29 September 2008

We Have A Winner!

Congratulations to Hongwei Liu, who is the winner of our first-ever News Blog contest. He correctly identified the graphic in a recent post as a QR or two-dimensional bar code.

The code contained a message which said: “Welcome to the VOA News Blog. If you can read this, please send an email to the News Blog with the word HAPPINESS in it. You will be featured in an upcoming posting. Thank you.”

Hongwei says he was attracted to a later post announcing this was a contest and asking visitors to “crack the code.”

Alas, he was disappointed because no sophisticated code-cracking software was needed. Instead he just read it by using a cell phone. We hope the promise of a VOA T-shirt will ease any dissatisfaction.

QR codes, by the way, are in growing use overseas, especially in Asia, and appear regularly in magazines and on signs and other objects that people might want more information about. Often they contain web links. Users who have a camera phone loaded with the right software can scan the image of a QR code and translate it.

2 comments:

Alex Belida said...

If you have further interest in QR codes, take note: we received an email from Roger Smolski who wrote us that “I thought you may be interested in the online magazine I edit http://2d-code.co.uk

"If you look through the site you will see the many ways that people are using 2d codes, some of them are very amusing or clever (or both!).

"If you find the site interesting and you think it is appropriate please mention it to your readers as a resource and help me get the word out on 2d codes! I would be most grateful."

Arash Sigarchi said...

Oh great, you write Weblog!
Nice.