What with Jonathan jetting off to Stockholm all the time (and not blogging much as a result!) I was feeling a bit out of it in terms of business travel.

So, off to Toronto I go in the first week of April.

Needless to say I’ll keep the blog going whilst I am over in Canada.

Howard
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Semapedia is a great new project that is linking virtual world wikipedia articles to real world physical locations.

By using the cameras that are in most mobile phones nowadays users can scan in a barcode sticker, which will be posted on physical objects, and in turn, download information about that place straight to your phone’s browser.

It goes a bit like this:

• People get given stickers that look a bit like crazy barcodes, you put them on places & objects & use the reference number from that barcode to create a review, or a piece of information about that place or object on the Semapedia website.
• Anybody with the new Nokia phones (and all next generation mobile phones I guess) can download a piece of software that translates these barcode things with the camera on the phone.
• The idea is you walk along, see a barcode somewhere, use your camera phone to translate the barcode, It then pulls the information about that place / object straight off the Semapedia site straight to your phone.
• Think about restaurant reviews… album reviews (Sema-codes on CD’s in shops?) …semicodes on billboards in Tube Stations (the barcodes can be as big as you want them to be) … possibilities are endless.

Exciting stuff! So far the technology is only working on Nokia handsets, so I couldn’t actually test it on my Sony, but readers for most other phone platforms are on the way via the Kaywa Reader software, and their web site allows you to register your email address so they can tell you when version 1.1 is out.

By bringing social networks and collaborative user generated content into the physical world this begins to bridge the gap that can seem so wide at times.

See, social tagging does have a real-world use!

Howard
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