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Google Mobile (free): Although scanning was fairly slow and clunky, this is the most interesting of the bunch, as QR scanning is only a tiny part of what this app can manage. In fact, Google Mobile may eventually kill off QR codes altogether, as its incredibly sophisticated software will let you point your smartphone’s camera at just about anything and Google supplies what it reckons is the most relevant info: scan a shop front and you might get opening times and contact details; scan a company logo and get a link to their website; scan a painting and you might get links to the artist’s biography and exhibitions. This is very, very impressive stuff.

SCVNGR has a solid shot at becoming the de facto mobile application to facilitate mobile scavenger hunts, and propel QR codes to mainstream adoption.

Of course, there’s also custom barcode/scanner services like Microsoft Tag, which is progressive in its own way but requires that users have a special app (they can’t use generic QR code scanners) to process Tag codes in the real world.It’s asking too much of people to make them distinguish between a regular barcode, a QR code and some other custom code. We need simplification and standards.

other innovators in the mobile device market will