Category: news

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Cadbury QR Coding and Twirling




I have in previous blog posts looked at QR Code implementation and how some companies implementations of QR Codes have worked or not quite worked.

Sitting down after munching some Cadbury Twirl Bites I noticed a QR Code on the back of pack and I had my phone with me, so I thought, well why not scan it.

Cadbury Twirl Bites QR Code

Using Qrafter on the iPhone I scanned in the code. It took a while to scan in the code as the foil packing and colours used on the QR Code made it difficult to capture the code. It reminded me of the chocolate QR Codes that the University of Bath made for the QR Codes project we did a few years back. Generally QR Codes work best when they are black on white.

Once I finally managed to scan the code I was surprised initially that I wasn’t given the choice to open the URL that was encoded into the code.

Qrafter Screenshot

I had to copy it and paste it into Safari manually. The reason was that the URL though correct, Qrafter didn’t recognise it was it started with landing. rather than www.

landing.cadburydairymilk.co.uk/qr/twirlbites/100

This is partly an issue with Qrafter not recognising a non-traditional URL and partly Cadbury for not putting http:// into the URL before encoding as a QR Code.

So

http://landing.cadburydairymilk.co.uk/qr/twirlbites/100

would have worked.

Having put the URL into Safari you are then faced with a mobile site for Cadbury.

https://technologystuff.co.uk/?cat=150

Swiping as directed results in a video of a chicken crossing a road.

a chicken crossing a road.

No I don’t really get it either, no idea what the connection is with chocolate!

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So where did iPlayer go on my Sony TV?

Sony Smart TV

It would appear that many Smart Sony TVs have lost their UK apps. I initially thought I was just unlucky, but it would appear from the internet tubes that many others have found that their Smart Sony TVs have lost their UK based apps, including BBC iPlayer, Amazon Player and Sky News apps.

Having recently replaced my TV, one of the reasons I chose the Sony KDL48W605 was the fact that it was a Smart TV and came with BBC iPlayer integrated into the TV. This means we can easily watch catch-up TV. Was slightly disappointed that there was no integrated ITVPlayer or Channel 4’s 4OD, though there is (was) Five on Demand. According to Sony this was down to licensing rights issues, less from ITV and Channel 4, but more from the rights holders of the programmes they show.

The apps on the TV are dependent on regional settings, and if you are based in the UK, then you get UK focused apps. It would appear that the server which delivers the various apps to the TV has failed to recognise those TV that are in the UK and as a result is not delivering the localised UK apps to them.

My initial thought was that only my TV was having a problem. My first few searches on Google only turned up Sony BBC iPlayer issues from 2011. I followed the guidance to refresh internet content to no avail, I then undertook a factory reset, retuned, etc and still no luck.

It was only after browsing the Sony support forums that I found other people were having issues, and the problem was been had by multiple different Sony TVs.

At the time of writing it would appear that Sony have been made aware of the issue on Friday, but as it was a bank holiday weekend, nothing so far has been done.

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Skype Group Video calls now free

It use to be the case that Skype group video calls required a subscription to Skype Premium, after today group video calling will be free for Windows, OS X, and Xbox One users.

You can connect up to ten people. It will roll out to all other Skype platforms soon.

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Wearing it on your sleeve

Android Watches

Google have recently a new version of Android for “wearables” specifically watches, Android Wear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrqZl2QIz0c

“That’s why we’re so excited about wearables—they understand the context of the world around you, and you can interact with them simply and efficiently, with just a glance or a spoken word.”

Wearables have been on the horizon for a while now. Rumours have abounded for a while about Apple’s iWatch and we have seen devices such as the Pebble which interact with your phone. Google have been “playing” with Google Glass in the US.

It’s interesting that Google see the next step is a watch.

Back in the 1980s the digital watch was incredibly popular, everyone I knew had or wanted a Casio watch, a watch that did so much more than just tell the time.

Today the watch hasn’t evolved, most people I know either don’t wear a watch or have retrograded to a “traditional” watch. In most respects, people see a digital watch as cheap and tacky!

If you though take a moment, though we are anticipating Android watches and Apple’s iWatch, there have been a few wearable technologies over the years already. The iPod nano was for many people a wearable, either attached to the arm when jogging or as a watch. Nike have their Fuelband and then there is the Fitbit.

The main difference with those devices compared to the anticipated smart watches, was they had limited functionality. The iPod nano was in the main, a music player, whilst the Nike Fuelband is about recording physical activity. You also have devices like the Pebble that aren’t isolated devices, but work in conjunction with your smartphone.

The newer anticipated devices, look like to be powerful multi-functional devices. You can see some of the concepts in devices such as Google Glass.

Mobile phones in the 1990s were in the main for making phone calls and sending SMS, some had a calculator, but generally they were limited single function devices. When you look at the Android phones and iPhones that we have today, these are cameras, gaming consoles, internet communication devices, video devices, as well as a device for making phone calls and sending SMS.

Generally when a device becomes more functional and flexible, the more useful it is for a wider range of uses and contexts.

So are you going to get a “wearable”?

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Let there be light

iSight

Interesting conversation on MacBreak Weekly about how low light impacts on video quality when using Google Hangouts or Skype. With low light, you need more gain, which means a more grainy video. More grainy video interestingly requires more bandwidth, so as a result services such as Google Hangouts or Skype have problems and downgrade the quality or buffer the video.

So if you use Google Hangouts, you may be at home or in the office, you very likely don’t have any studio lights (why would you) and therefore the environment is probably darker.

So if you are having connection issues using a Google Hangout, laggy video, latency issues, buffering, you might want to turn the lights on.

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Slow, but sure

iMac

I am finally getting my iMac working again after the system crash. Though I do have backups, there was some recent data that I wanted to retrieve, and as I do manual backups of the data (I know)my preference was to restore the drive as is, rather than rebuild from scratch. The simple way would have been format and then resinstall my apps and data.

Initially I was able to get the drive to “appear” using Firewire Target Disk Mode using another Mac. So my first approach was to “fix” the drive using the OS X Drive Utiity. This failed and the error message wasn’t that helpful, which was format and reinstall! I could mount the drive and read the files on the iMac, but couldn’t write to the drive or delete files.

My second approach was then to clone the drive onto an external Firewire drive, however this just didn’t work, in the main as I have a large full 1TB hard drive. So I went with manually copying over the files, but as I was copying from Firewire to Firewire through an old Mac, this was slow. When Finder said it was going to take 720 days (yes days not hours) to coop over 200GB of data, I knew that this approach wasn’t going to work.

So I created a boot drive using a spare external Firewire drive and installed OS X onto that. I then booted the iMac using the external Firewire drive as the startup drive. Success, however, though when using another Mac I could see the internal drive, when booting the iMac from an external drive the OS wouldn’t let me mount or see the internal drive.

Using the Google I searched on the Disk Utility Error Messages and the response across the web was to use DiskWarrior. I was a little hesitant as I suspected now that the drive problem wasn’t file system or OS based, but was a hardware problem (based on my previous experience).

In the end I did decide to buy DiskWarrior and once installed I got it going to let it do its work.

It took a fair few minutes to get going, but alas it couldn’t fix the directory problems and confirmed that there was a hardware issue with the drive and it would need to be replaced. However it also created a temporary file structure, which allowed me to copy files off the drive onto the replacement external hard drive and importantly do this quite quickly.

I was unable to clone the drive, but as I could copy files I was able to confirm I had the most recent copies, as well as checking system files.

So at the moment I am using an external drive, I will be taking the iMac to the Apple Store as I am disappointed that the replacement drive didn’t last very long, even though I am out of AppleCare.

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It just stopped…

Airport Express

My Airport Express working. Actually what happened was my TV which was connected to the Airport Express by wire couldn’t access the internet (so no BBC iPlayer for me then).

What I couldn’t fathom out was why it had stopped working, as I hadn’t done anything, I hadn’t done any updating, no re-configuration or changed any wires.

It was still broadcasting the SSID, so I first checked the wireless, devices connected to the Airport Express fine, however they got no internet access.

First did a hard reboot of the Airport Express, that didn’t work. So I did try and reboot the router and that didn’t work either. I was using a static IP address with the Airport Express, so I changed that to dynamic and the Airport Express ended up with a 169 IP address, a self-assigned address. So it wasn’t getting an IP address from the router, so I rebooted the router. No joy there.

The Airport Express isn’t directly connected to the router, it’s connected to an Airport Extreme which in turn is connected to the router. The reason is that there wasn’t a spare ethernet port on the router when I added the Airport Express to the network.

In the end I changed the ethernet port it was connected to on the Airport Extreme and guess what? Yes it all started working! So there was nothing wrong with the Airport Express, it was something else; the ethernet port on the Airport Extreme.

I have no idea why the ethernet port stopped working on the Airport Extreme. Well my network’s working now.

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What is Augmented Reality?

AR in Plain English

This is another of those really clever videos from the CommonCraft people, who take the time to explain what Augmented Reality is in plain English.

An introduction to a new technology that adds a layer of useful information to the “reality” we see on screens of mobile phone and computers.

Watch the video.

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How many adverts?

Broken Television

I’ve realised recently how little television I watch, but not only that how very little live television. If it wasn’t for the children watching Scooby Doo live then I would probably get rid of the TV licence!

In terms of pre-recorded stuff, the main avenues that I watch are BBC iPlayer, Netflix, iTunes and recorded television using my Elgato EyeTV tuner on the Mac. Reflecting I did note that I rarely watch ITVPlayer, 5 on Demand and 4OD.

4OD Logo

Watching 4OD on my iPad the other day I was slightly shocked, astounded and annoyed by the number of adverts. In one advert “break” there were seven adverts to “watch” before the programme continued.

Adverts on 4OD

As you might expect there was no way to “avoid” the adverts and as it was on my iPad I couldn’t switch to something else while they were playing.

I know really I shouldn’t be astounded, as 4OD is not funded by the licence fee, and when broadcast live there are also adverts. If I had recorded the programme then I could have fast forwarded through the adverts, or if I had bought the programme on iTunes then there would also have been no adverts.

I think my astonishment was more down to how rarely I watch advertisement supported television than the actual number of adverts.