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.

Can’t get enough Angry Birds? Play it online

Playing Angry Birds 1-1
A red bird crashing into a structure, killing a pig in the process

If your phone’s battery keeps dying on you because you spend all your time playing the wildly popular mobile game Angry Birds (or if you’re too cheap to buy Angry Birds), you should be pretty excited about this latest development.

You can now play Angry Birds online here. Here’s what you need:

  1. A decent browser (more on that later)
  2. Adobe Flash (sorry, iDevice users)

As the URL (chrome.angrybirds.com) might hint, Angry Birds works best in Chrome. I’ve tried it on several browsers and here’s what I’ve found: