Where Have You Seen Me Before?

Do I look familiar? Am I something you'd recognize?

How about now?In Japan you'll see theses black and white squares all over the place. On Movie posters. Game advertisements. Hand out flyers. Packs of tissues. What are they? Some kind of tracking code? Kinda. They're called QR Code or Quick Response and they were created by Denso-wave Corporation in 1994 to track vehicle parts manufacture. In the patterns, information is stored and can quickly be retrieved by the correct kind of scanner. More fascinating is what they're commonly used for now. It's a very public form of source for information, usually advertising. You can take a picture of the code with your cellphone and it will decript it and give you the information on whatever it is pointing to. Most commonly a website of some sort. It's actually very neat and I was amazed when I finally asked someone in Japan why there were black and white squares everywhere.

So this brings me back to the colored square I started the post with. Microsoft has started the same thing and is starting to use it for the same type of information spreading. Where did I first see this? On the Back of the Halo Wars box.

Just thought you'd like to know,
David