If you’ve ever wanted to create your own barcodes then you’re either the owner of the local Tesco Express or you need to get a real hobby.

However, dull as it is, I couldn’t help be fascinated to find you can now generate QR codes (like barcodes, but far more exciting) online and for free, just by installing something on your phone to read them.

Now, I suppose you are asking yourself what a QR code is, and if you’re not, then you clearly have better things to do – but QR codes are all the rage in Japan (apparently).

In basic terms, this small square of black and white, that looks like an exploding Space Invader, can carry a load of information such as a text-based message, a url, a phone number or whatever.

A real world example; Japanese McDonalds are printing them on their fries packets to display fat content, and you’ve probably seen them elsewhere but not noticed it. Some clever people put them on their business cards.

If you are wondering why this is relevant to you, then you need look no further than your mobile phone. It is the scanning device.

Download this little Java application from here , and within five minutes you too can be using the phone camera to snap QRs from webpages or printed material. You can even experiment by creating you own here .

The real benefit is that the app will decode the message and store it for later. Names, addresses, messages, codes, urls etc etc. It will even try to transfer you to appropriate application to deal with the specific code type (e.g. open a web browser and follow the URL).

OK, so if you’re not writhing with excitement by now, I’ll put you out of your misery and tell you, that was as good as it gets. But at least you’ve (maybe) learnt something new and be happy that you can spend the rest of the evening writing rude messages that only you can read in little black and white squares.

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OK, so we’ve all got social network accounts now. If it’s not Facebook, it’s MySpace or Bebo or Ning or whatever.

I’ve been making these points to friends for a while now in various discussions, yet the implications of mass shared personal data in years to come doesn’t seem to have been considered by many people at all. I often find people surprised by the ideas, which I think are very likely to become a reality.

I think it maybe because we’re too used to thinking in block of five years when it come to the internet. Also, I’m not talking about the scary aspects of a Big Brother society (we hear them lot) but some of the benefits to be encountered in years to come, especially by future generations.

For example, we all know the popular Friends Reunited website. A place where you can rediscover lost relatives, classmates and streetmates was probably the once most-popular social networking tool. The Friends Reunited idea was great and today’s “2.0” social network tools have built on this.

But over the next few decades Friends Reunited will become completely redundant. I’m not saying the company will necessarily disappear down the pan, they will probably evolve to avoid disaster, but there is one crucial ongoing change that is sealing the fate of this service.

We are now forging maps of all our relationships way before they have a chance to be forgotten or be disconnected. In fifty years time, no one will need to use a reuniting service to find long-lost friends, instead you will just be able to look them up. Even if you forget their name, a few minor details (a year or an event you both attended) will give search tools enough to locate the person in your records. And even if you never added them as a ‘friend’, one of your friends may have done, so you search their records instead.

The social network is creating an incredibly rich layer of information that will eventually be available to our children and our children’s children. At the moment, if I want to find out the occupation, location and children of my great, great, great, great grandfather I know I can. I go to the census records and search, but this is probably the limit of what I can discover.

Essentially, I can track down some specific information about maybe the past six generations, in periods of every ten years for 167 years (since the national census began). If I want to go back further, it’s really sketchy. All I can ever know about any one of my blood ancestors is the house they were staying in on one particular night on maybe six or seven days of their whole life.

I cannot see a photo of them. I do not know who they knew or who they worked for. I do not know what their job entailed or where they travelled to. I maybe able to trace their accommodation if the buildings still exist, but I can’t see it as it was as they lived. I have no idea of their personality, their likes and their dislikes.

In fact in comparison to what will be available to our descendants in a few decades time will be truly stunning. We have to remember, our data is a commodity, and is only ours until we die. After a while it becomes the property of whoever buys it. In thirty years time, we don’t know who will own Facebook. We don’t know if anyone will sell the database of millions of names (the holy grail for anyone in the illegal mass-marketing game) or make it public by accident. But we can assume that it will not be that long before demand to the access of records by historians will be huge.

In 100 years time, when most of us will be gone – our grand kids will be curious to find out what they can about granddad in his youth. There will be no stigma attached to accessing this information, as like copyright, or the archaeological excavation of an ancient grave – it eventually becomes part of the public domain.

The curious result will that the process of mapping family/interpersonal history will become far more complex than it is now, but also more accurate. Historians will be able to plot the exact movements (or at least much more than they ever could now) of any person part of a social network. Although the information is likely to be biased to some extent (as it is self-generated), it will mean they will know the equivalent of if one of your ancestors taught Shakespeare English, or if great-granddad really did punch the guy who went on to invent time-travel.

Of course, it’ll all be open to interpretation and all the silly stuff that goes along with it. Jokey relationship “descriptions” between people in Facebook will cause maximum confusion for historians, but at the same time, they will be able to partially rectify this by piecing together a personality using the other information available, such as who the person talked to, the mannerisms expressed in their comments and the places they photographed.

Bearing in mind that just in the past thousand years, there have been at around 30 generations of You, meaning that you know very, very little about the millions of relatives that eventually made you you. Had things continued as they have done for centuries before, when you eventually pass on, your entire life would be (if you’re lucky) summed up in a name between two dates – birth and death – with no record of what you we’re doing one afternoon in the summer of 2007.

I’m not sure if other people feel the same way, but there is something strange, but not necessarily unpleasant about your descendants knowing this much about you. For example, it is very possible that in two hundred years time, these exact words could be being read by a seventh-generation grandchild of mine.

Hello kiddo.

Odd eh?

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With the US launch of the multi-touch iPhone expected imminently, I am not surprised that Microsoft has upped the ante once more and outed it’s newest product – Microsoft Surface.

The technology that goes into this beautiful interface has been seen knocking around for a while. NYU’s Jeff Han demonstrated a similar prototype in 2006 at the annual TED conference in California and interest in the technology has been wide.

Microsoft’s package is noticeably low in Microsoft branding; a feature that has slipped over from the Zune (their media player, yet unseen in the UK) and something of a smart move.

The associated promotional site is neatly designed reflecting the product, and the logo is very suitable. The whole package seems to be another departure from what Microsoft came to represent until Apple started to make successful in-roads into digital media.

If Apple (or anyone else) had been planning on releasing anything similar, they’ve had some of the thunder stolen. It’s exactly what Steve Jobs did with the pre-announcement of the iPhone a number of months ago – the unveiling of the product months before a ship date (or even before being signed off by the looks of things) indicates a company scared that they might be beaten to it. Why else would you deviate from a tried-and-tested launch technique that whips your fans into a buying frenzy? Maybe they heard Microsoft we’re planning on releasing something big or similar soon and got spooked?

There have been rumours in recent months of the same touch technology used in the iPhone way well be ported in new Mac models, and we’ve still not seen exactly what Leopard, the next generation of Apple’s operating system can do.

It’s not like Microsoft have just copied an idea here either. It looks like they probably had the head start in terms of development (starting out as a gaming platform). They’ve got some brilliant innovation built in. Using their table top device, you can place “domino tokens”, devices and smart cards on the surface which the table can identify and interact with. The demonstration shows how this can be integrated into new forms of payment, direct marketing, organising, media viewing, file sharing and other experiences that we don’t currently encounter.

I think we are going see a new type of head-to-head we’ve not seen before between these two companies – each trying to break new markets first. We know they both have these technologies now, so it’s just seeing who uses it most effectively, first.

Visit the official Surface site or watch the CNET demo .

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This is a public service broadcast. If you have a new Macbook and are likely to ask me “Andy, what do I need on my Macbook?” then this might be an ideal read. This is especially relevant to first time mac users.

Being that I am now regularly finding myself being asked by friends about my Essential Selection, I have decided it would be far more sensible to jot it down here so that the links are all in one place.

Some of this stuff is very obvious, some is hardware, some is software, some is more Mac general than just for Macbooks. Use the bits you need.

Parallels

In my opinion Parallels is the best virtualisation software on the market. Alternatives include VMWare Fusion (a free beta, but with no right click support for Macbooks), Crossover (again free, allowing Windows applications to run in OS X directly) and Apple’s BootCamp (a beta likely to be bundled in Leopard, OS X 10.5, but requires a reboot to switch from OS X to Windows). Parallels supports any common version of Windows, however I’ve yet to find a way of installing anything without a bootable CD, so that rules out anything pre-Windows 2000 for me.

Memory

Although this is mixing hardware with software, I think it’s critical to point out the Macbook sees marked performance of virtualisation software with a memory upgrade. My logic is the sooner you buy it, the better value for money it becomes as you will get more use from it. Macbooks support up to 2GB of memory, and I recommend you buy from Orca , who offer a high quality product at a percentage of the cost of Apple’s branded stuff.

Unfortunately your Macbook will have come preloaded with two 256MB sticks (unless you customised at purchase) and these have to be totally replaced. Thankfully you can do the job yourself and it takes only a matter of minutes. The instant power boost is very noticeable and you can now happily run OS X and multiple instances of Windows at the same time with no lag. Everything else starts to act sharpish too.

(Note 1: go for the full upgrade straight out as having to again replace two 512Mb for two 1Gb down the line is going to be much more expensive in the long run).

(Note 2: keep your old memory. Not only is it pretty worthless coming in such small units, but if you ever have problems you should swap it back in to see if your upgrade was causing the issue).

Quicksilver

I’ve never heard anyone say they didn’t like this free little application , and amongst friends we’re pretty sure this is going to be swallowed up by Apple for use in Leopard (doing a ‘ CoverFlow ‘). If you’ve not discovered Spotlight yet (the inbuilt search mechanism in OS X), don’t worry about it, just go and download this instead. Quicksilver is a keyboard based search and task manager that ticks over silently in the background. Alt + Space brings up the small dialogue and from here you can open, close, move, edit, lookup, and execute pretty much anything on the computer. Enabling some of the extra plugins are a must, including:

• Dictionary Actions
• Text Manipulation Actions
• Apple Address Book Module (for searching contact details too)
• Extra Scripts (for shutdown and other shell actions)

You really can’t beat this program. It may take a few days to get used to, but it speeds up productivity no end – and that’s coming from someone who was initially sceptical.

The iSync Plugin For Your Phone

This might not be essential for some people; my W800i used to connect with iSync without a plugin, but my K800i isn’t so keen, so use this free download to remedy that.

There is no excuse not to keep your phone up-to-date with your address book and calendar with Bluetooth being so straight forward, and it provides a quick and easy way of ensuring if you were to lose either one of the pieces of kit, at least you’ll have a backup.

Flip4Mac

Quicktime is great, but you can’t play Windows Media files on there, so get the free version of Flip4Mac which gets over the proprietary movie format problem. Alternatively, if you don’t like Quicktime, VLC pretty much plays everything even if it isn’t much in the way of eye candy.

Colloquy

As an IRC newbie, this is the only app I’ve tried for, but it seems to work fine if you’re into that kinky chatroom stuff.

Remote Desktop Connections

Mac-on-PC, PC-on-Mac. No, this isn’t some geek porn mag, it’s the fantastic way you can use VNC or Microsoft’s Remote Desktop client to access another computer remotely. Although you may already be familiar with this stuff across a single platform, you might not know it’s also possible to do it across different OSs.

iWork

Throw away PowerPoint and start using Keynote for presentations. You will blow away any PC audience with this type of demo and the tools are very simple to pick up. I have less experience with Pages , but I hear very good things. Both applications come with the annually updated, fairly-reasonably priced iWork suite (only fairly-reasonabley priced because they update it annually).

Games

I am a fan of patience when wireless cannot be accessed. For this I recommend Solitaire XL . A little fancier than it’s Window’s counterpart it’s perfect for train journeys and lectures.

If you’re willing to experiment, Ambrosia Software’s Aperion X will stick to you like a heroin habit. Don’t pay for a licence otherwise the the 15 levels limit is removed and you could end up playing until infinity, and that simply won’t pay the bills.

Finally Macdoku is an interesting, free Sudoku generating app. I’ve yet to work out if I actually like it as I’ve not yet managed to complete a single game, and I’m not entirely sure it’s possible. You shouldn’t be wasting your time playing games anyway.

Salling Clicker

A little luxury, Salling Clicker means those with Bluetooth enabled phones can control their iTunes collection using their mobile. Unlike using the provided IR controller Apple give you, Bluetooth means this method works over longer distances and without line-of-sight. A nice addition is that you will magically be able to see the artwork on your phone screen, do direct searches and create playlists on the fly wherever you are in the house.

Honourable Beasts

Adium is free and allows you to run all your favourite messaging protocols at once. For the layman, that means you can run MSN, iChat, Google Talk, Yahoo! and a few others through one applications. Multiple account sign-in (polygamy) is also possible.

CyberDuck is a free FTP application which comes bundled on the install disc, but can also be downloaded. Maybe not the best FTP app out there, but it works.

Netfixer takes full-page screenshots of websites. There are other programs that do this but as I’ve not used them, I can’t comment.

If you’re not content with just screenshots, SiteSucker retrieves an entire site as HTML and with links and images intact. I use this all the time for local copies of dynamic sites to show to clients in case of an emergency. It can be a real lifesaver when the internet fails to work.

Using StuffIt Expander will help you unpack most forms of common archive. OS X copes with some standard ones, but this fills the gaps nicely.

A Couple Of Indispensable Websites

If you want to find free Mac software, I can highly recommend http://www.FreeMacWare.com as this is where much of my free software selection is made from. For software generally, try http://osx.iusethis.com . I subscribe to feeds from both these sites and something good usually turns up every couple of days.

A Couple Of RSS Feeds

If you are the sort of person who doesn’t listen to anyone else’s opinions, blindly argues the case for anything white and shiny and cries when you drop your iPod, then whatever you do don’t visit these sites. You will kill yourself through dehydration, salivating yourself to death from all the silly little rumours about upcoming product launches. Only subscribe to AppleInside or MacRumours if you think you still have a strong enough grip on reality. Little speculation you read on here transpires, but they are good places to go for the latest news on software/firmware updates and product discussions.

Software I’m Not Sure About

While Microsoft Office dominates, I’m not so sure about forking out for a license for my Mac, so I’m currently using OpenOffice . Unfortunately it’s not yet a universal binary, which means it won’t run at full performance on Intel Machines (all Macbooks fall into this category) and you have to run X11 (installed from your Tiger installation disc) everytime you want to use it. They are working on making it native, but it’s not quite baked yet.

If you have bought a Macbook since they started using Intel Core 2 Duo chips, you might or might not be aware that Apple secretly was shipping them out with the next generation wireless cards in them (801.11n draft). Most wireless home and office networks are currently 801.11g (the version before this new one) so you can’t really use it yet, but none the less if you want to ‘enable’ the extra functionality you need to pay £1.25 to download the official update from here . You have to pay for it due to a legal situation regarding selling products with hidden features.

And that’s about it. There is other software I use, but it’s specific or just bundled with OS X anyway. I’ve yet to pick my mac based text editor yet, but I know that TextMate comes highly recommended. If there is anything I’ve missed that is a good shout, drop it in the comments.

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For weeks I’ve been agonising over what comes next with regards to my phone. I currently have a rather spiffy SonyEricsson W800i, which although has the aesthetics of a flattened Irn-Bru can, does everything I need. The reason that I decided to go onto contract last year was based on a need to make more calls, and my time with Orange in the past 12 months far surpassed anything that T-Mobile ever managed to offer me on pay as you go for the previous five years.

Well, it’s that time of year again, and I’ve got the chance to upgrade. I’ve been angling quite heavily for the K800i, another SonyEricsson, and with the fundamental benefit of a camera upgrade – the key selling point for me on my last three phones.

I had been contemplating just not getting a new phone, and simply picking up a fantastically cheap, if not practically free contract and hold off on the new handset until maybe something shiny and O-SXy turned up (see what I’ve done there?), but temptation surpassed me tonight and I’ve gone and ordered it.

In a way, it is a necessary upgrade, and like all my significant purchases, the effects of my purchase trickle back down the line.

I’m not keen on buying for the sake of buying, but the K800i significantly improves on night-time photography over my current phone, and because good captures are essential for my state of mind, the ol’ 2MP camera is just not cutting the mustard any more.

The old phone will probably end up being pimped out to Father, or if not a lucky eBayer or one of my many fan clubs who I’m sure would love a piece of AAJH memorabilia for their display cabinets.

Whatever happens though, I’ll be a very happy chappy come Thursday morning, especially in the knowledge I managed to persuade the company to cough up a cheque to cover the remaining 15 days of my old contract (tell them you want to buy today, but you don’t want to miss the offer… they all work on sales-now commission).

In other news, I tried to encourage Swan to get a job. Despite being one of Loughborough’s most recent mathletics (Maths and Sports) exports, he has been unable to settle on any one job as yet (partially due to sleep, and mostly due to partying). Only time will tell if he ends up working as a high profile betsmith in the city, or more likely, an Umpa Lumpa at the Zeppelin Cider factory.

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Looks like they’ve recruited Mitchell & Webb to do some UK versions of the Apple Get A Mac Ads .

I’ve got a ridiculous pile of things to deal with today.

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It’s unusual for me to post so much tech stuff in one go, but a few things this week have got the focus of my attention.

Firstly, I have upgraded to Yahoo! Mail Plus. Most people might have assumed that being a web-type, I probably have my email system sorted down to a tee, but that is far from the truth. I have had my Yahoo! address from the first time I ever went onto the internet back in 1998 or sometime around then, and ever since have been reticent to change it because of the level of confusion it causes. I really don’t like it when people change their contact details, that’s why my phone number is what it is and has been since 2001, and I’m planning on keeping that way.

For a long time I have wanted to break the shackles of free mail, but there are just some conveniences that a third party webmail system provide that you just don’t get any other way. For example, I know my mail is constantly backed up, always accessible and is all in one place. The problem with free mail, especially Yahoo! Mail, is that you get silly little adverts along the bottom and your address doesn’t sound that professional either.

Over the years I’ve tried to create secondary email accounts. My main domain/work account has switched over so many times it is hard to keep track of where it is pointing, but as Yahoo! mail doesn’t allow you to assign your domain email addresses to your account it was never a satisfactory solution. That is, until now.

As you may or may not know, Yahoo! like Hotmail, is running a beta version of it’s new mail program. It’s like having Outlook or Mail running in a browser window, with full drag-and-drop for messages and attachments-upload-while-you-type. It’s really fantastic and really quite stable. I have been tres impressed.

The problem up until now is that it still sticks those silly little adverts on the ends of my email, I’m still stuck with a Yahoo! email address (albeit two now, they let us have a second one last year) and no domain attachment facility, unlike the lauded GMail service (send and receive your domain mail from your standard GMail inbox). But sometime recently they snuck this last feature into the lineup on their Plus package. So I signed up (£11.99 pa).

Finally, the adverts are gone, including the ones in my inbox. I have a full screen of pure message. The capacity has gone up to 2GB from 1GB, but this is of little concern as I keep my inbox pruned down to just the essentials. I now can send and receive not only from my Yahoo! address, so there are no lost messages, and I can confidently hand out my work email knowing that I only have to check one inbox from now on. I am very pleased, and don’t mind paying that small amount for the privilege.

All I want now is IMAP, and according to recent discoveries by other Y! Mail users, and also Apple’s announcement this week, I wouldn’t be surprised if it an option given to subscribers later this year. But even if it doesn’t happen, I’m still going to be happier with my mail than ever. The new interface is really leading the field in my opinion, and although Google has the edge with integration of all it’s other applications, I’d rather keep my Yahoo! Mail any day.

Secondly, I love this . What a brilliant idea; it’s funny nobody has tried this before. I’ve seen some unusual bastardisations of Mac Minis in the past, but this looks like great fun.

Finally, and not very tech related, I was incredibly annoyed this morning to find a book (the book was tech related) that Amazon had allocated me £2.32 to send, actually cost me £7.70 to send. I was not impressed.

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