It's been a while since I did a semacode update that didn't have something to do with my ramblings on business. Well, thanks to Eberhard Blocher and a mysterious benefactor, here is an article in the German tech magazine CHIP that talks about Semapedia , Semacode, and other things. I just love the big photo. The caption reads: Pisa-studies: The Semapedia Project links sights like the leaning tower of Pisa with the appropriate Wikipedia article.

In case you haven't already seen it, Semapedia now has an international google map that shows locations of known Semapedia tags. But I notice that they haven't got a label on Accra, Ghana, yet.

Curious choice of location? Not really. Guido Sohne put up the first Semapedia tag in Africa a few weeks ago at the Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT when he gave a talk on Semapedia ( slides available ). He noted that himself and a fellow Ghanaian programmer were involved in some of the earlier software development for Semacode which is absolutely true. Guido's talk has made the news in South Africa's Tectonic . Semapedia's blog has a complete summary of what Guido said at his talk.

On a third continent, a yearly San Francisco event is coming up and I will be at JavaOne to demo Semacode's JSR-257 functionality on May 15 in Jaana Malakangas'(of Nokia) session Touch a Phone, Touch a Friend: Using RFID and Visual Tags With JSR 257 Contactless Communication API . Thursday, May 18, 9.45 am in the room Esplanade 301. I'll at the conference from May 16-19, and I'm scheduling my time now, so if you want to meet up, get in touch.

TV-land requires me to pay it dues as well. I did an interview taped for the cult IT show Call For Help with host Leo Laporte. Man does that guy have a lot of energy. Amber was sweet as well. They film "live to tape" which means that barring an extra-special effort to keep me off the airwaves, I'll be appearing in a show that will air within the next month. I don't know when exactly, but I have this vague memory of hearing Leo say "episode 364" so that could be in the next few weeks. I was too distracted to take photos except for this picture of the shows "green hallway" . If for some reason you don't get G4TechTV you can get the torrents right here.

(I also spake at Torcamp DemoCamp in Toronto on March 28. Here's a photo .)

OK, going on Call For Help was a funny experience . First of all, I was totally spaced out because I had a really busy day ahead of me. So, I kind of zoned out in the corridor and just listened to Leo and Amber (the hosts) on the closed-circuit TV. To try and get their personality, and style. Then someone dragged me into makeup, where they insisted on powdering my face to make it look more real or something. Fortunately Amber was in there so I got to chat with her and find out what the show is all about. She's actually from Toronto, while Leo is from the States.

As I sat in the "green hallway" a bunch of crew came out and had a little footrace down the hall with Amber (who is apparently a runner...) ... subsequently I was taken into the studio to wait my turn on the stage. Again I zoned out and listened to Leo chat with a caller, trying to get his number (my lingo for trying to figure out someone's style of talk and way of thinking and all that). In which I did well but I think I scared the crew a bit :-)

The studio is really tiny, compared to what I've seen of TV sets before. There's these three desks which are the three sets, each in the corners of a square room. It's otherwise full of cameras, crew members, and computers. They stuck a mic on me and then I pretended to talk to Amber (OK, we really did talk) while they filmed a pre-commercial break thing. Then, I showed Leo how to make Semacode work, which was trivial since he's a smart guy, and we did the segment. I have no memory of what I said, but afterwards someone told me it went well.

I'm sure other interesting things have happened since I last posted a general update blog, but that's all I can remember right now. Auf Wiedersehen.

PS - Oh yeah — some updates to the hardware list and thanks to the contributors , both listed and not. Keep those test results coming!