QR codes on business cards should be contacts not URLs.

Posted on May 31, 2012 by james

Most of the time people put a URL as the QR code so they have records of when it’s scanned. I even heard of one firm where the staff had a competition to see who could get their QR code scanned the most.

But the problem with that is that firstly it doesn’t work if the user is off line, and secondly, you make the user perform an extra action to get to anything good.

What’s the alternative? You can embed several pieces of information including a URL in one code with a contact record (VCARD). Continue reading →

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What makes programming at hackdays great fun?

Posted on May 7, 2012 by james

Hackdays, events that bring many people from different backgrounds together to work on ideas, can be great fun for many reasons. But for computer programmers there is one particular reason it’s great fun.

Remember, the aim of the hack day is to explore an idea with other people, to see what is possible and hopefully kickstart the project into life after the hackday. You’ll probably end up building a prototype of the idea, to demonstrate how it works. The energy and ideas that are unearthed as people from different backgrounds work together is amazing.

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Flocklight: highlighting connections in a crowd

Posted on April 29, 2012 by james

For Culture Hack Scotland this year I worked on an idea I came up with that week. I feel I didn’t really do the hack day properly; I ended up working on my own and not using any of the data. But the event was the perfect opportunity to test the idea.

Flocklight pulls all the twitter data for those attending or mentioning an event like a conference, and tries to highlight useful data about the connections between people. The aim is to provide you with information so you make the most of an event. For instance, are others you know going? Do you have something in common with a stranger there who you can go and chat to?

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I wanna make a GPS Maze game, but with a twist.

Posted on April 14, 2012 by james

I want to make one of those GPS maze games, where a maze appears on your phone and you walk around in real life to navigate the virtual maze – but with a twist. Continue reading →

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Dealing with Twitter apps inflexible permissions

Posted on January 21, 2012 by james

Facebook apps, which can ask for any set of permissions from a user at any time, can start by requesting some basic permissions and can request others later when the users trust has been won. In contrast, Twitter apps are very inflexible. You must set what permissions you want and ask for them at the start, with no chance to change them.

If your Twitter app could work equally well with both read-only or write permissions, what do you do? If you ask for read permissions part of your app won’t work, and if you ask for write permissions then some users may be scared to give them to you and just abandon your app.

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Can someone write a present organising app?

Posted on December 13, 2011 by james

My family has recently been emailing and texting round as we sort getting presents for everyone – making sure they get something they want whilst not getting two of the same thing … shouldn’t there be an app for that?

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Do Job Searching sites clean data?

Posted on November 10, 2011 by james

You would think a basic rule for CV websites is if is a candidate hasn’t logged in for over a year then assume the data is out of date and flag it or remove it.

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What I got up to at this weekends Moving Targets hackday; replay social media with ShowShift

Posted on October 23, 2011 by james

What I got up to at this weekends Moving Targets hackday; we wrote a system that replays social media buzz as it happened on demand, so if your watching your favourite TV show later than everyone else you can still see everyone’s comments in context. Continue reading →

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See photos from the other side of the world

Posted on October 3, 2011 by james

Months ago, I was at a hack day in Edinburgh, and a team were working on a idea they called black and white. I ended up doing a version of it as a simple webpage.

It was based on color.com, the photo sharing service that shows you photos that others have taken around you. They thought this was daft – after all you know what’s around you, your already there. What you don’t know is what’s at the other side of the world. They wanted a service were you could take a photo, and you would get one back from the other side of the world. Continue reading →

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Using a custom domain on your service should not mean downtime!

Posted on May 28, 2011 by james

Many web hosting services like DrupalGardens.com and WordPress.com allow you to use your own domain. However, the set up procedure for many of them means that it is impossible to use an existing domain without some kind of downtime.

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