Yesterday, I paid a visit to the UK National Archives in Kew. Their amazing educational team have recently completed a stunning QRpedia installation. From their press-release: As part of this project to increase digital engagement we have used the QRpedia service to link some of our museum exhibits to articles on Wikipedia. In the on… Continue reading →
Why do some people in the technology community seem so susceptible to snake oil? I suspect it's because of two things. We trust our friends' judgement. We are experts in our fields and, therefore, trust our own judgement in matters we don't fully understand. Compare and contrast the following two statements. On the announcement of… Continue reading →
I regularly get contacted by recruitment consultants. Even though I'm very happy in my job right now (Hi Boss!) I usually don't mind being contacted. However, after having just had a particularly disturbing encounter with a recruiter, I thought it might be worth stating these rules up front. These are personal to me - but… Continue reading →
You know Jimmy Wales, right? He's the guy co-founded Wikipedia - and, possibly, its most prominent face. So, a few days ago, he popped down to The Children's Museum of Indianapolis to see the work the museum is doing with its Wikipedian in Residence - Lori Philips. What else did he do while he was… Continue reading →
While at Update Conference, I met the amazing Georgie St Clair who was modelling her spectacular QR code "info dress". She told me about her ambitious plans for a QR Code Treasure Hunt across Brighton. Working with local artists and businesses, the Brighton QR Treasure Hunt offers an interactive experience of the city that is… Continue reading →
One of the great things about QR codes is they have built in error correction. This means if the code gets damaged or dirty, it can still be scanned. This means we can add images into the QR code to make it look prettier without negatively affecting the code's usability. Niteesh Yadav has created some… Continue reading →
A quick round up of QRpedia in the news: The New Media Consortium has produced a report entitled Technology Outlook: UK Tertiary Education. The full report (PDF) specifically mentions QRpedia Codes as "smart objects" and predicts a time-to-Adoption of four to five years. I think we can do it sooner than that, though! The report… Continue reading →
QRpedia is designed to offer a single QR code which points to the same article in multiple languages. The most common question about QRpedia is "What does it do if the article doesn't exist in my language?" Consider the following example... A French user is in a German museum. They scan a code - which… Continue reading →
I've accidentally caused a little Twitter storm over my remarks at Update Conference yesterday. During my talk, I mentioned the following statistic: In Africa, there is better access to mobile phones than there is access to clean drinking water. However, on Twitter, that's got mangled into: There are more people with access to mobile Internet… Continue reading →
This was going to be a Sponsored Post from ebuzzing - but they rejected it. Can't think why... I think I'm turning into a Luddite. I see all these shiny tablets and... I just don't want one! Don't get me wrong, I drove myself crazy trying to get an HP TouchPad because a) Massive discount… Continue reading →