It’s social, it’s local and it’s called area/code. Michael Surtees of DesignNotes attended the recent PSFK Conference in New York and reported on the presentation done by software services company area/code; “Of all the presenters at the PSFK Conference, the one that shifted my thinking the most in a different light was Kevin Slavin of area/code. They’ve taken the idea of game to the outside of streets. Between the technology, using maps of cities and the social aspect of play mashed together, it was something that really made me reconsider my environment and the role of play. I ran into Kevin briefly after the conference where he gave me his business card. I’m hoping in the next couple weeks to do a blog interview with him – stay tuned…”. Also on DesignNotes, a post on semacodes (that’s the Kaywa reader above), “On Tuesday at the PSFK Conference I saw semacode in action with area/code. A day or two before that I noticed a post from do.palicio.us about semacode too. If you consider that almost every single person has a cell phone and I’m guessing that more than half have a camera with the ability to surf the web. If you combine that technology, semacodes become quite fascinating. More so because it acts as an identifying mark or key that allows a person to collect information with a single click.”.

What it means: There’s still a lot of room to explore the convergence of local + social, we’re just at the beginning.