Plans for some fun activities connected with the launch of my book are now beginning to ramp up, so I've been spending a fair bit of my time this week poking my nose into some new (to me) tech areas. I've been looking for excuses to spend time with the avalanche of new interest and applications relating to geo-tagging and GPS for some time now, and my chance, happily has come. I've even managed to astonish some of my tech-savvy children with my new found expertise-- something that doesn't happen every day.
Much more to come on this in the days ahead, but my most interesting find of the day has been the QR code. Somewhere in the back closets of my muddled brain, I knew about these things, but I had no idea that they were a. so easy to generate, b. so easy to read, and c. so potentially powerful as a means of connecting real places to the cyberlandscape. So here's a quick primer:
1. If you have a camera phone with a web browser, start by going here
to download a nifty piece of software that will allow you to read QR codes. Test by reading this:
Just run the software, point your camera at this image, and amaze your friends. If you'd like to generate your own QR codes, it's just as easy. Go here:
Can you see how much fun could be had with this? For some reason this simple technology for joining the mobile web to real world objects seems uncommon here, yet is more widely used in other parts of the world.
Many thanks to my friend Richard, who is leading me, not so much kicking and screaming, into cool new hardware and software territory these days.
Hi Colin,
Maybe the project DokoDare could interest you then.
See some pictures and QR Codes here. If you are logged in (=> http://id.kaywa.com), you will enjoy it more ;)
So far only the mobile version is online. We are working now on the web version.
Let me know if there is an interest;)
Posted by: Roger | January 21, 2009 at 06:34 PM
Upps. Sorry forget the URL to the pictures and QR Codes:
http://photo.kaywa.com/roger/album/108
Posted by: Roger | January 21, 2009 at 07:04 PM
Roger, DokoDare looks interesting judging by the pics but I haven't been able to register as I can't seem to SMS to the # listed on the site.
Posted by: Colin | January 22, 2009 at 11:51 AM
Finally got the chance to play around with this this morning. What a cool thing. If you got a few extra hits this morning it was me...just playing and being amazed.
Posted by: Cory | January 25, 2009 at 10:31 AM