Like many people, I no longer wear a watch. I've got a phone which tells me the time and data - why do I need something cluttering my wrist? The Evolution of the Watch I wasn't always this way, I used to love high-tech watches. Throughout my teenaged years I had one of those calculator watches - enabling me to add up my pocket money and write "5318008" for instant humour. In 1999, I…
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It's nearly time for Mobile World Congress - the glittering jewel in the European mobile tech scene. I'm going along with WAC and will be presenting and schmoozing on their behalf. This blog post - and all others on this site - is personal commentary and does not reflect the opinions of WAC or its members. With that said - here are my top five predictions for what we'll see at Mobile World…
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I get a lot of positive comments about my Moo Cards with QR codes. As I prepare to go off to Mobile World Congress, I thought I'd add a couple of extra designs into the mix. Feel free to use these as templates - but please remember to change the QR Code! (more…) …
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Seen in the latest issue of Sport Magazine - this rather interesting QR advert for Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. This is a really well executed campaign which should serve as a template to other advertisers. There are, of course, one or two issues that I have with it. Let's start by zooming in to the QR Code. Explanatory Text It's great to have a little note to explain to people what to …
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Tom Morris pointed me to this interesting discussion about using Wikipedia QR codes in museums. I think it's an excellent idea. It's something I've briefly discussed with Cristianno Betta for his 100 Objects project. There are five key points to the success of such a scheme. 100% of visitors will be scanning these codes on their mobile phones. The code must point to the mobile version of …
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Last year I gave a presentation at PayPal to show how charities could harness QR codes. I'm not sure if Oxfam were in the audience that day. But if they were, they missed the point. QR codes are a solution for quick interactions with mobile phones. Let's investigate the Oxfam QR code seen in Metro. The Advert So, can donate by scanning the code? Well, it's not really made clear what the…
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Congratulations to rawedge for this QR campaign for Sky Atlantic. A simple QR code, pointing to a URL (with source=qr for analytics), a mobile website, and a 3gp video. Almost perfect. Why Almost? I'm a nit-picker - but here are a few suggestions to make the campaign better. Make the code bigger. When dealing with newsprint and its fuzzy images, it's always better to make the QR as…
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Another day in London - another sighting of a QR code! This time, on a poster for high-brow art-house flick The Mechanic. Quite close to the bottom of the poster - so low, I had to kneel to scan it - is a QR code. Scan it and it takes you a mobile friendly trailer on YouTube. Issues It wouldn't be a Terence Eden blog post if I didn't criticise the approach taken by the advertisers. QR …
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Updated! 2011-01-11 20:00 - see the response from the Metro. The Metro is a London-based UK newspaper national newspaper which is distributed in 33 cities across the UK. Around a year ago, I reviewed the Metro's mobile website. It wass a perfectly fine mobile site and I'm pleased to see that over the last 12 months it has undergone substantial improvements. You can visit it at…
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(Yes, the title is link bait.) Sony Ericsson have announced that their Xperia X10 range of Android handset won't be updated to the latest version of Android. They'll be stuck on Android 2.1 with no hope for any bug fixes. As I discussed last year in "The Future of Android - And How To Stop It" there is a fundamental tension between users, manufacturers, Mobile Networks, and Google when it…
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The unsurpassed guru of mobile phones, Tomi T Ahonen, has released his latest book for free! The book, "The Insider's Guide to Mobile", is an invaluable guide to anyone in the mobile industry. I've read through a few pages of it and it is smart, funny, useful and a hugely important tome for anyone in the industry. There's just one small niggle I have with it. It is released as a PDF. PDF is…
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After the derisory efforts of Waitrose to properly utilise QR codes, it's disheartening to see Debenhams make a brand new mistake. At the bottom of tonight's Evening Standard is this advert from Debenhams. Debenhams QR Advert The QR code immediately caught my eye and - being the saddo that I am - I immediatley whipped out ZXing and scanned it in. Debenhams QR Code What goodies would it net…
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