AFP: Japan to get cellphone 'sommeliers': official

Japan is to start licensing cellphone "sommeliers" to guide consumers through complicated functions as mobile telephones become ever more advanced, an official said Monday.

The communications ministry said it was planning to support a private-sector plan to launch an exam to license specialists who sell cellphones.

"We hope they would be able to explain complicated functions and charge systems to consumers, much like wine sommeliers guiding you," a ministry official said.

The ministry also hopes the cellphone experts would remind parents of the risks of letting their children use Internet-capable cellphones and recommend installing filters to block access to harmful websites, he said.

If Japan has already mobile sommeliers, we here in Europe should at least start with catalogues similar to the ones offered in Japan - especially the kind that Softbank offers.

QR codes for BBC programmes and some other stuff

We’re on a bit of a roll at the moment with our work on /programmes, so quick on the heals of the work to integrate iPlayer and programme credits onto our episode pages I’m chuffed to announce another batch of new features: QR-Codes, schedules and um calls to inaction.

[...] You can then print QR-Codes on posters, t-shirts, scarfs, whatever. People can then decode them by taking a picture, using specific software installed on their mobile phone, to read and convert the code back to the URL - so they can easily visit the web site.

Anyway - every BBC programme now has a QR code. You can get it by adding …/qrcode to the end of the URL for any programme page. For example, this is the URL for Platoon:

   http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007mcgw

And this is its QR-Code:

   http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007mcgw/qrcode