Goo.gl Now Generates QR Codes

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The importance of QR codes is just increasing, we learnt how to get QR codes for Facebook and now Google has added a very smart trick to its URL-shortening service goo.gl, the ability to generate QR codes for the shortened links. Actually two-dimensional bar codes that come in quite handy on mobile devices, yet the technology is still not really admired in the US, or anywhere outside of Japan.

Matt Cutts head of the webspam team made this announcement via Tweet –

Goo.gl learned a new trick today! Take http://goo.gl/727X and add “.qr” to get a QR code: http://goo.gl/727X.qr Please RT!

That simply means, every time you generate a shortened link with goo.gl, you could also create an associated QR code by simply adding ‘.qr’ at the end of the link. In fact, QR codes can really prove useful in lot of situations. The codes themselves could hold all manners of data, links, images and text, however the most usual method they could be used is the link to additional data about a product or site. The expediency of QR codes comes from the detail that they could be simply read by any camera phone and there are plenty of apps that could translate the codes into useful data. The service is only officially available through the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner, but there are still ways of using it without installing the toolbar.