360angles

What do you get when you multiply psychedelic colors with contemporary shapes?

A one way ticket to a place called Awesome Town, that’s what. See you there!

Some of you may have noticed the bitmap in our sidebar. It’s a Quick Response (QR) Code. Normal bar codes are 1 dimensional: they store information horizontally. A QR Code stores information in 2 dimensions; horizontally and vertically.

A good way to think of a QR Code is as a real-world right-click. It’s a hard-link instead of a hyperlink. QR Codes that store addresses, contact information or URLs appear in magazines, on signs, buses, business cards or any other object that users might need information about. Our sidebar QR Code contains the url of the mobile version of the Voltage Blog. That way someone can just scan the QR Code with their phone instead of having to manually enter the url into their mobile browser.

The QR code is an open-source standard in Europe and Asia (In the sense that the specification of QR Code is disclosed and that the patent right owned by Denso Wave is not exercised.) In fact, Japanese Cell phone makers include QR readers in their phones by default. If you’re phone doesn’t have one, you can download one for free at any of these websites:

• Bee Tag (This is my favorite) – http://www.beetagg.com/downloadreader/
• Kaywa reader, Kaywa / 3GVision – http://reader.kaywa.com
• I-nigma, I-nigma – http://www.i-nigma.com
• QuickMark – http://www.quickmark.com.tw/En/basic/index.asp
• NeoReader – Accessible via iPhone App Store

Most of the sites above also have QR code generators where you can create your own QR code for anything you want to tag. Like your blog…

[photo by CoCreatr]

Li Chen’s Design Portfolio is fun to navigate and fun look at. The drawing is fun, and the work on display is nicely presented. Illustration has never been my forté so I love looking at hand drawn sites like this.

Twitterkeys is a great little collection of symbols and shapes that are UTF8 compatible. This just means that these shapes can go lots of places a font-based (dingbats) or html dependent picture (.jpgs and .gifs) can’t go.

Originally made by TheNextWeb for enhancing Twitter posts, I’ve found this bookmarklet helpful for spicing up my communication in other places, like forums and email signatures. Just drag this link to your bookmarks toolbar: TwitterKeys and you’ve got a pallet of very portable symbols and glyphs at your copy & paste disposal.

Independent dairies are finding a classic solution to a classic problem – how to differentiate their products. For inspiration, they hearken back to a time when ice cream was made on the farm, and milk was sold in glass bottles. For older people it’s a taste of nostalgia, for younger people it’s a novelty.

The appeal is simple – many aficionados swear milk tastes better from a glass bottle, and looks fresher too. Unlike plastic or cardboard, glass doesn’t alter the true taste of milk and it looks amazing on the shelf. “The glass, it just jumps out at you,” says Leroy Shatto, maker of Shatto Milk (shown above.) One thing is very clear. This old-time design approach is so retro, it’s trendy. To keep this trend alive, support your local dairy farmers by enjoying their yummy milk in glass bottles. But, most importantly – rinse, return and repeat the process.