Ping

It's been crazy relocating from Tokyo to Amsterdam without taking time off of work. I've now got an apartment and a bike, so I'm pretty much settled in. I am a little concerned about the spiders.

I am not so fond of spiders.

There are LOTS of spiders around the parks in Amsterdam.

My apartment is near a park.

When we moved in for real and the owner had cleared out my wife and I could really check everything out. We went to the terrace (a big selling point on the apartment) and took a seat. Without turning my head I could see 6 spiders hanging in midair pretty close to me. One of them was eating a fly. I don't want to get rid of them because I expect they are there because my place is teeming with spider snacks.

Maybe a few spiders is better than swarms of gnats or horseflies. The only spider that concerns me is this little tiny guy in a corner of the terrace. Today we saw him slowly cocooning a horsefly maybe 20 times bigger than itself. Must be pretty poisonous.

Or maybe I should just relax and spray them away with a hose. That's my terrace.

DoCoMotion

Played with a few of these today at work. No interesting motion-capable apps come preinstalled though (that was my main reason to play with it :(). I'll have to download some I guess. The press release shows a full list of features, so check it out.

Trillcode Take 2

I was a little critical of Trillcode in a previous post about 2 months ago, especially the hype about integrating logos into (below) the codes. In the past months they have made some enhancements that allow you to place an image or animation within the code itself - a vast improvement that places the brand at the center of attention rather than the code itself.
I am still most enthusiastic about the approach Logo-Q takes, even though they charge an arm an a leg (around ¥200,000|€1,300|$1,600) Euro for one. With a little more practice I expect to be showing them up. DesignQR has me just as mystified, charging around ¥57,000|€350|$475 for a monochrome code with a tiny emoji-like image embedded in it. The same thing with more than two colors will run you an extra ¥20,000 (you could do this yourself with GIMP in 2 minutes). I didn't manage to track down pricing for the Trillcode PC Encoder, but I am very interested in finding out. Even if it is pricey, at least your money goes for a tool that you can generate many codes with rather than a designer dot-box that will lose it's purpose hen your campaign is over. Hmmm, now I guess I am being too hard on Logo-Q and DesignQR.

DIY LogoQ

About a month ago I wrote a little about Logo-Q and DesignQR and how they allow you to add images and logos within or integrated with QR-codes. It's not too difficult to see how they did it. Each QR-code can be broken down into pixel-like elements. If you just try to maintain the contrast between dark and light in the code you can make the codes much more interesting. When I get back to Holland I want to try this with some other barcode formats. These examples are a little crude, but not bad for 45 minutes of experimenting with Gimp. Especially considering that Logo-Q charges around 200,000 yen and up for one code. With a little refinement I could probably automate this:

• Choose background color
• Choose foreground color
• Choose and place image
• Choose dot pattern shape

Maybe I'll hack around with the Ruby qrencoder module or the qr-code Firefox addon.

Google Calendar and Checkout Go Mobile

So Google calendar is now officially mobile. No more hacks or v-cal exports to my phone (not necessary, anyway). Plus you get a nice link to a map if the event contains location information. Also Google Checkout is mobile as well. Users verify their identity via PIN rather than account credentials. Can't wait to try it out. Now if they will just let people pay in euros and yen as well as dollars and pounds...