Homework

  • Generate a QR code of your business card (vcard format) and bring it with you. (Google "generate vcard QR code" for several sites that do this)
  • Download QR code scanning software for your smart phone

Tonight instead of exchanging business cards, we will save trees and scan QR codes instead. It will be interesting to see how the different smart phones react

QR Codes

Nokia bar code scanner: couldn’t open the latest QR code

i-nigma software: couldn’t open the new type of bar codes, were showing "3.0" instead of the content (on both iphone and Nokia)

Quickmark was the clear winner, worked on Nokia and iphone, was able to generate and read the latest QR codes

Can we compress content into QR-codes, like a book?

Maximum lossless compression

We decided to see how much we can fit into a QR code. It turns out 2000 bytes is the max on the latest QR codes. So we decided to test out lossless compression on text documents and then run into a QR code.

Not much software out there for decoding QR codes.

Some interesting findings; the first 4300 bytes off the Wikipedia steganography page compresses to 2000 bytes with bzip2 or 2027 bytes with gzip. - Kris

Tyler working on a decoding tool (QR Code -> decompress)

Bitcoin

21 million being created

This isn’t good - TB

not an issue, because you can go down 8 figures below 1 http://www.bitcoin.org/faq#How_divisible_are_Bitcoins - RS

Free bitcoins

Are currencies controlled by communities or government?

the value of $5 is if I’m willing to part with it and if you’re willing to negotiate for it - DN

the expansion of money comes from loans - DN

No currency you can’t create more of will ever succeed - TB

Current exchange rate is about 50 35 cents USD for 1 bitcoin https://mtgox.com/trade/history

Ham radio/APRS

GPS -> TNC -> Ham radio -> APRS

APRS Finland

Google APRS (shrink and scroll)

Spy Numbers

Numbers Station

The Conet Project

Misc/URLs

Save Mary Lake campaign Nicole looking for interviewees and hosts

Dave talking about how he’s been using Firesheep at local coffee shops

Don’t use the same password for all of your accounts

Is it better telling people how bad information security is?

Discussion of BC liquor law reform;

Flock was bought

RockMelt social media browser

PhoneGap

Adobe apps that are cross-compiled are allowed again in the app store (source) - Ryan

Big discussion about students with tech, should we provide tablets to all students?

BC Hydro still uses IE6 - Gillian @gndv

Scientific Victoria