Wandering around the steets of London, I came across this excellent initiative from Camden Council on how to use QR codes on street furniture. If you see that a light - or anything else - is damaged, you can scan the QR code and report the issue. There's even a phone number and vanilla URL for those who aren't quite up to speed with new technology. There's only one slight issue - the QR code points to this site. The fact that the landing page isn't mobile friendly is bad enough, but…
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I unashamedly love QR Codes. But every so often, I see one which makes me wonder if there should be some sort of licence for creating them :-) As I was walking around Camden the other day, I spotted this monstrosity. I figured with a code that dense, it probable contained a URL to a rubbish iPhone app, or perhaps a link stuffed full of tracking parameters. Still, what the heck, I scanned it. What's the bloody point in that? Here's a guide on "How Not To Screw Up With QR Codes" which I …
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A few months ago I reviewed the UK grown wasabi of The Wasabi Company. The good folk at Kazari saw my review and offered to send some of their wasabi to review. Their Kazari rhizomes are imported from Japan and America, and they're about half the price of The Wasabi Company. After months of procurement, we successfully diverted a portion of Asia's natural wasabi harvest from Tokyo's sushi bars to the UK. Our customers, including some of Europe's leading sushi chefs, love it. It really is a…
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I wrote this before the Presidential election. I didn't publish it because it looked like Obama was going to win without my help. Also, it feels unseemly to meddle in another country's politics. Recent events have stirred me into posting. I don't know much about Mitt Romney's position on gun control. It doesn't seem to have come up much in the run up to the election. I can, I think, infer his thoughts on the matter after watching this exchange he had with Bob Garon, a Vietnam veteran who…
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One of the most pernicious memes is "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." It implies that the only reasons for opposing a law is that you would find yourself guilty under it. The phrases is, I think, a contender for a new form of Godwin's Rule. Any discussion about laws eventually boils down to "Only a criminal would oppose this measure." The annoying thing is, it's particularly hard to refute. In some cases, yes, it may be felt that the law unfairly criminalises…
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In October, I was interviewed in Econsultancy about the BBC's new "responsive" website. I said: The BBC's mobile site is fairly responsive. If you view it on different sized phones and tablets it adapts quite well. But it is an entirely separate site from the main BBC news site. The BBC are doing device detection and redirecting mobile users. It's not a bad strategy per se - but it is not best practice Clicking on a link on the BBC's front page today, lead to this "responsive" experience. …
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For the last few years, I've been using Y-Cam security cameras to guard my home. I've stuck a couple up around the house. I can monitor what's happening, get email alerts when movement is detected, and can stream the video to my phone. The latest versions also upload photos and videos directly to my server so - in the event that they detect anything interesting, I have a backed up copy. They even do night vision. If you buy the cameras directly, they cost from £135 to £135. That's q…
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Earlier this year, I blogged about seeing these QR codes appearing on some train tickets. The campaign itself wasn't that great - a poor call-to-action and a decidedly mobile-unfriendly site - but I was interested in how many people had scanned them. Thanks to bit.ly's practice of exposing everyone's statistics, we can see exactly how well this campaign did. Wow! Twenty-five thousand scans. It's not as good as Tesco's QR campaign (80k scans and counting) - but it's an interesting data…
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Can you spot anything interesting on this poster? Yes, there in the corner - living in blissful harmony are a QR code and an NFC tag. There's an excellent call-to-action which even works for people without either a QR reader or NFC scanner. The destination is this mobile friendly landing page. Of course, you should still boycott Nestle due to their contributing to the unnecessary death and suffering of infants around the world by aggressively marketing baby foods in breach of…
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I usually admire The Guardian's technology coverage (not least because they occasionally feature me!) but their latest article - The success of smartphones comes at a price - is ridiculously bad. It posits three arguments. More people are using smartphones to access the Internet than ever before. Smartphones are heavily locked down. Mobile Operators are "corporate control-freaks". The author concludes that this is radically different from the PC world and, therefore, a very bad …
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Yesterday afternoon, I received a call from an unknown number. I answered it, and a heavily accented voice said "Hello, can I speak to mister..." there was a pause while she tried to figure out the intricacies of my surname, "Ehdan?" I asked who was calling, and she said, "I am calling from American Express with important information about your card. Please can I take you through security?" You know where this is going, don't you? I asked her to prove that she was from American Express. "I …
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It occurred to me that I've been very lucky in my computing career. I had parents who encouraged my love of technology, who were able to teach me BASIC, and buy my brother and I our first computer when we were still quite young. That old BBC Micro served me well and helped springboard me to where I am today. I think it's time for all of us in the technology industry to encourage young people to explore the fascinating world of computers. Our lives are dominated by computers - and knowing how…
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