QR Codes

I was dead excited today while browsing the DVD section in Tesco. I mean, I'm usually quite excited about looking for movies, so I suppose it's no real surprise, but this time there was an alternative reason for my delight.

For a couple of years now I've been interested in QR Codes, those interesting blocky "bar" codes. Actually, since I watched an episode of CSI:New York, where the codes were plastered round the city for aspiring adventurers to find and photo. I can't remember what information was being colllected in these codes, but I do remember that the very next day I obtained a copy of a QR Code reader for my phone, and started investigating their use.

I was a bit disappointed to find there was not a lot going on with them, and decided to think of possible applications. I had read about someone who had set up a bit of neato software so that he could be browsing videos in his local blockbuster, decide which film he wanted to watch, enter the title in the software on his phone, and have the film bit-torrented by the time he returned home. Now I actually had in mind something a little more, well, legal, you understand, but my thought was that one could adapt this to work in a similar way, but you'd have a account set up, you'd see a piece of media you wanted, photo the code, and it'd be waiting for you - legally, mind - when you get home. I couldn't work out why anyone would want to have the codes on their media, because, after all, they'd want to be selling their media, not letting you browse it and put back on the shelf. But you see where I'm coming from?

And so back to my excitement this afternoon. On the back of the Chatroom DVD was a QR Code, with instructions to follow the code and view the trailor. Which would have been super fabulous if I'd had anything remotely approaching a 3G signal there at the back of Tesco!

Edit: As it happens, even when I had a signal, my phone refused to show me the video, but I suspect that's a limitation on my own hardware. I'm still working on those other uses!

Hoaxes and Google

I know I've written before about my wonderful friends, and their inability to use Google to search for the hoaxes in the emails they forward with such monotonous regularity. However, today's question is this: Why do people start these idiotic lies in the first place?

For me, at least, one of these will cross my email portal (I'd have said door-step back in the day when it was chain-mail), and while there are days when I can't be bothered to look it up, and it doesn't sound too stupid anyway, so I'll accept it at face value for the moment, but I'm certainly not passing it on. Then there are the ones which are so chock-full of patently idiotic claims that I'll be compelled to head on over to Snopes or Google, just to confirm my suspicions.

So it happened recently that I was in receipt of an email telling me that for the first time in, like, FOREVER, this year July has 5 (count them!) Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. This, the email continued, happens only once every 823 years!!! Yes! That's right. Once in 823 years does July have the 5 weekend days. Since I was busy thinking about other stuff, I actually ignored this one, and sent it to trash. I wondered, briefly, if this was true, but mention of Feng Shui dampened my curiosity, so I didn't bother to look.

On to yesterday, when a link on Reddit caused me some amusement, but I still delved no deeper.

Until this morning. I have a friend. No, I'm not boasting! Really, I have many friends, but this one is special. She's one of the ones of whom I wrote last time, one of the ones who will forward on any old crap, and for whom any kind of skepticism is a totally alien concept. She's also a person I love deeply, so we'll be using no names! Let's just say it came as NO surprise whatsoever to find that she'd done the old copy pasta on her Facebook page this morning, exhorting us to do the same, because those who read and don't copy will get NO money!

So, having meanly shown that the last such incident of the 5 Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in July was none other than 2005, I came away from Facebook somewhat grumpy, questioning why people DO this. It's not as if there's any actual money in it for them. You're not trashing anyone's hard drive.

Maybe it's for the sheer joy of seeing something you "created" all over the interwebz. The delight you feel when you prank someone and they fall for it must be considerably more delightful when it's a whole bunch of gullible people all over the world, and you can see it being spread by these, um, simple people to all their simple friends. Perhaps it's because you want to expose the world as being inhabited by considerably more morons than reasonable, reasoning people. Maybe, just maybe, you're hoping that by exposing all these morons, they'll see the error of their ways, and actually start to do some research.

Sadly, if that's your plan, I've got to tell you: You're going to be disappointed! I've been actively informing my special friend of the stupidity in believing all the crap being forwarded, and while she gaily apologises for the single infraction I've highlighted, she's back to her old tricks before the virtual ink has dried.

I now feel like a grumpy old woman. And you can just Get Off My Lawn!

Why?

It's possible that many of you know I recently (late January, anyway) signed up for Facebook. I was unsure of its utility until I managed to friend an old mate of mine who'd had a stroke a couple of years ago, and although we'd been in touch via email while she was in hospital, we'd ended up out of touch again. Once we'd become FB friends, I found myself able to see her updates, share in her frustration with physio, and rejoice in the delivery of her new, disabled-friendly car (and yes, I know that's horribly un-PC, but I just can't work out how to say it). This alone has made signing up for FB worth it all.

However, I find myself perplexed by companies' insistences that I "follow" them on Facebook. Why? Please tell me why I'd want to "Like", for example, Domino's Pizza on Facebook? And Domino's are not the only ones. I keep seeing signs - Follow us on Facebook/Twitter etc.

I truly cannot see any kind of advantage to me in doing this. It's bad enough that every band/film I've cited on my preferences page puts unnecessary updates on my home page on a semi-regular basis (until I worked out how to stop that nonsense!), but can you imagine how much extra spam through which I'd have to filter if I said I Like Domino's?

I'm going to do an experiment. Sorry Domino's, it's not you! I use a chat client called Nimbuzz on my phone, which I find a particularly useful tool, but every time I fire it up, I'm exhorted to "follow us on Facebook!" as it loads its network and checks to see which of my friends are online. I'm going to "Like" Nimbuzz on Facebook and see what happens. I'm going to see whether this enhances my life, or is completely meh.

I'll get back to you on this...