Do QR codes and billboards mix?

Thus far I’m somewhat ambivalent towards QR codes, those 2D bar codes that are increasingly featured on ads, posters and billboards.

Leaving Digital Pharma (but not digital pharma)

Just over two years after launching the Digital Pharma blog I have written my final post.

Published on my last day at Pharmafocus/InPharm.com, the self-explanatory Last words from Dominic was a nice opportunity to recap a particularly busy time in ‘digital pharma’ as the rapid advances in social media galvanised the sector.

Google+ goes for celebrity stardust

The spiritual leaders at an earlier - offline - meeting

One of the more unlikely bits of social media ephemera to pass my way this week concerned an online meeting of two of the world’s most recognisable religious leaders.

Or, as the Dalai Lama announced it on his Google+ page, ”His Holiness the Dalai Lama will have a conversation with Archbishop Desmond Tutu by live video over a Hangout”, thus ensuring both his message and Google’s would be widely shared.

Offline Twitter promotion that was hard to miss

Returning some books to my local library today I was surprised to see this hard-to-miss advert for their Twitter account.

The surprise was more from its direct, eye-level promotion, complete with the now obligatory QR code, than from the fact of the library being on Twitter.

Like many, many other institutions and businesses Epsom Library is using Twitter as an additional customer service tool – it’s just rare to see such effective off-line promotion of the online tool, and placing it at the self-service computers where you borrow or return books was a nice touch too.

We7 bets on a future in personalised radio

UK digital music company We7 abandoned its free streaming music service this week to concentrate on its Last.fm-powered personalised internet radio.

This allows it to offer ‘stations’ based on an initial choice of artist, genre or song, and in an email to users We7 styled itself as “your free and easy Personal DJ”.

Putting aside fears you may not want your personal DJ to be “free and easy”, We7 has increasingly been heading in this direction over the last few months as it sought to raise the profile of its radio service.