Last week I was trying to find a software/site to generate a QR code that when scanned would download a VCF card on the scanner, the idea being that I would put it on a visiting card and then anyone could scan the card to get the details and save them instead of manually having to type them in.
When I had last tried this a couple of years ago I found a few sites that would do this and since those sites were down I searched for others and while I did find them they all were creating a QR code that had a URL for people to visit and then download the details from there. Basically it meant that if that site ever went down or decided to start charging for this all the visiting cards I had would end up being useless.
I was about to code something to generate this be then I half remembered that Android had the ability to generate QR codes as well. So I checked in my contacts and to my joy I found that Android has the built in ability to generate a QR code for a given contact entry. All I had to do was create an entry with my details and use the system to generate the QR code.
It is interesting that a lot of the functionality that we would get by downloading extra software (both on the phone & computer) is now baked into the OS itself. In a way it is good because I don’t have to download anything when I setup a new system but it does reduce the options available because whatever is the default system available is what people will use. Which is why Microsoft including Internet Explorer in Windows for free was a big issue in the early 2000’s.
That being said, I was happy that I didn’t have to code a QR -> vcf generator because I do have other work I need to look at…
– Suramya