Tag: qr codes technology

The U.K. firm is hoping to enhance the information available on grave stones.

Since the dawn of time, humankind has wondered about the mysteries related to death and since the beginning of society, efforts have been made to try to memorialize those who have died, with QR codes being the latest effort in that regard.

These quick response barcodes are being used by a growing number of cemeteries on their grave markers.

In this effort, a company called Hyphenalia, from Tonbridge, Kent, U.K. is now working to add QR codes to gravestones and murals, so that people who are visiting these grave markers will be able to learn more about the deceased individual who is buried or memorialized there. The company is owned by a woman named Wendy Nash.

This use of QR codes is appearing on a growing number of grave sites across the United States, and the world.

Headlines have been made from a number of American cemeteries that are now offering QR codes as an added feature on their gravestones, but they are also appearing in places such as China, and even in Wales at a cemetery for war veterans.

According to Nash, she came up with her own idea for using QR codes on gravestones “because I have always had a fascination with headstones and eventually I thought to myself ‘is that it? Am I just going to be a name on granite?” She pointed out that for most people, a name and a date is all that is available to tell visitors about the deceased individuals to whom the grave markers are making reference. She feels that it is “a shame and a wasted opportunity.”

It is the hope of Nash that this will provide future generations the ability to avoid the current struggle with making sure that the achievements of ancestors are not forgotten. The QR codes provide families with the ability to use the internet to share a much larger amount of information about their deceased loved ones than their names, the years in which they were alive, and a possible additional word or two.

The latest technology news from the arena of quick response codes is that they are getting easier to generate.

Mobile marketers have adored the opportunity that QR codes have had to offer, using them on everything from product packaging to magazine ads, but these are barcodes that have traditionally been generated by computers.

However, MIT Media Lab researchers are now making it possible to use graffiti for the exact same purpose.

These graffiti QR codes would allow a hand drawn barcode, created on virtually any surface, to be converted into a scannable and readable image that smartphone users could turn into a much broader amount of content. In order to achieve this goal, the researchers had to change the way that the barcodes would be read in the first place.

Traditional QR codes are scanned using a barcode reading app that snaps an image of the black and white square.

With the new graffiti style of QR codes, the user would simply move the smartphone over the path in order to access the content to which it is linked. The accelerometer in the device is able to detect the pattern of the movement and is then able to load the content to which that particular path is connected.

As the method uses only the smartphone’s movement in order to read the barcode, instead of actually scanning the QR codes themselves, it means that the shape would no longer be limited to a pixilated square. Instead, the barcode can be drawn using any kind of material and onto any type of surface.

Possible uses, for example, are that a graffiti QR code could inform the smartphone user regarding what the art represents, who created it, what materials were used, and other relevant and interesting information.

One of the Media Lab’s Viral Spaces group members, Jeremy Rubin, said that there is a great deal more potential to these QR codes. For example, it could provide the opportunity to share relevant content to the smartphones of consumers while they are taking part at a certain activity within a location. For example, while riding an escalator up to the next floor of a store, it could provide information regarding what they are about to see and what products are located on the next level.