One of the loveliest ideas I’ve seen for a long time.

Semapedia combines 2 of my favourite (and quite low-tech) things, Wikipedia and Semacodes. Semacodes (or QR codes as they’re sometimes called) are small black and white images which are basically barcodes. You take a pic with you camera-phone and the semacode will direct the phones browser to a url. Here’s an example of one in use in Japan where it shows you the nutritional value (or otherwise) of what you’re about to eat.

Now semacodes have taken off massively in Japan as it’s illegal to sell a phone without the reader software. As a result they’re in use everywhere and instead of the bus stop electronic signs we get, you take a pic of the bus stop’s code and it then informs you when the bus will arrive (interestingly enough all mobiles in Japan and South Korea have to make an audible sound when they take a picture too. It’s the law). So Semapedia.org basically allows you to automatically make a tag for anything which will direct the person to the Wikipedia article on that thing. It could be a chair, a bridge, a work of art or even a person.

I love this idea on so many levels. It’s free, open, pretty simple and it’s providing a unique link between the physical and digital worlds. Where digital used to reside mostly on our PCs we’re finding more and more ways of meshing digital information onto our everyday ‘reality’. What if these semacodes took you to a wikipedia article with an mp3 attached with information on the area/work of art. Of course semacodes won’t be fully mainstream until the reader is loaded onto most phones but it’s almost quite a good thing that they’re still kind of secret and cool. You see one on a flyer, it takes you to a secret url and off you go….. wonder if the Met are onto them yet?