QR Codes

Until now QR codes haven’t seen mainstream use in the UK.  The relatively under-developed mobile web market here is probably part of the reason for that.  As data use on mobile phones in the UK increases, one major brand has decided to give the codes a go.  Bottles of Pepsi Max now feature QR codes that take customers to a ‘Pepsi Max Kicks’ website that gives away gig tickets among other promotions.  In order to access the goodies you have to use the QR code.

The question is, how many people are going to bother to use them?  To most people the codes will just be a pretty pattern on the side of the bottle.  There’s no full explanation given on the label as to what the codes do, and how to use them.  Curious customers are simply directed to visit the Pepsi website by, er, typing the URL into the phone or browser.

Those who do decide to follow through and visit the website are taken to a page that explains a bit about QR codes.  It suggests that many phones have QR code readers and that if yours doesn’t you should download one of a selection of QR code readers from a list of links.  At this point I think Pepsi have lost many of their potential audience.  If you’re forcing Joe Normob to download software to their phone they’re likely to think it’s not worth the hassle to learn to do something they’ve never done before and perceive as complicated.

If you’re still having problems getting your QR code to work, don’t worry!  Pepsi have an extensive list of suggestions to help you but you’re likely to think it’s not worth the hassle when you’ve read the first few.  Lighting, movement, distance between the phone and the code, camera settings and more can affect whether the code is read properly or not.  Even Pepsi seem to have given up hope when they get to tip number 12; “Try anything!” they say.  They then have the cheek to suggest you buy a new phone just to access their poxy promotional site. Failing that they finally give in and give the option to have the URL texted to your phone.

I tell you what, Pepsi, why don’t you just print the URL on the bottles?  How about a link to it on the website?  I’m all for trying something new, in fact I love trying out new technologies but when they’re so much hassle you might as well not bother.  I’d be interested to see how many people use the QR codes.  They may be handy in some cultures but as my post on the Japanese mobile industry showed ideas, no matter how good, don’t always translate.  I suspect QR codes may be one such idea.

Another celebrity who has benefited from blogging is Stephen Fry. His ‘Blessays‘ (as he calls his blogged essays), along with their associated podcasts (’Podgrams‘) and his recently established Twitter presence have helped rescue him from becoming just another aging actor hosting panel shows and BBC travelogues. Becoming a middle-aged posterboy for Social Media has helped re-establish him as someone on the cutting edge, something he’s lost over the years since his comedy heyday in the 80s.

Celebrity’s blogs can help their fans feel closer to them. That closer bond makes them more likely to spend money supporting them in the future. Part of that closer bond is down to the blog being a personal account of what’s on the star’s mind, unfiltered by the usual sanitised PR spin.

That doesn’t mean that every celebrity should necessarily publish their thoughts online without getting them checked over first. Just see the example of Kanye West. The Inquisitr has flagged up just why he should at least get his posts proofread before publishing. Written entirely with Capslock on, Kanye’s latest post complains about his treatment by the paparazzi.

“HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED…WHEN I LEFT THE CLUB, I WAS ENCOUNTERED BY A THIRSTY PAPARAZZI AS USUAL. HE FELT HE HAD MORE RIGHTS TO MY SPACE THAN ME, SO I PUT MY HAND UP TO PREVENT HIM FROM TAKING MY IMAGE. I DIDN’T ASSAULT HIM BUT MERELY PUTTING MY HAND UP TO COVER HIS LENS. MY SECURITY YELLED, “GET THE CAMERA OFF HIM.” I GUESS IN ALL THE COMMOTION THE CAMERA SCRAPED HIS NOSE.”

While there’s nothing wrong with the anti-pap sentiment he’s expressing, the way he does it makes him seem a lot less intelligent than I ever imagined him to be. For a start the capslock makes him seem like a shouty teenager. Although he’s writing in sentences, the caps make them hard to pick out making the post as a whole harder to read.

Whether you agree with Kanye’s point about press invasion in his life of not (after all he’s happy to use the press when he needs them) you can’t deny that looking like a semi-illiterate teenager is not the best way to express it. I always thought of Kanye as a peg or two above the Snoop Doggs and 50 Cents of this world. His lyrics have always seemed a bit smarter.

Maybe I was wrong about him or maybe he was just incredibly angry when he hammered out that post. Either way, he really should get someone to read over his posts in future before he hits ‘Publish’. I don’t think I’m being snobby here, it’s just that one of the basics of internet communication is Lay Off The Caps!

[Image Credit: Darkroom Demons on Flickr]

Ragdoll’s latest hit is In The Night Garden which launched on the BBC last year.  Any parent of a preschool child in the UK will be familiar with the tales of Iggle Piggle, Makka Pakka, Upsy Daisy and friends.  My girlfriend’s nephew is only 18 months old and is already a huge fan.  So much so that he’s taken a early love of merchandising tie-ins and has worked out that if you chew the Makka Pakka toy in the shop, Daddy has to buy it for you!

Like most Ragdoll productions, In The Night Garden makes perfect sense to young children but can seem to adults like just a load of people in weird costumes dancing about in private woodland.  There is, however, huge thought put into every single scene of each of the 100 episodes.  In order to explain that, the programme’s website has an exhaustive analysis of an episode with video commentary from the show’s creators.

If you have even a passing interest in the way TV is put together it’s well worth watching.  It’s written in such great detail that even renowned media Semiotician, Roland Barthes, would have enjoyed it.  So, head over to their site and have a watch.  If you need persuading, here’s the craziness they’re explaining…

While the Google Group for the Cafe now has over 150 members, we were honestly only expecting about 30-40 people to bother to turn up on a cold and windy November evening.  How wrong we were!  At its busiest point there were about 80 people there.  Attendees came from varying backgrounds - PR, journalism and tech startups seemed to be the main ones but there quite a few “just interested” types too so it was a good mix.

The “main event” for the first meeting was a panel discussion around that “Is Blogging Dead” meme from a couple of weeks back.  Craig McGinty, Chi-chi Ekweozor and I, chaired by Sarah Hartley of the Manchester Evening News debated the current state of blogging and there were some great questions from the crowd, bringing up subjects as diverse as best practice for corporate blogging to the apparent shunning of Livejournal by the blogosphere.

To be honest, it all went by in a bit of a blur for me and so I can’t really offer an objective view on the debate but there were a variety of responses from the crowd via Twitter using the hashtag #smc_mcr .  Michael Cooper and Simon Wheatley in particular offered some great live commentary of the debate as it happened.  There will be a big screen displaying hashtagged tweets at the next event to allow for a more interactive event.

The best bit of the night for me was the networking.  Events like this are a great opportunity to informally chat with all sorts of interesting people.  I had conversations about topics as diverse as creative ways to arrange screenings of classic films, the pro-TIF PR blitz in Manchester to the psychology behind voting methods in TV cookery programmes!

I did some live video streaming to Qik last night which is available here, here, here, here and here.  Sarah live streamed some of the debate on Bambuser here and here.  If you live in the Manchester area in the North West of England why not come along to the next event?  Join the Google Group for more information as it’s announced.

That’s all well and good but all that noise comes from somewhere.  Why not kill it off at the source?  Sure, some of the “noise” that people complain about is perfectly useful stuff for someone, it’s just that one person’s news is another’s noise.  The real problem is the stuff that’s pretty much useless to everyone.  Social Media content that’s created for no reason other than because it can.

One example of this comes from FriendFeed.  They recently launched the ability to stream every single thing you do on their site to your Twitter account.  I very quickly had to unfollow a couple of people of Twitter who decided to stream every FriendFeed comment, ‘like’ and shared item onto Twitter.  It was noise that was useless to everyone.  If someone wanted to know about all this stuff they’d follow the user on FriendFeed too.  All these FriendFeed items on Twitter simply clogged up my feed, making it difficult for me to see ‘genuine’ tweets.

Another example of pointlessly created noise comes from one of my pet-hate Social Media apps; BriteKite.  The idea of BriteKite is location-based social networking.  Don’t get me wrong - location-based apps are very exciting and given time and mainstream acceptance they’ll be very useful.

For now though, the main way people seem to be using BriteKite is to ‘check in’ at locations.  This simply means telling the service where you are.  BriteKite can then let your Twitter followers know where you are by posting a Tweet saying “I’m at Wormwood Scrubs” or whatever.  The tweet is accompanied by a full address for the location.  Now, this has its uses but I think that sometimes people “check in” just for something to do.  Do I care that someone is at Rochdale Station or on 5th Avenue?  No, and neither do at least 99% of their followers.  It’s just irrelevant noise.

I’ve probably been guilty of creating some pointless noise myself but I’m certainly careful these days to ask myself “Do I really need to broadcast this?” before I sign up to a new Social Media service.  So, maybe its time to ask yourself “Am I noisier than I think?”

TV and gaming have had a rocky relationship in the UK. Mainly the preserve of obscure satellite channels that show endless Unreal Tournament matches, mainstream TV has rarely been treated to good quality coverage of the videogame scene.  Those shows that do make it to channels with more than a handful of viewers tend to disappear as quickly as arrive.

Here are some of the most fondly remembered examples for deceased videogames shows.

Gamesmaster

Combining Patrick Moore with a little-known young Scottish presenter with a love of innuendo may seem an odd concept but that’s exactly what Channel 4 went with back in 1992 when Gamesmaster launched in a 6pm weekday slot.  With a focus on competitive challenges with a few reviews thrown in for good measure it was the first real ‘hit’ series to focus on games.

Over time the series’ quality declined.  In series 3 original presenter Dominik Diamond was replaced by former child actor Dexter Fletcher, best known for roles in Bugsy Malone and Press Gang.  Fans of the show, including my teenage self, were rather put off by his over-the-top cock-er-nee presenting style and Diamond eventually returned a few series later with a much more smutty version  of the show.  Still in a teatime slot but with more of a focus on getting as many glamour models and sexual innuendos into each show as possible, it was clear the show needed to be put to sleep.  That’s just what happened in 1998.  Here’s a clip of the show in its prime, from 1992.

Bad Infuence

Following the success of Gamesmaster, ITV decided to launch a new games show aimed at a slightly younger audience.  Presented by Andy Crane and Violet Berlin, the show was less about challenges and more about news and reviews, with children offering their views on the latest releases.

For hardcore  gamers like my brother and I it sometimes seemed a little patronising but it was always fun and it was a shame to see it disappear from our screens in 1996.  Here are a couple of reviews from the first series, including an Atari Lynx(!) game and one of the earlier John Madden series games, still a huge cash-cow for publisher EA today.

Bits

After the demise  of Gamesmaster in 1998, it was only a year before Channel 4 tried its hand at another videogames show.  This one, however,  was squarely aimed at adults and being on at about midnight it’d have to be!  Snappily edited and presented by a three-girl team who (shock) actually knew a lot about games(!) it was the smartest and most enjoyable games show to date.

Following the end of Bits, a similar show Thumb Bandits replaced it but it wasn’t anywhere near as enjoyable and was quickly axed.  One of the presenters of both shows, Aleks Krotoski, is now presenter of The Guardian’s Tech Weekly Podcast.  You may remember I went along to the Manchester meet-up in the summer.  Here’s a clip from the first series of Bits.

For the past few years, gaming has very much been relegated to those aforementioned obscure channels in the furthest reaches of Sky’s programme guide.  So, does the British public simply hate watching games and prefer to play them?  Possibly, but many more people watch Football matches on TV than bother to kick a ball themselves so there’s obviously a market for spectator sports.  Think of all the people who watch Soccer AM or Football Focus to get their Football news.  Are people so disinterested in games news that they won’t watch a show about them?

What’s likely is that as the number of games shows have declined from their 90s peak, TV commissioners have lost confidence in videogames as a ratings draw.  Times change though and with sales of games up 42% this year, maybe its time for them to reconsider that viewpoint.  While sites like Gametrailers.com can give us reviews and footage of new games, there’s still a home for a popular pastime like games on TV.  So, come on commissioning editors; give us a smart, fun show about games made by people who care about them.  Pitch it right and you’ll have a hit on your hands.

Subscription plans have existed for a few years now and they’ve all had drawbacks.  Napster offer unlimited downloads for a monthly fee, but the tracks are DRM-wrapped Windows Media Audio files which won’t play on iPods and expire if you stop paying.  eMusic offer unprotected high-quality MP3 files to keep forever but there’s a strict monthly download limit and the choice of music is quite limited, especially outside the USA.

In the mobile space MusicStation is a service that allows unlimited downloads but again it is DRM-encumbered and music is locked to the customer’s phone with no way to transfer the music to a computer.  Nokia’s Comes With Music has just launched and is another DRM-protected, unlimited downloads scheme.  Once again though, the music is locked to one phone although you can copy it to one computer and you do get to keep it forever.  It’s good, but it’s not the DRM-free, unlimited ideal.

It’s understandable that the music industry wouldn’t want to take the risk of licensing their content for such a Utopian dream.  They’d be too scared of helping all the illegal filesharers out there.  It looks like some of them have taken the plunge though.

Datz is a new subscription service offering that ideal of unlimited MP3 downloads with no restrictions.  If you’re prepared to pay £99 per year you get a USB dongle that you plug into the computer you want to download music on.  You can only download music from a computer with the dongle in but once you’ve got the music you can copy it and play it wherever you like.

There are still some teething problems.  The software used to download the tracks is Windows only (although a Mac version seems to be planed for the near future) and some of the biggest record companies such as Universal aren’t on board.  EMI, Warners and Beggars Group are though, so there’s plenty of content you’ll have heard of on there.

So, is your favourite band available on Datz?  Once you buy into the service there’s a search facility available in the software but finding out if it has the music you want beforehand is difficult.  Their site only offers an A to Z of artists and a genre search.  Searching for well-known bands i difficult as there are so many little-known artists out there.  I’m not a Coldplay fan but they are a popular EMI act, so are they on there?  You have to search through page after page of artists beginning with ‘C’.  After a while I discovered Chaka Demus & Pliers are on Datz, as are unknowns like Cinema 33 and Cocobongo.  On and on I went clicking through page after page.  44 pages in I finally found Coldplay, but only seven tracks are available!

Datz definitely need to point potential customers in the direction of their best-known content rather than confusing them with long lists of obscure artists.  Those ‘premium’ artists definitely need complete catalogues too.  Imagine paying £99 and discovering most of the music you wanted wasn’t there.

Hopefully Datz will iron out these problems.  Introduce a search facility to the website and if there’s enough music I want on there I’ll happily sign up.  It’s expensive up front but as long as there’s lots of good content to download it’ll pay for itself in no time.  Let’s face it, most serious music fans will spend a lot more than £99 per year on music.  If it’s successful the remaining majors will get on board and it will be an amazing proposition for anyone with even a moderate interest in music.

Datz is definitely one to watch.

The awards took place on the 22nd of October and you can read more about what went on there in my previous post about it.  There are also some videos from the event on my Qik channel.

Onto the podcast, then!  You can download it from my Podomatic page at http://14sandwiches.podomatic.com/ or you can subscribe to it in the iTunes Music Store.  Enjoy!

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this month’s podcast.  Look out for another one in about four weeks’ time.

Just take a look at the applications Nokia has for tracking your life; they’re becoming highly sophisticated pieces of social media technology.  Before we get onto the really juicy stuff, let’s start off with something simple that’s also incredibly useful.

Nokia Step Counter is a pedometer - you walk and it counts your steps.  The thing is, because it’s built into your phone it’s capable of so much more.  Apparently doctors say 10,000 steps is a healthy amount to walk each day (although that varies depending on things like your weight, height, age and state of health).  Step Counter allows you to see how close you’re getting to a daily target you set for yourself.

Leave it running on your phone right through the day and it will tell you your step count, the amount of time you’ve walked through the day, the number of calories you’ve burned and the distance you’ve walked.  There’s also all manner of graphs to see how you’re getting on and you can compare your stats from  different days.

As a simple exercise tracker it’s fantastic.  Using it in the last few days I’ve found that I’m walking about 7000 steps on a normal day.  I definitely need to get a few more in there!

If you’re a real fitness fiend Step Counter may not be enough for you.  For you Nokia has Sports Tracker.

Sports Tracker requires GPS to work and actually traces your journey on a map, giving you live information on your current speed and the distance you’ve traveled.  You can even see live graphs, updated as you go, showing your speed over time, your altitude and other stats.

Once you’re done you can upload your workout to the Sports Tracker website and share it with others if you like. The program’s tracking is frighteningly accurate and it always gives me a sense of glee to see a line traced out on my computer screen showing my exact route with markers for where I was fastest, slowest and the highest altitude point of my journey.

Sports Tracker started off as purely a sports tool but over time it’s grow into something much more interesting.  The latest version of the software tracks the music you listen to as you work out and the web service will even display any photos you take and videos you record on your journey.  It’s even been used to create Position Art!

So Sports Tracker is great, but there’s something even more exciting on the way.  Nokia viNe takes  lifetracking to the next level.  It’s currently in private, invite-only testing so I haven’t been able to give it a go.  However it’s certainly looking good.

Much the same as Sports Tracker, viNe tracks your journeys using GPS.  It remembers the songs you play as you travel and stores the locations of photos and videos that you create along the way.  The finished journeys can be uploaded to the viNe website, complete with any photos and videos that you choose to share.

A widget will soon be available to allow users to share their journeys on their blogs or other websites.  Just think how fantastic that could be for travel blogs.  An interactive, accurate record of a journey with rich media to illustrate it.  I’ve got some great ideas for using it myself, I just need to convince Nokia to let me on the trial first!  You can see an example of how it’s been used in India here.

If you want to try out these apps you can download Step Counter and Sports Tracker from Nokia Beta Labs.  They’re compatible with recent Nokia S60-based phones.  viNe will hopefully hit public beta sooner rather than later.

Currently in private beta, the site aims to answer the question “How am I going to be a better Dad?”.  In order to help men achieve this aim there’s an imaginative range of features on offer.  Heading these up is the ‘DADSDAQ’, a graph that tracks how many promises users keep for their kids. Maybe you’ll pledge to take your children to the park once a week, or read them a bedtime story more often.  This is a fantastic application of Web 2.0 ideas and shows that these technologies can be used to make family life better.

There’s the chance to get advice from other Dads too, using Twitter-style micro posts in a forum environment.  The micro-blogging approach extends to status updates which allow multiple people to be updated via SMS or the web as to what the kids are up to.  To extend its usefulness, Odadeo allows for child-related media sharing too.  Users can set up pages for each of their children, allowing videos, photos and the like to be shared in a controlled way.

The self-improvement approach of the DADSDAQ is a refreshing take on social networking.  It shows there are few limits to the different directions social media can be taken in.  It also shows that there’s more to proactive fatherhood than breaking into Buckingham Palace in a Batman suit.  It’ll be interesting to see how it develops when it moves into public beta.  There’s no word on when that’ll be as of yet.

Invite Codes: I’ve got 25 invites to Odadeo to give away.  If you’re a father and want to try out the service head over to their site and use 14sandwiches as the invite code.  Be quick though, when they’re gone they’re gone!