I’m looking forward to the Internet Librarian & Internet@Schools West Conferences starting this weekend. I’ll be teaching a Saturday pre-conference workshop on WordPress and doing another WordPress session with Buffy Hamilton on Monday.
But before I get to Monterey, I hope to get to Filoli Gardens in Woodside, CA – sort of on the way from SFO. I visited this gorgeous garden & estate in the February and basked my snow weary soul in the gorgeous daffodils. They close next week, so last chance this year.
And on the trip down to Monterey, I hope to have time to for lunch at Palapas Cantina, a great Mexican restaurant with a gorgeous water view in Aptos. My good friend Steve Watkins introduced me to their tasty food.
So what about the QR Codes? Well here they are:
These will take you to the locations in your smartphone’s map app. But what I’d really like to do, is find a way to put a whole bunch of locations into one QR code. I know I can create a custom map in Google Maps and create a QR code for that map. But that opens in your browser. And yes, you could save that map and it will sync with your phone. But it would be faster if it just opened in a map with all the locations.
I’ve done a bit of digging around, but it there doesn’t seem to be a standard for this sort of code – yet. Several years ago I worked on an “I Spy” projects with about 20 libraries. The kids created something of a photographic scavenger hunt of historic spots in their towns. It was great fun and I could see incorporating QR codes into that project if we were doing it today. But it would be terrific to be able to create one code with all the locations marked. If anyone knows of a way to do that, please share!
In the meantime, hope to see some of you in Monterery!
In regards to your QR quandary, I wonder if you couldn’t create a Google Map with all the locations marked as your QR target? Adding multiple locations to a GMap is easy (click add destination), and if there is a save function (I can’t remember at the moment), then you would just need to point the QR code at that particular URL.
Perhaps with Yahoo! Maps or maybe on the Rand McNally site or maybe even AAA. If you have your own server with a public Internet face, you could even host it as a basic HTML website and incorporate links to stuff associated with the scavenger hunt.
I’ll have to look into that a little further, but I wonder if it can’t be done that way?
Sorry the thoughts are a bit random, but that’s how I brainstorm usually.
Yes, creating a custom map in Google Maps works. You can save the map, make it public, then use the link to generate a qr code to take you to the map. But that qr code is going to open in a browser, not in the map app on a smart phone. I suspect there just isn’t a way to add mulitple geo locations to one code. Take a look at this qr generator: http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/ it seems to handle all the qr options.
Keep brainstorming! 🙂
I’m heading over to IL2010 on Friday as I am also teaching a Saturday pre-conference with 2 of my co-workers on Libguides Interface customization. Maybe we’ll see each other there. I printed out my qr code with my business card info today so I can attach it to my name tag.
Look forward to meeting you Kelly! See you Saturday. Good idea about the QR code for your name tag.