McDonalds Japan places QR Codes on Big Macs

McDonald’s is now placing QR codes on the packaging of many foods so that eaters can scan the package with their phones and find out the nutritional information.

Known as a QR Code, these printed codes look somewhat like a barcode and are scannable by many Camera phones. All sorts of information can be packed into these little codes, from the website to find the amount of calories and fat in a Big Mac to a company’s contact information on a business card.
The codes were originally developed in Japan in 1994 to track parts for automobile manufacturers. Now they have taken off with the ubiquity of camera phones that can easily scan and pick up data from the two-dimensional symbols. The main purpose for QR Codes is to automatically input information into a phone (such as the data from a business card) without having to type it in.
People who don’t have camera phones don’t have to live in worry that they’re getting too much saturated fat without knowing it. The company has also set up short, easy-on-the-thumb URLs so people can look up the nutritional information on the food they’re about to consume. You can see the QR Codes and the URLs for each food item here, although the web pages will only load if you are connecting from a Mobile phone in Japan. source: calorielab