Howard Thomson

Every place and object in the world has a secret past: who lived there, who passed by, who touched it. The secret lives of objects are filled with such details. If only you could make them talk. But what if you could give any physical object a story simply by sticking a barcode on it and appending a message to that barcode? The message could be a photo, a text message, a video, or a voice note. All anyone would need to unlock the message is a phone with a special barcode scanning app.

Stickybits is that app. Founded by Billy Chasen (the original programmer behind Chartbeat) and Seth Goldstein (chairman and founder of SocialMedia), the startup just closed a $300,000 seed round from Polaris Venture Partners and Mitch Kapor. Officially launching this week at Austin’s SXSW festival, stickybits is a new mobile app for both the iPhone and Android. It lets you scan any barcode and attach a message to that physical object.

The barcode in a greeting card , for instance, could trigger a video message from the sender. One on a box of medical supplies could inventory what is inside. A business card with a code on it could link to a resume or LinkedIn profile. Museums and theme parks could use them for audio tours and maps. Local merchants could use the barcodes to track deliveries or place them in their storefront windows to distribute digital coupons and offers to passersby. The possibilities are endless.

Read More @ TechCrunch & stickybits.com

Flash platformer Canabalt may be simple in concept, but what it lacks in gameplay variety, it more than makes up for in being awesome. This “daring escape” platformer is simply beautiful and beautifully simple.

Have been playing this for the last week or so, and so far my top score is 8,409. Check it out. [via: Kotaku]

One of my favourite TV shows, The Gadget Show, has just released a couple of iPhone applications into the App Store. They are both close to being featured in the Top 50, and one of them is actually quite addictive. I would imagine that the apps are due to be features on the programme at some point, perhaps as one of their challenges. Both have been developed by North One Television. Click read more to see my first impressions.

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After a year of owning an Xbox 360, I finally got round to subscribing to Xbox Live Gold. So I start it up, join a game of GTA IV and end up waiting in a lobby for ages. Nothing much happens, people come and go but the game never starts. Not a very good first impression. Then I end up in a game with around a dozen people, and that’s when it starts to get interesting. People driving up and down the streets, shooting each other with rocket launchers, assault rifles and the like.

Then I remembered my Xbox came with a headset. So I plug that in, and I really wish I hadn’t. The whole server was full of whining teenagers, complaining about any tactic that they thought was unfair. “Don’t drive the cars. Don’t hug the walls, wall hugger”. I think I’ll be playing without the headset, at least with people I don’t know.

Grand Theft Auto is one of my favourite series of games, and I’m glad the gameplay online isn’t as awful as I was dreading. I wish I hadn’t left it so long to get Xbox Live, as undoubtedly most people have moved on to other games by now. But for me, that white box under the TV just got a whole lot more interesting.

My gamertag is: HowardThomson

Currently working on a comparison website with a web 2.0 style. So far the domain is ordered and a landing page is up. Will update here and on the RSS feed when ready for public testing.

I’m trying out a new file sync service called Dropbox, and it’s pretty cool. It creates a folder on your machine that is automatically synced to the web, where you can easily access your files from any web browser. It also has the ability to upload files to this folder via the browser too, making it really handy and an easy way to remotely start torrent downloads. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Edit: Also, use this link, and both you and I get an extra 250MB of space, just by signing up. Easy