From the Toronto Star:
Rio is mixing technology with tradition to provide tourists information about the city by embedding bar codes into the black and white mosaic sidewalks that are icons of the city.
The first two-dimensional bar codes, or QR codes, as they’re known, were installed Friday at Arpoador, a massive boulder that rises at the end of Ipanema beach. The image was built into the sidewalk with the same black and white stones that decorate sidewalks around town with mosaics of waves, fish and abstract images.
The launch attracted onlookers, who downloaded an application to their smartphones or tablets and photographed the icon. The app read the code and they were then taken to a website that gave them information in Portuguese, Spanish or English, and a map of the area.
There is a picture with the article, and the QR code tiles look pretty cool.