360angles

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]

This should be a bookmark for everyone who does graphic design out there. This directory has free zipped  Adobe Illustrator vector files of flags for every country in the world.

Free Vector Flags of The World

If you’re a web designer in Missouri, this is a good place to get listed: The Missouri Web Design Directory. (They also offer a national directory as well as one by city.)

1. English-to-Pirate Translator. Ye best be learnin’ t’ be talkin’ like a buccaneer.
2. A guide for picking up wenches in a manner not unlike Blackbeard himself. May the one you catch keep the wind in your sail.
3. Download some free Pirate Fonts. The pen is mightier than the sword.
4. Learn about the most successful pirate of all time. The scurvy dog controlled a fleet of 1,500 ships and upwards of 80,000 men. And she did it all without any color of beard…
5. Find out your pirate name. I’m Black Dagger Dan.
6. A treasure trove of recipes fer even the biggest sea dog appetites.
7. Know thine enemy. A beast to be feared.
8. Pick up some Pirate flags, authentic and otherwise, and show your true colors.
9. Peruse a listing of every single pirate movie ever made. With synopsis and star rating!
10. Learn about the tradition’s noble racquetball roots.

Over at Cymbolism.com you are presented with a word and asked to pick from a pallete of widely varying color choices. Once you click on one, it then shows you the breakdown of what everyone else picked. It’s a really interesting exercise at the moment, but as they grow it will become more than that.

They have a search function that allows you to search their database for words. As they accumulate more and more words and votes this will turn into a neat design resource. Say you’re designing a car seat and you want to know what colors make people think “smart” and “safe.” This could be the place to find out. Someday. Right now, it just makes me feel yellow.

Wordle is a free web app that allows you instantly visualize text works.

ordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like

For instance, the U.S. Constitution, or the Numa Numa song.