Welcome to #Monmouthpedia

Monmouth bridge & gatehouse

Wikipedia, on its blog, has unveiled the first Wikipedia town - the historic town of Monmouth. Over 1,000 QR codes have been placed on every landmark, building, and business, enabling residents or visitors with a smartphone to call up information about that location in 25 languages. Wikipedia reports that, "Because of Monmouth’s efforts to provide free wi-fi ... the town is likely the only place where a visitor can tour in Hungarian, Hindi, Indonesian, Welsh, or numerous other Wikipedia languages using QR codes."
   Why was Monmouth chosen for this project? Perhaps because it has a lot of history: King Henry V was born there, there's a Norman castle built in 1067 and a rare 13th Century bridge and gatehouse.  Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said, in a report in the Independent, that "he was excited about the project. Bringing a whole town to life on Wikipedia is something new and is a testament to the forward-thinking people of Monmouth ... I'm looking forward to seeing other towns and cities doing the same thing."  Is it a coincidence that Monmouth is in Wales?

QR Codes

You may have started to see codes like these appearing everywhere, you certainly will if you live in Japan. Called QR codes they are 2-D barcodes designed to be easy to scan. Many modern camera phones have readers that scan the QR code and automatically take you to the website that the code is linked to (there are several iPhone apps that do this).

These codes can be put on billboards, in magazines, on products, anywhere, enabling people to quickly obtain information about the thing tagged with the code, using the browser in their phone.

The QR code above is the one that points to this blog. I think I'll get a T-shirt printed with the code on it.

You can generate your own QR codes using the QR-Code Generator.