[Apologies for cross-posting]
-- G.
===================== FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE =====================
Semapedia Introduced to Africa: Powered By "Made In Ghana" Technology
"Wikipedia, Semacodes, and Semapedia - The Physical Wikipedia"
Accra, 7th April, 2006
The Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT introduced the
Semacode
technology and the Semapedia application to a segment of the Ghanaian
public
in a presentation delivered by Guido Sohne, Developer-In-Residence at
the Kofi
Annan ICT Centre for Excellence and Chief Software Architect of
CoreNett Ltd,
a Ghanaian electronic transaction processing company [0].
Introduced for the first time in Africa, the Semapedia is an
application of
the vast information available on the Wikipedia and the simple yet
practical
URL barcode, called the Semacode. A physical entry is made into the
Semapedia
when a real world object or location is tagged with a high capacity, two
dimensional, error correcting bar code technology called Semacode.
THE SEMACODE TECHNOLOGY
The Semacode [1] (a URL barcode), was conceived in Canada (North
America), and
includes portions (such as one of the very first versions) that were
developed
in Ghana (West Africa) by local software developers. Simon Woodside,
the
founder of the Semacode Corporation [2] and the Semacode Organization
[3]
contacted Mr. Sohne for assistance in developing an early version of
Semacode
and Mr. Sohne in turn recommended Francois Bonin, another
Developer-In-Residence at the Kofi Annan Centre for Excellence, to
develop
this software. Mr. Bonin successfully delivered on the project to
develop an
implementation of this technology, which later on has become
increasingly
widely adopted and known.
The significance of Semacode is that one can now link a real world,
physical
object to arbitrary data. Before there has been no link, except for
things
like ordinary barcodes such as those used in stores to label
products, or on
books to indicate publication details. Unlike Semacodes, traditional
barcodes
have limited storage for information, are fixed function and good for
only one
narrow application, and also require the use of special, custom
hardware and
software to read or access such barcodes.
With the Semacode approach, all it now takes is for an ordinary
camera phone,
equipped with a Semacode reader software package (available free of
charge by
pointing your mobile phone web browser to the 'over the air'
distribution
[4]). There is no need to purchase any hardware or software to read
these two
dimensional barcodes.
Semacodes, by embedding a URL into a barcode, enable any portion of the
Internet to be 'attached' to any object, and can replace barcodes by
going
further to give arbitrary information on the Internet, not just the
simple
product number.
After the successful development of the core of the Semacode
encoding software (called the Semacode Tagger), Semacode went on to
achieve
user adoption, such as with the inception of the Semapedia, the Physical
Wikipedia [5].
SEMAPEDIA, THE PHYSICAL WIKIPEDIA
In the words of Stan Wiechers and Alexis Rondeau who are the founders
of the
Physical Wikipedia, "Semapedia is a non-profit project. [The] idea
was to
bring the amazing knowledge from the wikipedia to places in the
*real* world
where it matters. Being able to stand in front of a building and
dive into
its history right on the spot is something incredible useful to anybody.
Doing that by just taking a picture with your mobile phone of a
semacode is a
very very simple interaction that is understandable to everybody. We
have
been explaining and showcasing to people with no technical background
at all
and they still immediatly understand the use and value of our project.
Semapedia is a community project, everybody can go to our site and
create
semapedia tags via a simple text entry form right away, print them
out and
start hyperlinking ojects to the information he wants people to know."
MADE IN GHANA
Following his interest in the initial development of the Semacode
encoder, Mr
Sohne [6] has continued with Semacode technology by developing free
software,
licensed under the GNU General Public License, to create Semacodes.
The first
version of his software was developed as an experiment to investigate
the
benefits of writing code for the Apple Mac OS X operating system
[7]. Mr
Sohne had at the time recently acquired an Apple PowerBook and used the
Semacode as a goal to be achieved that would serve as a learning
exercise for
the newly acquired hardware.
This software grew to include a C to JavaScript port of the Semacode
encoder
to run within a web browser, so that it could be accessible on all
platforms,
and not just the Apple platform [8]. Within computer software
development, a
port can be considered akin to a translation between two human
languages. It
retains the essence of its source, yet is somewhat different while
performing
the same function. With that transformative step, each Web browser
is itself
a full blown Semacode encoder, regardless of platform. And since each
Semacode created by the software is in a hyperlink format, all the
Semacodes
created can be conveniently stored by web engines such as Google.
Powering this all, are deceptively simple Semacode symbols that are
easy to
create and quick to read, a testament to simple ideas brought to life by
complex systems. Perhaps the real genius of the idea behind the
Semacode,
brainchild of Mr. Simon Woodside of Semacode Corporation, is that it
is so
simple that it works so well and so easily. It was not so simple
before the
breakthrough concept of the Semacode as a URL barcode that is
accessible by a
wide variety of 'off the shelf' camera phones!
BRINGING SEMAPEDIA TO AFRICA
Today, this introduction of the Semapedia and its associated
technologies, at
the prestigious Ghana India Kofi Annan Centre of Technology [9],
explained and
explored the possibilities that are opened by the use of Semacodes. The
audience received the talk very well and suggested several
interesting ways of
locally applying Semacodes during an engaging discussion during
question and
answer time.
The introduction of the Semapedia immediately preceded the launching
of the
first African entry into the Semapedia which will took place
immediately after
the talk, when several members of the audience used Semacodes to tag the
Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence with its corresponding
entry into
the Wikipedia.
During the presentation Mr Sohne said that "The time has come for
African
content to take its place in the global constellation. We need more
African
content, and anybody can help add more content to the Wikipedia. So tag
something today. It's really easy to do and the software is free too!"
If it can be done in Ghana, then it can easily be done elsewhere in
Africa and
even in Asia, Europe and North America too. It is rare to find African
created technology being used today in Western cyberspace so this
event is
indeed a laudable step forward for African technology as well as an
indication
of the benefits of collaborative development based on liberal software
licensing such as open source software that can arise from further
North/South
private sector partnerships.
[An online copy of Mr. Sohne's presentation is available in PDF
format at
http://sohne.net/files/Semapedia.pdf]
REFERENCES
[0] CoreNett - http://www.corenett.com
[1] semacode @ wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semacode
[2] Semacode Organization - http://semacode.org
[3] Semacode Corporation - http://semacode.com
[4] Semacode Over The Air - http://semacode.org/ota/
[5] Semapedia, the Physical Wikipedia - http://semapedia.org
[6] sohne.net: in search of insight - http://sohne.net
[7] semafox - http://sohne.net/semafox/
[8] semacoder - http://sohne.net/semacoder/
[9] Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre for Excellence - http://www.aiti-
kace.com.gh
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