Advanced Information Technology Institute - Ghanaian developers push Semacode tags:

location based services

"If you've surfed the Internet you probably know what Wikipedia is. For those that don't it is an online, community driven and edited encyclopedia with more than three million articles in a range of languages that has, since its launch in 2001, become one of the most comprehensive sources of information on the Internet.

Which is is all well and good when you're sitting at work behind a PC with an Internet connection. But what if you're away from your PC? For example, as a tourist in another country? Wouldn't it be great to access Wikipedia to read up on the historic buildings you find in your travels?

Developers at Semacode have a plan to do exactly this: link the physical world with appropriate online information sources including Wikipedia -- or what in this case is called Semapedia. In its simplest form Semacodes are URLs (website addresses) encoded into a two dimensional barcode that can be attached to any physical object. Users with mobile phones equipped with a semacode reader are then able to snap a picture of the barcode with their camera and retrieve the URL and website on their mobile browser.
And a group of Ghanaian developers have been quick to embrace the technology and have contributed to developing the underlying code for Semacodes as well as developing applications to build codes. Earlier this week they introduced the new technology to fellow Ghanaians. Guido Sohne, developer-in-residence at the Kofi Annan ICT Centre for Excellence and chief software architect at CoreNett, a Ghanaian electronic transaction processing company, said during his presentation that it was encouraging to find African developers providing code that is being used globally.

'If it can be done in Ghana, then it can "