If you have an Android device with a camera, you can install the ZXing Barcode scanner [1] which supports the following method. It is my understanding, however, that other barcode scanners do not support this, so as cool as this is, it may only serve a very limited audience. The ZXing app doesn't even support this method on iOS, as far as I know.
The ZXing team has a proposal for scanning barcodes to access wireless access points using a MECARD-like structure [2]. The structure of the format is like this:
WIFI:T:WPA;S:mynetwork;P:mypass;;
The parameter "T" can be one of "nopass", "WEP" or "WPA" for the security type. The parameter "S" is your wireless access point's SSID (make sure you append "_nomap" to prevent Google from tracking you [3]). The parameter "P" is the password, if any, of accessing the access point. So, a QR Code containing this information could be something like:
Hopefully other barcode scanners pick up on the proposed standard, and make this more ubiquitous. The obvious advantage is not having to type in lengthy passwords on a small screen. At any event, hope this is useful for some.
1: https://code.google.com/p/zxing/
2: https://code.google.com/p/zxing/wiki/BarcodeContents#Wifi_Network_config_%28Android%29
3: http://pthree.org/2011/11/15/google-wants-to-track-your-physical-location/
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