I'm a big fan of Groupon - the money saving site - that's why I'm so disappointed with their latest campaign. A nice simple set of banners. Let's gloss over the missing apostrophe in this one though... Which leads to the Groupon mobile friendly site. Well formatted mobile site. Free text field for an email address and a drop down list of cities they support. There's no notion of what they'll do with the email address - which is very naughty - but the worst is yet to come. After filling…
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Two years ago I was severely annoyed at Labour's Andy Burnham for his plans to censor the net. Today, I am equally annoyed at the Conservative's Ed Vaizey for a similarly corruptible scheme. I don't have the money to lobby bribe donate to the Conservative party. I'm too scared of the police attempting to kill protesters to go and stand up for my beliefs. What can I do that will make me feel smug and self-righteous yet won't involve me having to go outside in the snow? It is, I understand,…
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The unsurpassed guru of mobile phones, Tomi T Ahonen, has released his latest book for free! The book, "The Insider's Guide to Mobile", is an invaluable guide to anyone in the mobile industry. I've read through a few pages of it and it is smart, funny, useful and a hugely important tome for anyone in the industry. There's just one small niggle I have with it. It is released as a PDF. PDF is a terrible format for ebooks. Releasing a PDF ebook is the publishing equivalent of releasing an…
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After the derisory efforts of Waitrose to properly utilise QR codes, it's disheartening to see Debenhams make a brand new mistake. At the bottom of tonight's Evening Standard is this advert from Debenhams. Debenhams QR Advert The QR code immediately caught my eye and - being the saddo that I am - I immediatley whipped out ZXing and scanned it in. Debenhams QR Code What goodies would it net me? A URL to visit their mobile site? Contact details for a Christmas order line? …
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I'm an utter bookworm - on holiday, I like nothing better than to lie by the pool reading a good book. I generally average a book a day. Me reading a Kindle on the beach.... Last year, I took a mixture of eBooks and physical books away with me. This year, I'm only taking eBooks. That's where I need your help, gentle reader. Which books should I take? Which books do you recommend for a beach read? Criteria eBooks only. Liz & I have a Kindle and an Elonex 511EB - happy to have…
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What a joy for fans of 2D codes. London's freesheet "Metro" has adverts with two different styles of 2D codes on pages 14 and 15. In the left corner - John Lewis sporting a QR Code. In the right corner - the Donkey from Shrek going into battle with an MS Tag. FIGHT! QR Code This use of QR code leaves me a little conflicted. On the one hand, the code is too small and, either in resizing or printing, has become distorted. On the other hand, the code resolves to a great mobile site. …
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Well, looks like I was right. The good folks at ShowFilmFirst did treat us to an advanced screening of Tron: Legacy. They specifically asked us to embargo our reviews until 2200 tonight. That's given me plenty of time to ruminate on just how disappointed this movie left me. This review is spoiler free. By which I mean, there's so little plot, there's not much to spoil. Neo goes into the Matrix, fights Boba Fett, recovers Excalibur, Learns A Valuable Lesson, gets the girl. WARNING! This…
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For the last few months, I've been squirrelled away at IPC Media working on their Mobile Products. We've recently launched the Decanter World Wine Awards app on iPhone, Android, and Nokia (with BlackBerry coming soon). Thanks to the amazing team at Grapple for all their help. I'm now incredibly proud to announce the launch of the mobile sites I've been working on for IPC - goodtoknow - Marie Claire - Now Magazine! Point your phone at them and feast on the mobile goodness. A selection of…
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What's this I spy from across Woking Station? Why! An advert for the Olympus PEN - complete with a QR code! The QR code is near the bottom, and has some explanatory text letting you know how to use it. There's even a shortcode to get a reader. The URL that's sent back from the SMS is http://www.isitetv.com/mobile/reader.html which redirects to the popular i-nigma reader. A clearer shot of the QR card The QR resolves to http://www.isitetv.com/pen-m1.htm?INGUID=17662. The Mobile Site …
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This has been a really tough NaBloPoMo for me. Work has been frantic - meaning that my lunchtime blogging has been restricted to a quick bit of copy editing. I've also had some wonderful new toys to play with - which has distracted my attention. But the biggest problem? My Android phone. Don't get me wrong, I love Android - but for typing, it's nowhere nearly as good as my BlackBerry was. I spend a lot of my time on trains, so I'm used to being able to bash out a fairly lengthy post or…
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I don't want this to be seen as an anti-Microsoft rant. I'm a great fan of Windows Phone 7, my Microsoft 4000 keyboard is the only device I'm comfortable typing on, and my Xbox hardware is still going strong years after release. I'm also heartily impressed with Microsoft's continuing support of the Creative Commons. True, I don't use Windows at home - but I don't blindly devote my life to knocking them unfairly. But I do have serious concerns about Microsoft's attempts to enter the 2D tag…
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I'm a big fan Show Film First. A company which aims to get people to preview screenings of films - for free. There's also a confusingly similarly named company called See Film First with broadly similar aims. I'm not sure what, if any, relationship the two have. Show Film First concentrate mainly on bloggers - getting them to exclusive screenings in the hope that they will generate some online buzz about a movie before release. To help you on your way to creating a blog, they've created a…
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