

World’s First ‘Wikipedia Town’ Goes Live Today - sparknlaunch12
http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1112538383/worlds-first-wikipedia-town-goes-live-saturday/

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lusr
Nice idea but I wonder how long it'll be until the local school kids replace
the QR codes with links to 4chan and 2 girls 1 cup.

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guynamedloren
First legitimately useful execution of QR codes I've seen. In 2 years of
Android ownership, not once have I been compelled enough to scan a QR code to
learn more about something.

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tomflack
Over lunch yesterday a graphic designer friend was trying to convince me to
include a QR code on my business cards. We ran through the many steps required
to scan a QR code... and end of conversation. It is a very limited technology.

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DanBC
QR codes on name badges at conferences may be useful. But then some kind of
augmented reality splotch would be better. You point a smart phone at the
splotch and up pops information about the person - name, company,
specialities, etc.

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derefr
I'm imagining QR codes will really come into their own when the Google Goggles
(and later competitors) make augmented reality default to on. Then QR codes
will probably just always have a little hypermedia description-augment
floating about in space in front of them, and you just have to focus on it to
"go" there. I feel science-fiction-y just thinking about it.

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Tichy
I think those glasses will be able to decipher text directly.

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DanBC
I think those glasses will be able to recognise faces directly. Great for
avoiding those "Hello Mrs, er, yeah so How are you anyway?" moments.

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Kilimanjaro
I don't like QR codes, no matter how much lipstick you put on them.

Can we think about a better alternative? human+computer readable?

Like a hashtag or something? and let the apps do the walking?

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dkersten
Agreed. I always found QR codes too awkward and cumbersome to use and theres
no way I can remember or write one down for later if I don't have a smartphone
or camera handy.

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fromhet
The thing is that people with smartphones often _do_ have them handy.

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drcube
I thought this was going to be about a wiki-style government. But this is cool
too.

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peaceful_weapon
How, you think, wiki-style government would have worked?

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Jauny
Ahahah yeah anybody can go change the laws, rules and human rights whenever
they want, from home :)

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fromhet
And horrible edit wars...

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Ralith
Literal edit wars, perhaps!

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simonpantzare
Wikipedia already has geolocated entries[1]. Apps that make use of devices'
GPS chips together with services like GeoNames[2] or WikiLocation[3] would be
easier to use.

1\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Geographi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Geographical_coordinates)

2\. <http://www.geonames.org/wikipedia/>

3\. <http://wikilocation.org/>

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philipn
For a variety of reasons (technical, social, logistical), Wikipedia isn't
suited for really hyperlocal knowledge sharing. The same factors that make
Wikipedia work well actually work against collecting really specific,
uncitable, non-noteworthy local knowledge.

If you're into this sort of thing you should _definitely_ check out the
LocalWiki effort: <http://localwiki.org> We're a non-profit, decentralized
project to collect and share the world's local knowledge.

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h2s
This is in a small Welsh village. If they haven't thoroughly checked for
adequate signal strength in the places they installed these, this might be a
PR disaster.

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jarofgreen
From the article: "Furthermore, Monmouth has committed to provide free Wi-Fi
throughout the town, making them the first location in the entire nation to do
so and making it possible for visitors to edit articles on the fly."

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Tichy
In hundred years they will be known as "QR Code museum" :-)

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dlsym
This would not be possible with the german wikipedia. The Articles would be
declared irrelevant and deleted.

