QR codes and twitching

Hugo Andrade and David Parra Puente, of the Pacoche Nature Reserve in Ecuador, are trying to connect birdsong with identification information, using QR codes as a mediator between the two: something like Shazam for birdsong. The QR code step may seem a bit clunky but it allows a two-way interaction from song to book, and vice versa, recognising the limitations of typical birdsong descriptions ('tee-do-do-eet') in field guides and, perhaps, that mobile phones have limitations for field consultation.

[Reported by Jennifer Ouelette via NotExactlyRocketScience]

iMuse launch

From yesterday's tea party at the Museum of English Rural Life, to launch iMuse, a collaboration between the museum and the charity AACT (Access Ability Communications Technology) to make museums accessible.

In the picture, an attendee is shown how to use QR codes to find out more about the museum's exhibits.

Bar code scanning etiquette

Sign of the times (and technology).

[Photo by Scott Smith via Chris Heathcote]

Objects as media

I've always been intrigued by the idea of adding information to objects, to make them more usable and accessible (and, I suppose, with an 'internet of things', trackable). Tagging with RFID and barcodes is part of the story. Stickybits are adhesive barcodes which allow you to tag and add information to any item (using Stickbits iPhone app), without the object having an IP address. CEO, Seth Goldstein, describes this as 'objects as media'. Someone's taking him seriously: he's now signed a deal with Pepsi who might use barcode scanning to direct you to social media campaigns or (perhaps giving more incentive to scan) tokens etc.

Phone bar code readers

(NTT Docomo's service) Has come up quite a few times recently - first in Bill Moggridge's video clip of someone trying to buy a drink from a vending machine. There are huge problems with everything that happens after the bar code has been read - but not with the bar code use in itself. It has a high penetration among Docomo's customers.
Tomi Ahonen has written up NWA's advertising campaign (users point their phone at huge 2-d bar codes on advertisement hoardings that then take them to a quiz about NWA's travel destinations, presented as senryu poem).
And then I clicked from there to Tomi's rave review having first seen the technology in 2005. Quote "Typing is so last year."

Precise prescriptions

Radio 4's Casenotes describes a robotic drug dispensing system designed to reduce human error in hospital pharmacies. The system reads barcodes on packaging and picks and delivers the drugs to the pharmacist's work station. However the robot is limited by packaging size: it can't pick small packages. Sounds like a design opportunity.

One nugget that I picked up in the programme was that it wasn't until 1972 that drug packaging was required to display the name of its contents (and indeed I can remember medicine bottles saying just 'The mixture').