The observant consumer abroad may have noticed patterned squares on their purchases. In Japan, these shapes now take up space on the side of whole houses, and seen teenagers whipping out their mobiles to take photos.

Of course, these codes contain more than just obscure patterns. Devised in 1994 for industrial use, ‘QR codes’ were employed for tagging boxes as a more information-heavy barcode. For example, the German Post uses them to keep track of packages.

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Usability is generally trumpeted as a major consideration in website design. What is often ignored are the results of a website losing its usability – or, indeed, its familiarity. Yesterday, a number of users were unable to log on to Facebook. Why? Because they weren’t actually on Facebook.

What happened was that, for a couple of hours, Facebook slipped off the top Google rank for the search “Facebook login”. Instead, a blog called ReadWriteWeb (an excellent read, by the way) slipped into first place. Not noticing the change, users simply clicked on the top link anyway and were taken to a ReadWriteWeb article about Facebook, which looked entirely unlike the actual Facebook page.

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Toyota is having a rough time of late. Faced with having to recall millions of vehicles globally, its profit for the year is likely to be entirely wiped out by the estimated $2bn cost of the recall. However, the public relations story is causing further damage to the company. How it reacts over the next few days and weeks is likely to have a major impact on the severity of this damage.

That’s where the web comes into play. Shocked and dismayed customers are sure to pay attention to the media’s cries of horror, but they will also recognise that they need to pay close attention to the official line by Toyota. They will turn to the internet to find out the logistics of the recall and the way they need to interact with Toyota and its dealers in order to get their cars fixed up. Besides actually fixing cars quickly and efficiently, the web represents Toyota’s best chance to repair some of the damage to its reputation.

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Nothing kills the authority of an intranet site – or any website – faster than obvious, avoidable errors. These errors can be factual (such as job titles or general facts), graphical (the wrong image assigned to the wrong person, for example) or grammatical (bad spelling or punctuation), but whatever the mistakes the effect is the same: users go elsewhere.

It’s not enough to make sure that your site owner is thorough. Everyone makes mistakes, and the best way to cope with the possibility of a slip-up is to ensure that you have a dedicated quality control process in place at all times. If you use an agency to run your site, then they should be able to work this out with you. If you work on the site yourself, read on for some key areas that you should focus on…

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A news item on the radio today caught my imagination. It made the point that many of us today suffer from a hitherto undocumented mental illness, the core symptom of which is an inability to focus one’s attention for any significant amount of time (have I lost you yet?). This often chronic condition is brought about by the ever increasing amount of digital disruptive media which we receive onto various devices around us: PCs, mobiles, telephones, and so on.

As I write this sentence Skype is bleeping an alert and a little bubble is popping up in the corner of my screen containing the first (meaningless) line of a chat conversation going on in the agency between a few people. Now an email alert (Subject line: Monthly newsletter: January 2010) is popping up and a text (minutes remaining on my price plan) has just arrived on my mobile phone. Someone tweets “an interesting article on the digital economy ”.

So far I am not struggling to maintain my concentration. The temptation to turn my alert-blasted attention to these items is small. Have I lost you yet?

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Social media: it’s the ‘in thing’ for marketing departments around the world. But not all campaigns are created equal, and the internet is a fickle place. What works for one campaign might not for another, and ideas quickly get stale.

We’re always impressed with creative uses of social media, and this year we’ve seen some incredibly inventive ideas. Keep reading to find out about three of our favourite campaigns of 2009, and one of the worst. Don’t forget to let us know about your favourites in the comments!

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There’s been a lot of talk recently about newspapers charging for online content. Famously, Rupert Murdoch of the News Corporation said that the newspapers under his command – which include the Times and the Sun in the UK – would move to pay-per-view formats. More recently, Johnston Press in the UK has begun charging readers to read their articles online.

Johnston Press is one of the largest newspaper firms in the UK, and publishes a wealth of local newspapers. Taking part in its pilot scheme are the Worksop Guardian, the Ripley & Heanor News, the Northumberland Gazette and the Whitby Gazette, and – in Scotland – the Carrick Gazette and the Southern Report. The Scotsman – another Johnston Press title – already has a pay-per-view model in place.

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The results of a survey of the cost of workers using social networking sites have been published, putting the figure at £1.34bn.

The report, commissioned by tech firm Morse, was covered in the Daily Telegraph in late October, and labels the use of these platforms as a “productivity black-hole”.

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I enjoy blogging. It’s a bit of a hobby – which is great, because I get to maintain this blog in my professional time. In my spare time, I write about whatever takes my fancy: everything from the fashion industry to the latest video games.

Getting your blog noticed on the internet is difficult. Large, well-known brands have a natural advantage in that people are already searching for them, but what can the rest of us do to put our words in front of the world?

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Many companies have jumped onto the Facebook application bandwagon. Most of these apps bomb and the ROI must surely be negative. However, there are some great apps out there. Here’s a case study about an app we found that ticks the right boxes.