QR Codes: like barcodes, just better

Quick Response Code
A Quick Response Code

QR Codes, or Quick Response Codes, are all the rage nowadays. You know, those black-and-white barcode-looking thingies that show up on magazines, posters, and even some t-shirts.

A QR Code is actually fairly similar to a barcode: it’s an image that encodes data like URLs, phone numbers, words, and more. You can even take a picture and sort of turn it into a QR code (the picture is uploaded to the internet and the QR code encodes the URL of the picture.) Sure you lose some aesthetic value, but hey.

HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript: the future of the web

Before I start, a brief trip through history…

It’s 1999. Internet Explorer 5 is hot stuff, the tech bubble is growing. And Mariano Rivera is World Series MVP. And young (gasp.)

A web developer sits at his computer, drinking coffee and writing some code. He wants to make a browser-based game. The only way he can do this is to use Adobe’s Flash platform to make an interactive movie and embed that in his website.

He wants to put a video on his site too. YouTube sounds like the name of a cheesy subway line, nothing more. Our developer has to make a Flash movie for that, too.

Forget flash drives with Dropbox

I’m sure this happens to a lot of people: you have an important file on your flash drive and you need to hand it in, print it out, or take it somewhere else. Only problem? You lose your flash drive. It’s happened to me far too many times.

So that’s why I decided to eschew flash drives and emailing stuff to myself and use the power of the internet.

I found Dropbox, which lets me access my files from anywhere as long as I have an internet connection. I don’t even need a flash drive any more; I can just store everything I need on my Dropbox account.