News
We're in the GUARDIAN!! | Ben Templeton | Thought PieAfter some quick-thinking from the Happy Packages team, an impromptu photo shoot and some excellent work by the PR team, we've finally got lift off on some mega-publicity. Though, in truth, I'm not sure who reads this blog….
Have you seen QR?? | Tom Dowding | Thought PieWhen Thought Pie first came together (what a day), Mobile Pie talked a lot about these things called QR Codes and Thought Den thought that we were a bit obsessed with them. It was true that we desperately wanted to use them, but we heeded the warning of Film Producer Lord Puttnam, who said "Kill your darlings first", by which he meant, if there's something that you are really keen on doing, or are really proud of having made, drop it, because you probably want it in the project for the wrong reasons. We took his advice (though he clearly ignored it himself when using the squirty cream guns in Bugsy Malone).
However today the light switched on for Dan when I showed him how to send a text message via QR, and now it's wormed its way back into the plan. For those that don't know what I'm talking about (which happens alarmingly often), QR stands for Quick Response, and a QR Code is a 'Physical World Hyperlink' - a barcode with 2 dimensions of information designed to be captured on a phone's camera. It looks like this:
They can be used to encode text, phone numbers, URLs, and SMS messages! The only barrier is that you have to download a QR Reader onto your phone. We have found that the best one can be found here (it's free).
If you want to try it out, get the reader and snap the image above and it should create an SMS automatically that is preloaded with my phone number and a message! So come on try it out!!! It's said that 90% of all WAP usage in Japan is made via a QR code, which is staggering, so one thing that we want to achieve as part of Happy Packages is promote the use of QR to the general public in Bristol. We will be using it in at least one of our mini-projects. So stay alert!
Field Research, part 3, Distance | Dan Course | Thought PieToday we checked the distance we can deliver our content from when broadcasting from a raised position in the office.
Field Research, Part 1, Chased by 'fanny'! | Dan Course | Thought PieWow, what a lovely day it was Wednesday the 30th!
So not a good day for Thought Den and Mobile Pie to stay in, and as such we headed out into the big wide "real" world to do some initial Gopping tests.
We mainly focused on a few areas around town Fountains, KFC, Galleries and the Watershed (for drinks) in the hope all these areas would pull in splendid results like, every-one accepting the file we bluetoothed to them and then bought us drinks 'cos we were so clever.
How-ever,
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P.R. (Pervasive Relations) | Dan Course | Thought PieOne of the biggest challenges we've seen at Thought Den, (apart from having killer ideas, eyeing up potential ventures and knowing where to start…) is getting people to actually interact, turn on their Bluetooth or send an SMS with the system. In our every-day lives, we just don't have the reason to start mucking around with our devices for doing more than sending a text or listening to music.
So a question is raised,
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