QR codes are slowly, slowly gaining more traction, despite the fact that they are pretty much only useful little beasts when it comes to directing smartphone users to some or other web content URL. Generating them is pretty easy, hell, even Google Chart has an api for them, and to decode them you simply need a phone with a camera and a decoder app installed. But if you aren’t particularly computer illiterate, what is the best way to generate a QR code of your own?

Well for that you need an online encoder (or generator if you like). Enter the poorly named ZXing project (Apparently this stands for Zebra Crossing), which is dedicated to producing a multi-format 1D/2D barcode image processing library, implemented in Java.

Using the previously mentioned Google Chart API, they have released a very handy online QR code generator that allows you to enter the various bits of information you wish to encode and then spits out the generated QR code image which you can download and do whatever you want with.

Very, very nifty.

The encoder can be found at: http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/