington MO, which can help lost hikers find their way or injured visitors to get help. Wi-Fi connection is available all throughout the park.

Meanwhile, Cincinnati Parks have come out with QR codes in Ault Park, as part of its pilot project. The QR codes would serve as a virtual tour guide for visitors in the area.

Lastly, San Diego County’s Parks and Recreation have also installed QR codes to help hikers get more information about the parks they are visiting. The program, called QR Fit Trail service. These QR codes deliver fitness and exercise videos straight to your phone.

It is a wonder why people joke about the QR code being useless, when in fact QR codes serve a lot of functions.

The allegation that nobody is scanning QR codes is just plain baseless. We have a lot of statistics that say otherwise. In fact, QR code scanning numbers have consistently grown over the past few years and will continue to do so as more and more people get a smartphone.

The biggest reason why QR codes are getting a bad rap and a bad rep nowadays is that marketers are using them without really thinking about what they are doing. This indiscriminate use of QR codes are giving their customers and the general public a bad experience.

In short, marketers are killing QR codes with their badly planned campaigns.

It is time for marketers to take QR codes seriously and help make it shine. There is no sense in killing a tool that is obviously beneficial for you.

For one, we would like to see less QR codes being used online. We have seen enough QR codes in e-mails or banner ads to make us cringe. It does not make sense to use a QR code when a link would do.

Find ways of using QR codes that would help you business gain ground. Craft content that your customers would want to read and could learn from. Build Web sites that are not a pain to view on a smartphone. These are relatively simple things that you can do but are not doing.

Lastly, track your QR code campaigns to ensure that you are doing things right. If your tracking reveals that you are not, then find ways to improve on your campaigns.

DS Smith Packaging Industrial is a leading manufacturer of heavy-duty packaging materials. They are very popular in the automotive, chemicals and food industries because their packaging helps store, protect and transport products effectively and easily.

When a customer scans the QR code, found on the box or the pallet label, they will instantly see that particular product’s information as well as information on how to re-order. The re-order is then automatically placed on your behalf.

DS Smith Packaging’s marketing and innovation director Peter Foot says that by letting their customers order via the QR code, they can expedite the delivery of these items. It can also help them do so with no possibilities of error in ordering the wrong materials.

Foot also says that by using the QR codes, their customers can save time while also minimizing errors.

Foot also explains their decision to use QR codes instead of traditional barcodes. For one, it is very easy to use. All you have to do is to point your smartphone camera on it. Using a QR code-scanning app, you can easily decode a QR code.

Further, QR codes can still be read even if some parts of it are hidden or obscured.

QR codes placed on product packaging is not a new concept. But most of the examples we have seen so far only directs customers to a Web site where they could get more information about the product.

We think it would be interesting to copy DS Smith Packaging’s idea and allow more people to re-order via QR codes. Can you imagine being able to replenish prescription medications just by scanning a QR code on the medicine bottle? Or perhaps, have your newspaper subscription renewed by a simple scan?

As part of Project Solace, the QR codes are used to encourage people to report anti-social behavior to the authorities. Project Solace aims to bring down crime in the city. It provides support and advice to victims of anti-social behavior. It also promises to crack down on all perpetrators quickly. They will also try to help perpetrators to change their behavior.

Project Solace is a joint project of the Gloucester Police, Gloucester City Homes and the community Safety Partnership of the Gloucester City Council.

The QR codes is the idea of Emily Jones, who is a senior ASB officer for Project Solace.

When you can the QR code, it will take you to an online form where you can report incidents of anti-social behavior you witness.

Jones notes that they are probably the first and only ones who are using the QR codes in this manner. This is unfortunate because it makes things easier and quicker. Jones also says that the QR codes would help encourage young people to report ASB incidents to the police.

Gloucester City Homes chief executive Ashley Green adds that the QR codes are there so that residents could easily report incidents as they happen and speed up their response times.

Anti-social behavior is a big problem in the area. In February 2013 alone, there were more than 350 reports of ASB in the area. These included violent crime and robberies.

This is not the first time that we have seen QR codes used in fighting crime. We have already reported on various police departments in the United States that have put up QR codes on public places, store windows and even patrol cars in an effort to get the people to report crimes. There were also instances wherein QR codes were used to help catch elusive suspects.

Over the past few months, we have seen smartphones come out with better features and a smaller price tag.

But how do you use QR codes for your marketing? Here are some ideas:

1. Do you have something interesting to say? QR codes are best used when you have something interesting to share. It could be a video, or a Web site that provides interesting, informative or entertaining content. Without this, you should skip over using QR codes because your customers will just be disappointed when they scan your QR codes. Without offering them content that they could actually use, they would not have a good experience with you and will not buy from you.

Do not waste your customers’ time by giving them your standard Web site. Not only is it not interesting, but they can view it when they are at home, not while they are outside of the house.

2. Offer special coupons, promotions or exclusive information for people who scan your QR codes.

3. Connect with them on Facebook or Twitter. QR codes are a good way to catch their attention but it is only a foot into their door. If you want to engage continuously with your audience, you should use social media to communicate with them. Fortunately, a QR code can help you with that as well.

4. Wherever you take your customers, ensure that these Web sites are optimized for mobile display. Your customers are using their smartphones to scan your QR codes, why should you show them a video or Web site that is too big for their screens? Take time to create a Web site that displays perfectly on any screen, this way your customers would not be pestered into scrolling left to right just to read a line of your text.