Designer Ming Ling has created the most wonderful QR code constructed out of Tetris pieces. The full size version is a work of beauty. As I've explained before, this works because the QR scanner sees the image in black and white - so light colours disappear. Anything else is covered by the fairly generous error correction. I'm nowhere nearly as talented as the above artist, but she has…
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Here's the captured video from MobileMonday's Trends in mHealth panel. Presented in glorious HTML5 and hosted on Archive.org Part 1 (more…) …
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One of the most influential books I have ever read is Donald Norman's "The Design of Everyday Things". In the book, Norman rails against the usability flaws which seek to undermine our comfort and sanity. Everything from lightswitches which never seem to have a consistent state, to to alarm clocks with impossible to figure out controls. It really is a must read for anyone who cares about…
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British Gas has announced its latest price rise to near universal dismay. So it seams a little odd that they're running a campaign based around how much you could save if you switch to them. Still, what concerns me in this Mobile Badvertising series is not the content, but the execution and usability. Let's see what happens when we click on it. Clicking the advert takes you to your phone's…
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Oh! Woe is me! I can't make BarCampLondon 8. This will be the first BarCamp I've not been able to get to in ages. Following hashtags is fun, if a little disjointed. What I really need is some way I could attend virtually..... .social-embed {all: unset;display: block;}.social-embed * {all: unset;display: revert;}.social-embed::after {all: unset;}.social-embed::before {all:…
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A few updates on the Video Recording Sunglasses I blogged about earlier in the week. I stuck in an 8GB microSD card and let the glasses record indefinitely. I was curious what would happen when the size of the video went over the 4GB limit imposed by FAT32 - and what happened when the memory card ran out of space. (more…) …
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One of the lovely aspects of QR codes is the variable levels of error correction built in. On even the most basic code you can obscure or deform up to 7% of the code and most readers will still decode it. This leads us in to the amusing territory of "hiding" human readable data in the code. I say "hiding" because we are hiding it from the scanner - not from the human. One of the more famous e…
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I've recently released a couple of audio widgets. Inspired by the Instant Rimshot and Sad Trombone sites, these are "single serving" widget. For the "Family Fortunes" buzzer widget, you click the icon and you'll hear the famous "EURGH-ERRRR" noise. I'm also selling a "Dramatic Sound Effect" Widget - download it by scanning this code. Go on, it's a mere 50p! This is a quick tutorial showing…
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So much has already been written about the N8's atrocious software. It's a popular (and fair) stick to beat Nokia and Symbian with. One thing that is always mentioned is how amazing the hardware is. I disagree. The hardware is as poor as the software. I think this picture symbolises that problem. N8 and HDMI lead The N8 has an HDMI port. A mini HDMI port. The image is of a full sized…
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For a little while, I've been lusting after the Immortal Video Glasses. Sunglasses with a built in video camera - perfect for recording all my action/adventure exploits! But, at £300, I thought they were a bit out of my price range. Undoubtedly fun, yes, but not 100-pints-of-beer fun (or however you choose to measure your fun). I wondered if anyone was selling them second-hand on eBay. They …
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There's a delightful video doing the rounds of an Augmented Reality game for the iPhone. What better use of technology than to simulate the destruction of TIE Fighters? While undoubtedly cool, what amuses me about this game is why it has taken the gaming world so long to catch up with Symbian! Way back in 2003, I got my hands on the Siemens SX1. It was the first non-Nokia handset to be…
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I love nothing more that a tramp round a city. Taking the Metro in Paris is very simple - and fairly cheap - but the riches you discover wandering around make up for the extra time needed. A few years ago, Miss Geeky introduced me to Space Invader spotting. Dotted around the cities of the world are mosaics of Space Invaders. Placed there by a mysterious artist - seemingly at random. Before …
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