I've been trying to work out the best response to this. I think that you're correct in that there is a hole to be filled by a QR-to-URL service - essentially a bit.ly for QR codes. Despite availability of QR codes from existing players (Google being the most significant) and the ready availability of both websites and libraries for producing QR codes from URLs (and any other text), branding will play a big role in making them take off. ScanLife is certainly a player in this space: http://us.scanlife.com/ . They have QR codes on the Inception movie posters as part of the advertising campaign, as well. But anyone can do it. And given that ZXing is an open source scanning library, anyone can build the apps.
It may be shortsighted, but that's not the business I want to build. Scanning a QR code to follow a business is something I actually want - something that came directly out of a need in my own life - and it's the connections themselves that are interesting to me. QR codes are really only the beginning of what I want Quirk to be - I just think they're a good place to start.
That said, you're not the only person to suggest that Quirk should provide a tool for converting URLs to barcodes, even just as a promotion for Quirk itself. And if that turns into the biggest aspect of Quirk, then so be it. So, I guess we'll see.
Thanks again for your comment - definitely made me think (thus the slow response).