Most of the times I’m using barcode reader to navigate to web site that has long address. Other uses for the barcode is to get contacts details, some people print barcode on their business card, scan and you got their details whithout the need to type their details or sophisticate scanners that try to perform OCR (Optical Character Recognition).
I tried several applications and I found i-nigma the most conveint for me. you can download using your phones browser: www.i-nigma.mobi

The site also provides the ability to generate the barcodes
In addition to URL and contact details the site and reader supports also message and SMS.

I keep a bookmark to the barcode generation so each time that I need to send a link to my browser instead of sending it by SMS or email I create barcode and scan it.