Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Generate QR Codes for Wikipedia Articles Using QRPedia

QRpedia is a mobile Web based system which uses QR codes to deliver Wikipedia articles to users, in their preferred language. QR codes can easily be generated to link directly to any Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), butthe QRpedia system adds further functionality.
You need to only paste a wikipedia URL into the box givenin the website to create a language-detecting mobile friendly QR code.
Process
When a user scans a QRpedia QR code on their mobile device, the device decodes the QR code into a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) using the domain name “qrwp.org” and whose path (final part) is the title of a Wikipedia article, and sends a request for the article specified in the URL to the QRpedia Web server. It also transmits the language setting of the device.
The QRpedia server then uses Wikipedia’s API to determine whether there is a version of the specified Wikipedia article in the language used by the device, and if so, returns it in a mobile-friendly format. If there is no version of the article available in the preferred language, then the QRpedia server offers a choice of the available languages, or a Google translation.
In this way, one QRcode can deliver the same article in many languages, even when the museum is unable to make its own translations. QRpedia also records usage statistics.