"What's this thing I keep seeing everywhere?"

That's what my husband wanted to know a couple of weeks ago when The Bee did an experiment on Page A1 with a QR code tied to a photograph of a great gray owl.

That "thing" looked a bit like a more artistic version of the bar codes you see at the grocery store, and it functions in a similar way. We used it to help readers with smartphones scan the code to see our entire gallery of owl photographs.

I whipped out my iPhone, showed my husband the gallery and said yet again it was time for him to give up the BlackBerry or at least get a smart version of it.

QR stands for "quick response." The codes can contain all kinds of information, including Web addresses or coupons. If you have a smartphone, download an app that uses the phone's camera to scan the code and it will either take you to a website or give you information. (iPhone users can download apps like the NeoReader, Android users the Barcode Scanner, Windows Phone users the Microsoft Tag and smart BlackBerry users the QR Code Scanner Pro.)

A gimmick? Maybe, but they're also fun. I'm interested in them because they make it easier to find information at sacbee.com from a mobile phone or tablet.

A Pew Internet Project survey in April and May found 83 percent of U.S. adults have a cellphone, and of those, 42 percent own a smartphone – mostly an Android, iPhone or BlackBerry.

Certain demographics lead the way with smartphone ownership, according to the Pew survey. The wealthy and well-educated, those under the age of 45 and African Americans and Latinos have the highest ownership rates.

More importantly, for about a quarter of those smartphone owners, that tool is their only way to access the Internet.

For news companies expanding the ways in which they distribute information, the QR codes are one more tool to bring readers to stories, photography, databases and much more.

Our experiment with the owl photo gallery was a good one – more people used the QR code to view the gallery than typically would type in the suggested link to view it. As a result, you've seen more codes in the paper since then, and you'll continue to find them in places that make it easy to access related content online.

We've been publishing a code on Page A3 in "The Buzz" for readers who want to get to Capitol Alert, our political news blog. We've added a QR code to the cover of Wednesday's Food & Wine section. Scanning it gives you all the recipes in the section – a handy list for your next trip to the grocer.

In today's paper in the Sports section you'll find a QR code with the story about Roseville's Tour de France cyclist Vladimir Efimkin. The code takes you to a photo gallery at sacbee.

I'll show my husband on my iPhone.

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Reach Executive Editor Joyce Terhaar at (916) 321-1004.

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