Asking a girl for her number is so 1998. Imagine the day when you can do this:
1. Spot hot girl at club.
2. Whip out phone.
3. Snap picture of bar code on hot girl's T-shirt.

It's as easy as scanning a pack of Ding-Dongs at the 7-Eleven. You'd download her number straight to your phone's contacts file. You'd find out her likes and dislikes, maybe even have a couple of pictures to remember her by. Don't like what you see? There's no small talk wasted; just keep walking.

Well, that day is just about here. Thanks to little square boxes of black-and-white pixels (called two-dimensional bar codes or QR codes), web addresses, video, text and music can now be embedded into just about anything -- movie posters, wine bottles, buildings, business cards and, yes, even women's T-shirts.

"This is going to be one of the next big killer apps, something that comes in and changes the way people work on a daily basis," predicts Eric Schwamberger, managing partner of Zezza Network, an NYC-based ad agency that has devised campaigns using QR-code technology. "It's going to be something that people use every day in one way or another."

It's called "physical world hyperlinking," a fancy way of explaining the meshing of the virtual world (think websites and downloads) with the real world (think Empire State Building, a bottle of tequila, your girlfriend). "These tags can appear anywhere," Schwamberger says.

Two-dimensional bar codes are already huge in Japan, where you can't swing a dead Hello Kitty without hitting one. There, people use their cell phones all the time to scan codes around them. Click on a billboard to enter a contest. Snap a movie poster to download previews. Scan the wrapper on your burger to get nutritional information. Download a QR code for your boarding pass onto your phone and get it scanned at the airport.

Here at home, QR codes are about as popular as text messaging was 10 years ago: not so much. But Zezza recently partnered with Jim Beam on campaigns using two-dimensional mobile bar codes, including a "scan the ad, get the girl" pitch for Hornitos tequila appearing in next month's Playboy. The Hornitos ad shows a cocktail napkin with the words, "Scan me! XOXO, Miss July." Snap a picture of the pixelated bar code on the page (or the "tattoo" on our model at left) and you'll get a free download of a picture of Miss July.

You'll need to have a camera phone, of course. And your phone must also be loaded with software to read the code, available for free by heading to m.hornitostequila.com.

"This is coming and it's going to be everywhere. You might as well get on board early and be first," says Barbara Liss, the Hornitos brand manager behind the campaign. She says the potential applications for these QR codes are endless -- especially in the world of booze marketing. One click on a bottle and you could get drink recipes. Snap a sampling model's shirt and you could enter contests. Or be directed to the address of the nearest liquor store to buy a bottle.

"You think tequila, you think technology," Liss says.

It won't be long before QR codes show up on everything in this country, Schwamberger predicts.

"I promise you, once you see one of these, you start to see them everywhere," he says. "Once you know what they are, it becomes a little bit of an addiction to go around and scan things and find out what they say."

And as in the case of Miss July, sometimes they don't have to say a word.