Top Ten Blog Posts 2018

Over the last twelve months I have published 19 posts.

The post at number ten was from ten years ago, and contained a (now deleted) YouTube video on the new Skyfire browser for your Windows smartphone or PDA. Skyfire discontinued its Skyfire Web Browser in 2014.

The post at nine was now a rather dated post from ten years ago about how Scrabble’s owners were going to sue Scrabulous.

The eight most popular post was another ten year old post which was about when Apple was offering some free TV shows on iTunes.

The seventh post was from 2012 when my HP Photosmart printer died. My printer is dead! was a sorry tale about how replacing the ink cartridges on the HP B110a resulted it in destroying the print head.

The post at number six was Comic Book Fonts which was about the amazing comic book fonts from Comic Book Fonts.

The post at number five was wondering Where are my Comic Life Styles? I found them.

The fourth most popular post was about the free wifi (or lack of) on my holiday, Haven no wifi.

Polaroid Pogo printer

The post at three was about Dusting off the Pogo my old Polaroid Bluetooth pocket printer. Still going strong.

The second post was about when my iMac Fusion Drive Failed and had to have it replaced.

So the most popular post on the blog was my post about QR codes on chocolate bars, Cadbury QR Coding and Twirling was published in 2015 and was one of many posts I published on the use of QR codes back then.

Cadbury Twirl Bites QR Code

Tech Stuff: Top Ten Blog Posts of 2017

Over the last twelve months I have published 26 posts, many of these were about my return to fibre. So it is nice to see that the tenth most popular post on the blog this year was from nearly a year ago.  We will have fibre in “12 months”!  I said back then that according to BT Openreach we would have fibre within twelve months, I was slightly sceptical, but nine months after publishing that post I did get fibre.

new fibre cabinet 25

The ninth post was about when my iMac Fusion Drive Failed and had to have it replaced.

The post at number eight was another post about my fibre journey, Still checking… was when the cabinet was activated, but alas wasn’t accepting orders.

The seventh post was from 2012 when my HP Photosmart printer died. My printer is dead! was a sorry tale about how replacing the ink cartridges on the HP B110a resulted it in destroying the print head.

The post at six was about  Dusting off the Pogo my old Polaroid Bluetooth pocket printer. Still going strong.

Polaroid Pogo printer

The fifth post was how I don’t like BT FON which was originally published in 2011.

The post at number four was wondering Where are my Comic Life Styles? I found them.

The third most popular post was about the free wifi (or lack of) on my holiday, Haven no wifi

The post at number two was Comic Book Fonts which was about the amazing comic book fonts from Comic Book Fonts.

So the most popular post on the blog was my post about QR codes on chocolate bars,  Cadbury QR Coding and Twirling was published in 2015 and was one of many posts I published on the use of QR codes back then.

Cadbury Twirl Bites QR Code

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!

Ssshhh, Wispa

 

Oh what’s this?

Wispa

Yes it is a Cadbury Wispa!

I thought these had been discarded to the litter bin in the sky where all old chocolate bars go when they are replaced by new funky chocolate bars.

Probably a limited edition.

Buy hey it’s a Wispa bar!

Remember this…