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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Well, there we have it. The Apple iPad is officially no longer just a rumour. It’s a lovely new shiny device. There’s a lot right with it; go to the Apple website to see about that. However, there’s also a lot wrong with it. Three key things really disappoint me.

Firstly, in spite of the misleading name, this is not a ‘pad’. You cannot write on it. There is no handwriting recognition, no stylus. Surely one of the key functions of a tablet should be that you can write notes on it and do away with paper pads? A cleverly-designed operating system would help no end in managing pages and pages of scrawled notes by making them searchable, date-stamping them and adding other meta-data. OK, handwriting recognition is still a technology that has a long way to go but Apple didn’t even try to address this.

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A brief history of mobile web browsing

Web browsers first appeared on mobile phones at the start of the millennium. These initial attempts to ‘mobilise’ the web were pretty disappointing. Firstly, the hardware wasn’t powerful enough to handle full web pages, and screens were too small and low resolution. Also, use of WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and WML (Wireless Mark-up Language) demanded special tools and limited the possibilities for creating usable interfaces. Furthermore, the web’s best content was rarely adapted for delivery to mobiles.

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Remember Tom Cruise using his hands to move data around in the futuristic film “Minority Report”? Well it turns out that this image is not that futuristic after all: you can more or less do it on your iPhone right now.

The key phrase you need to know is “augmented reality”, and it is becoming increasingly mainstream these days as more applications are found and the media keep jumping on the “OMG this is so cool” bandwagon. (Which it is, to be fair). But what is it and how does it work? Put simply, augmented reality (or AR) is a digital overlay on the real world. A camera takes a picture, and then the computer overlays King Kong (or whatever) onto your screen. The cool thing is that this can be done in real time while you’re walking down the street.

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Apple’s App store has just celebrated its first birthday. There are now literally thousands of ‘apps’ available for the iPhone or iPod touch – from 3D games, to currency convertors, to software that transforms the device into a working spirit level.

While some apps are purely a distraction, others seek to make life easier. For example, there’s CashFinder, which helps you to find the nearest cash point based on your current location.

We were intrigued to discover that there are also many Healthcare apps, some of which are designed to help patients manage their conditions, or their adherence to courses of drugs. In no particular order, we’ve picked out our favourite ten. Read on…

There is a real buzz around user-created content on the web at the moment. The popularity of sites like YouTube are sound testament to this. But, in order to find genuinely original material you often have to wade through a mass of lifted TV and film footage. Even if you do find the true user-created nuggets you are searching for, the talking heads and candid action rely upon people who have access to camcorders, digital cameras, or the most high-tech mobile phones. Read on…