MiniQR brings URL shortening to QR Codes

[Austria] Franz Enzenhofer, an Austrian developer, has merged two current Internet trends and created something pretty neat: MiniQR, a URL shortening service for QR Codes.

Imagine you are a company and want to create your very own QR code for a product, service or any other use. MiniQR enables you to do just that but also adds a URL shortening feature to the mix. Enter beta.techcrunch.com as the source to be encoded, for example, and MiniQR provides a unique and clean QR Code which points to a shortened version of the URL – miniqr.com/techcrunch.

Information entered (in this case the domain) is also amended to the shortened URL, which Enzenhofer claims helps to prevent “QR domain grabbing”.

QR Codes are those 2-dimensional barcode-like stickers they you may have come across on sights, products or pretty much anything else. Using a smartphone with a QR code scanning application installed you’re able to scan the code using the phone’s camera, decode it and be redirected to whatever online destination lies underneath. This technology, which strives from Japan and was created back in 1994, has found itself being utilized in multiple ways, although mostly in marketing (aside from packaging, distribution and other B2B applications).

URL shorteners, synonymous with the real-time web and made popular through Twitter, are the quick and tiny helpers of today’s Internet. They create an alternative and much shorter URL for any web address and the idea has escalated into a huge number implementations, ultimately with Google jumping on the bandwagon.

Other small apps such as Kaywa or QR Code generator are already doing a good job of enabling a QR code to be generated within seconds, but MiniQR’s concept of positioning it as as a URL shortening service too has some added viral potential.