QRCodes, Sociable Objects & RFID - The Oxfam Curiosity Shop in Selfridges

Tales of Things is all about memories, the stories we attach to objects as we move through life. As such we are very pleased to announce our latest partnership with Oxfam for their Curiosity Shop in Selfridges, London. The Curiosity Shop is open until 10^th of April on the lower ground floor with a host of fantastic fashion on sale. All of the items have been donated to raise money for Oxfam to help fund projects around the world that support and empower vulnerable women.

Annie Lennox introduces The Curiosity Shop below:

The clothing donated has some very respectable previous owners such as Annie Lennox, Colin Firth, Helen Mirren, Kate Moss, list goes on…Each item in the shop has been tagged with a QR code which links to stories about what the money raised will buy.

Visitors to the Curiosity Shop can view these stories on their own Smartphones or use one of our bespoke RFID readers to scan the item. The readers glow when scanned near a RFID tag and play the associated narrative on the screen. Designed by Jon Rogers from the University of Dundee with tech inside from here in CASA it links direct into the Tales of Things system. Once the item has been scanned the object story will appear on a plasma screen in the store, making the object come alive.

There are some hidden gems in the collection too which have a unique story attached to them from the celebrity who donated the item such as the dress below which Annie Lennox wore at Nelson Mandela’s 90^th birthday party in London.

Over the last few weeks TalesofThings has been working with Oxfam to collect the celebrity stories and tag items in the store with both RFID and QRCodes. In essence this allows items of clothing to tell their story via either our bluetooth enabled curisoity reader or via our free Android/iPhone apps. Once the items have been sold, the owners are able to add their stories - via a mashup of sociable objects meets the antiques roadshow.

If you come into the shop you can try out the curiosity reader, scan Annies dress or any of the other items with codes and see the stories behind the objects. We are in Selfridges until April 10th, come down to grab a celebrity item tagged with their story, help raise money for Oxfam and take a look at the emerging technology behind the Internet of Things.

A massive thanks goes to Oxfam, Selfridges, Annie Lennox and the TalesofThings team who have worked hard behind the scenes, the installation is simply wonderful...

You can see a list of donated items direct via the tales of things site.

Tales of the City – Tagging Shoreditch and Beyond

Via the project talesofthings.com we have been capturing people’s memories of objects and playing them back via small readable and writeable QR codes and RFID tags. As part of the London Festival of Architecture 2010, Tales of the City extends the concept into the urban realm with the architecture of the city able to replay memories and its history.

The project will enable participants to add their own tales to buildings and view stories that other people have left. The project has been tagging architecture since its launch in April 2010, most notably Broadcasting House in Portland Place and a wall in Chalk Farm which when scanned replays how the wall used to look with a Banksy Stencil in place.

Tales of the City starts off with a pre-placed tag at the historic heart of Shoreditch, St Leonard's Church. From there you will be able to spot tags (QR codes) on Shoreditch High Street which you can add your own stories to, contributing to the growing network of tagged architecture.

This will enable people to form a personalised tour of London’s contemporary history through architecture. If you have an iPhone or an Android handset be sure to download our free app - talesofthings to enable you to leave comments on the QR codes, or create your own codes to put on your favourite buildings.

You can become a follower of the project over at the London Festival of Architecture page.

We will have more on Tales of the City next week...

How to Add Anything to the Internet of Things: Creating the Geography of Everything

Every object in existence can be tagged with any media, linked to tell a story, to recount its memories in a read/write environment and tweet when its interacted with.





Its a concept that takes a bit of time to take in, for example a wall in Camden Town, London, tweeted me last week when someone replayed its memories of having a Banksy painted on it. That wall is part of the Internet of Things via the project TalesofThings.

The best part is, its incredibly easy to add objects. You simply sign up at talesofthings.com and then take click on 'add a thing'. This takes you to a form where you give your object a name, for a example 'Andy's Mug' or 'BBC Broadcasting House' are some of things we have added so far. You then type in a short story, or tale, linked to that object and upload a photograph to the site.

Everything has a location so we are creating a 'Geography of Everything', a brave claim perhaps but one that develops a new a new kind of geography, the geography of things. Simply click on the map to set a location, your object will now become part of the 'World of Things' map.

Thats it, your object will now become part of the Internet of Things and will be able to tweet, have new stories/tales added as its passed on, sold or interacted with. It is all part of a Social Web of Things or SWOT as its known.

Each thing created gets assigned a unique 'qrcode' which can be attached to your object. For example, we have attached a qrcode to our office here in CASA which visitors scan using our free iPhone app. This 'virtual guest book' allows our office to recall the story of CASA and the people that pass through our doors. You can print out your codes via the site and attach them to anything.

Any media can be added to you object, the clip below provides a glimpse of the system running via our recent link up with Oxfam via Future Everything, complete with the iPhone RFID reader:





Anything, anywhere can be tagged with any media, do take a look at the beta version of TalesofThings, we are very proud of the work and as the Ericsson Labs blog noted, this is really part of the social web of things, it will be trillions of tags around in a couple of years...

iPhone RFID and Bluetooth AudioBoos in Oxfam Clip

At the Oxford Road branch of Oxfam in Manchester, TOTeM (Tales of Things and Electronic Memory) Art Project: RememberMe, are attaching stories to the things that people leave behind, and allow new owners to access them.

Using scanners, delegates of Future Everything and the general public will be able to listen to memories and buy objects that come tagged with their very own story.

TOTeM has created a new iPhone RFID reader especially for this piece Using a jailbroken phone and off the shelf circuits, the reader can replay memories by simply ‘swiping’ near the object. The team plan to release a ‘how to make your own’ breakdown of the device in the near future via the talesofthings.com site. The Oxfam store is also home to a Bluetooth ‘wand’ which works with Android phones. These devices bring the Internet of Things to life allowing all the objects catalogued with talesofthings.com to connect to any online media. The Oxfam Shop has been taking donations of all shapes and sizes that have been tagged with memories as part of the in-store exhibition.

The movie below shows some of our 'internet of things' tech running and the memories of past objects:



Thanks go to the whole TOTeM team with notable thanks to Benjamin Blundell, Duncan Shingleton and Martin de Jode for developing the technology and getting everything working.

You can of course tag anything and indeed everything yourself via http://www.talesofthings.com