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 there? Why, scanned some QRpedia codes! You can see all the photos of his visit on…
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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 both factual and entertaining. Your team of 2 to 6 people will go…
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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 QR portraits which feature famous faces superimposed on a QR code. I'm not overly convinced…
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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 is CC-BY and well worth reading. One of our friend in…
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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 points to de.qrwp/Nelahozeves Unfortunately, Wikipedia doesn't have the…
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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 in South Africa than have access to clean water. …
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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 and b) under a hundred quid. You see, everyone I know with a tablet has one of two accessories. A …
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Update: A version of this article appears on Sophos's NakedSecurity blog Last year I blogged about how easy it would be to pay for parking via QR code. Now it looks like Islington Council have partnered with Verrus to make this a reality. But is it any good? Well.... nearly. Let's take a look. The Initial Impression The QR code is fairly clear and I was able to scan it without issue…
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While my recent trip to South Africa was primarily for work, I couldn't spend a week there and not do some touristy things! The absolute highlight of the trip was being eaten by a lion! If you're in Joburg, visit Lion Park - an amazing place. Other highlights included.... I went up Table Mountain. I saw Robbin Island from Signal Hill. I visited the Apartheid Museum. I used Untappd to…
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It's been a while since I did a screenshot based review of a mobile app. I was gratified when QR Pal asked me to review their new app. First thing's first, this is a great idea for a QR Scanner. It saves all your scans - so you can retrieve them by category, it checks to see if links are safe to click on, it allows you to share scans with friends, and it also has a gameification element. But…
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I love Ribbit Mobile's voicemail service. It's the perfect replacement for the now-defunct SpinVox. My voicemail gets transcribed (by a human or machine) - then the text is emailed and texted to me. I even get an MP3 recording for later blackmail purposes. But today comes the news that Ribbit is shutting down. Or is it? The email specifically says: "this notice only refers to Ribbit…
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We're getting a few more museums lined up with QRpedia - and busy working on new features. I just wanted to update you on some interesting developments. QRpedia was presented by Roger at Wikimania - it seemed to go down a storm! The Children's Museum of Indianapolis are adding more QR codes. A lovely blog from Lori about seeing people scan the codes. A bug in Wikipedia has been…
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