As of November 8th 2016, the database seems not available. Error message "The user was not authorized".

Thank you for your feedback! yes, you are right in both cases.

I have updated the article and sent it for publishing. Hopefully, it will be corrected in 2-4 days.

Windows phone and iPhone

Thanks Stan. I have downloaded and run the code from the link you shared ("Just launched new open source project QrCode.Net at http://qrcodenet.codeplex.com").

The QR codes seem to work,...

Thanks a lot Stan. I got the same results with your image so far. The phone cannot read it.

Other QR codes from the web seem OK to phones, I wonder...

Thanks Stan for clarifying. I agree with you, it is worth investigating

So far, we know that the QR codes created with the tools in this article are not compatible...

After trying the code, the images generated seem unreadable by a cell phone. Is that expected somehow?

The online code reader at zxing does recognize it, but iPhone or Lumia phones...