Facebook is changing, will this change the world?

Mark Zuckerberg introduced only 17 months ago the like button. It seems it was around forever, because almost every website has the little blue like button. In the next coming weeks FB will go beyond the the like button with opening their Open Graph. Developers are now able to send more info than "like" back to a Facebook user profile. It will open the world to new verbs like eating, drinking, watching, listening etc. With Open Graph FB users will see when their friends watching a movie or listen to a song and can then at the same time listen to the same song. This is the idea behind. Timeline will be another big change. Facebook new layout will allow users to go easily back in time. Different content types are now placed into blocks.





My wife and i might go to a motorcycle shop and buy a new bike. We might use our smart phone to scan a QR code for more info to a bike. On our Facebook book page would be instantly a message that we are buying right now a bike in XYZ at dealer ABC.

Or you might play a game on your iPhone and in FB will be a post that you recommend the game and just played 16 hours straight. Such new Open Graph features will give developers and companies a new, never seen before way to brand their products and to get more attention.

Especially for app developers on iOS or Android. Both system have together more than a million apps. It is almost not possible as a developer to get users to buy or download their app, and at the same time, it is for users not easy to find the app they are looking for. I searched in the Apple app store for golf and got countless results. The only way to know if an app is good, is to download it or to look at the ratings.
With Open Graph, Facebook will open a new way to find mobile apps. And if a friend is recommending an app, then I might more likely buy or download the app, regardless of other ratings.

Facebook let us build a digital copy of our life. And wants to be the start page when we open a web browser, and be the last page we look on it, before we go to bed.

Which sounds great but is very dangerous. I hear and read a lot of discussions around FB and how it is different than Apple and how open FB is. This is true, they are totally different but Apple might charge developers for their apps a lot or have a walled garden but they don't try to be our digital copy.

Facebook does not charge anything to end users or developers. We all can use FB for free. There are some games with in games purchases but most parts are free. An easy out if the box personal free web page and email address. This is very kind from Facebook. But this has a price. Facebook is collecting all and everything written on their website, they are collecting all clicks and views. From where is the user coming, what he is doing and where did he go. All for the greater good to earn money by very targeted ads.

One company does know more than FBI or any government about 800.000.000 people. And actually Facebook does know even things about people who are not yet in Facebook. My son has of course no FB account, but FB could already know who my wife is, the name of my mother in law and that I have a son an his age. All this is just a matter of data mining, which FB does day in and day out to sell to higher priced and more targeted ads.

Adding timeline and Open Graph, does exactly what Mark Zuckerberg wants:
"Facebook's mission is to make the world more open and connected. We do this by mapping out all of the things you are connected to. … As a first step toward this we made it so you could connect to things by Liking them. … This year we are taking the next step, so that you can connect to anything you want in any way you want. Now you don't have to Like a book, you can just Read a book. You don't have to Like a movie, you can just Watch a movie. You can Eat a meal, Hike a trail, Listen to a song, and connect to anything in any way you want. This will let you make an order of magnitude more connections than before. We are helping to define a new language for people to connect."

Is this not scary? We are all open and connected like in the real life and more. But the biggest difference is, that one will always know everything what happens in the FB country - Mark Zuckerberg.

Maybe Facebook acronym will be soon FBI (Facebook interconnected).

Does anybody remember the Stasi (The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS)?
Stasi in East Germany did try to know everything about their citizen. They had official Stasi employees, but as well many East Germans reporting to the Stasi information about their neighbors. All to keep the country safe.

Facebook is not trying to know everything. Facebook DOES know everything in their world.
As a good citizen, I would argue, that I have nothing to hide and therefore I don't care, if somebody is watching me all the time.

But unfortunately it is not so easy. There are a lot of things we don't know we should better hide. Remember, Palin's email account got hacked, because the hacker found the security phrase on her Facebook page.

Even if Facebook is not taking advantage of their knowledge, somebody will try.

Imagine you do post, that you went to a football game on Wednesday. But for some reason you thought it is better to delete the post. Do you really thing it is deleted because you did hit the delete button? Think twice. Of course it is not deleted. It is still in the DB but just flagged as "by user deleted".

East Germans did not like the Stasi, the wall and the controls and decided to change this and to revolute. It helped, the Stasi is gone and the wall is down. When do we start a revolution against Facebook?

Suddenly we are talking about 20 times more people controlled by one company, not state but company. Who is controlling this company? Who does make sure our data is not exposed or used for wrong doing?

How do I know, when I deleted something, that it is really deleted?

I understand that the situation is a little different. We decided to use Facebook and we decide to put as much or as less information on. We are responsible what we do with our life. However does this give one company the rights to be able to know everything? And remember it goes beyond what we put on Facebook. It is what other people put on Facebook. I could today invent a fake person and upload images to Facebook. Then I tag this image with me and the faked person. Maybe I as well write how great the day with XYZ was. Suddenly FB has info about a person who has no Facebook account or even does not exist.
I can see that FBI will create fake identities in the future by using Facebook.

Somebody could post a picture from a party showing me totally drunk hitting on a woman. I did never upload this image but it is now in Facebook and Facebook never forgets. A friend of this person might see the image, download it and send it to his friend which might be my boss. My boss would fire me, because the woman on this picture is his wife. Now you could say that this is my fault. I should not have been drunk and hitting on a woman.
This is correct, but what is, if this image was taken years before I even worked for my boss, before he met the woman and before I knew there will be something like Facebook?

Before timeline, not many people did upload anything old, so we might not care. But now people will upload and post things from the past. Within a short time FB will know more than anybody else about us even before FB did exist.

Or look at the kids who are using FB today. Do you think the know the impact of their posts and images they do today in 20 years? No they don't and they don't care. But it will be a problem for them in a few years, when they try to find a job and are wondering why nobody wants to hire them.

Somebody would argue that we use the Internet since 20 years and did post always a lot of things. This is true but the difference is that before we did distribute our info or not everybody was on the same website. It was much harder to collect info about people and their behavior because the data was stored on different servers which were owned by different companies.

Maybe it is time that our laws are changing to protect us with this new situation, maybe Facebook needs to be broken down into multiple companies.
What do you think? Am I too negative and FB is the best thing ever happened to us? Is Google better or worse? What about Apple, do they control us?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad. Please follow me @schlotz69

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Brooksville,United States

What is next?

A good friend on mine and I discussed today what is already old what will be the new trend, to define what is old was easy but what will come was not.

The last few years social did dominate the Internet. Thousands of social platforms and apps came on the market. The famous ones are Facebook, twitter, linkedin, groupon and foursquare. All these social networks have in common that you suddenly connect with people you can't remember anymore or you don't know it is all about to be connected. As a result we have so many connections that the social gets too blur.

But social is now so common that it is not new anymore. Trying to do something new in social is still possible, but difficult to have a new break through. On the other hand, it is fascinating that many investors still invest in social start ups. Localization is almost old too but at least still open for more to come.

However there is a trend of new social networks which reduces the connections just to a few people who are truly your friends. I see this the next level in terms of social. Companies who are building networks, where we easily can have small groups of people and with no big effort allow to communicate and prioritize them combined with location recognition will get the next hype.

Shazam is to watch.
Shazam is a commercial mobile phone based music identification service, with its headquarters in London, England. The company was founded in 1999 by Chris Barton (now at Google), Philip Inghelbrecht, Dhiraj Mukherjee and Avery Wang.
Shazam uses a mobile phone's built-in microphone to gather a brief sample of music being played. An acoustic fingerprint is created based on the sample, and is compared against a central database for a match. If a match is found, information such as the artist, song title, and album are relayed back to the user. Relevant links to services such as iTunes, YouTube, or Zune are incorporated into some implementations of Shazam.

Shazam has a perfect recognition software, is is really pretty fast and accurate. But the really cool part is, that shazam can bring TV ads and e-commerce together. If Shazam would be able to be build in the major smart phones then it could get big verry big.

During a show you see an ad you really like, you can now either try to read in the ad the internet address (if you see it) or try to scan from 15 feet with your phone the QR code (if they show one) - good luck with this, or try to make a picture of the ad and use google goggles to get more info about the product shown on TV. Nothing of this works really well. But Shazam can listen to the ad and then display on your phone the relevant online ad with a buy now button. Shazam did already some experience with same SciFi shows. I tried it and it worked well.

Gadgets
In the gadget department are smart phones already old. Tablets are still on the growing market but nothing really innovative. All manufactures are trying to copy the iPad. Android and iOS are so look a like that even there is not much innovation.

NFC (near frequency communication) is surely the next big thing for electronic devices. It is not a new technology but still not build into many devices. In a few years we might see NFC not only in smart phones but in many other things like toaster or running shoes. NFC will get cheaper and wider communication radius.

Augmented reality is still on my top list. We are still not at the top of the cycle. A big breakthrough will come when the processors of the smart phones and tablets will double in speed and performance.

Another big favorite of mine is gesture as input device. The Microsoft kinect is a great beginning. I can see many great innovations in this area. I believe that we are able to buy 65inch TVs in a few years under $1000 with build in kinect similar
technology. We will then replace in our master bathroom the vanity mirrors with flat screens. They work like mirrors (because of build in cameras) or as windows with scenics coming from the cloud. If we then walk in front of the screen ,the scenic will move like if we move in front of window and look outside.

In 2013, most of the consumers will buy tablets instead of notebooks. Netbooks will be dead till then. But the really fascinating part is that we, the consumers, will have always multiple intelligent devices, even if each device can do everything we need.

I remember that my friend I and discussed that in 2010 we might have only one device to make a call, shoot picture, tape a video or to surf the internet. We have been partly right. Our iPhone can already do this, but we have been wrong at the same time. We believed everybody does want to have only one device. The reality is different. The reality is that most of the electronic devices will be able to do almost everything, but we still want to have multiple devices. The reason is the form factor. I even believe (as my friend), that there is still space a device in size between a smart phone an a table. Something around 6inches screen size.

The biggest trend will be the total integration of all of them. Apple started some of this by allowing to watch a movie which is streamed to the iPhone or to play a game on the iPad which was purchased on the iPhone. And now they are going further with their iCloud for music and documents.

However the inter connection is yet not even started. The next really big trend for us is the seamlessly switching between devices without any effort and data lost.

Imagine you take a FaceTime call on your iPhone, you then go in your office to your desktop with NFC the iMac could recognize that FaceTime is running on your iPhone and ask you if you want to switch to the iMac. You could then at the same time surf again on the iPhone or even take another call.

Or you are on the phone having an important conference call, at the same time you need to take your car to pick up your son from VPK.
In the future you would be able to have your conference call on your office phone, as soon you wave your iPhone over the office phone, the call will be directed to your iPhone. When you are in your car, the call gets directed to the build in phone in your car and the sound will be played over the build in stereo.

After you picked ip your son, you need to print a presentation. You drive to Fedex Kinko's. There you hold your phone to the printer and your selected document will print.

Computers are much easier to use than 15 years ago, but then we had one device. Today we have at least 2 if not even more. I am regularly using any given day 5 different "computers" (iPad, iPhone, AppleTV, iMac, Windows 7 notebook).

Apple, Google, dropbox and Amazon are helping us to move our data (music and documents) into the cloud which helps to get better our devices synced, but to be honest not yet did I find a system which worked very well and is at the same time easy to set up.

the cloud is a buzz today but nothing really new, however faster Internet connections, the cloud and wifi everywhere will bring us to the next level. I truly believe, that in a few years most of our smart devices don't have large memory for storing data. The apps will be thin clients that a smart phone only need to have a few gigs to run OS and the Thin clients. Surely memory gets cheaper and smaller, that I doubt the memory will be reduced on the devices, but I believe most of our data will be stored somewhere but not the device.

I am not the biggest fan of Google but Google will lead this. They have already a notebook which uses chrome as OS and everything you do is in the internet using their service. The notebook sucks, it sucks pretty bad but only because we don't have all the time internet and without Internet the notebook is useless. It is like having a 3 series BMW but no gas to run it.

Even if the notebook sucks, the philosophy behind is the future. As developers we need to think more in applications which are storing the data not local and to allow seamless integration to any other device if needed. If Google would extend the notebook to allow to work on a doc offline and as soon internet is available the data would go into the cloud would be great. And as I heard they are working on this. Apple's iCloud seems to promise this for some data types.

Another trend will be projectors. They are around since ever, but with augmented reality and better technology, they will get new places not just for presentations or as TV replacement.

When I talk about projectors then I actually mean screen less displaying. The windshield in cars will be your screen. Windows will be screens and every wall can be a screen. Maybe you choose your room color by clicking a button on your iPhone and your room is suddenly red. If you don't like it anymore then you can change your room color without painting the walls.

The future is closer as we think and when my son is 18, he will lough about my blog entry from today.

- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Brooksville,United States

Cracker country goes digital

My family and I have been on Sunday at the Florida State fair.
Besides ridiculous fancy food like
Chocolate covered bacon, krispy kreme doughnut fried hamburger, deep fried butter, deep fried oreo, deep fried candy bars and meatloaf Sunday
and a lot of attractions like double head princess, half man half mermaid and the smallest pig in the world, they had as a small cracker town.
The town had original houses from Florida crackers from the 19th century.
What are the Florida crackers?
Florida cracker refers to original colonial-era English and American pioneer settlers of what is now the U.S. state of Florida, and their descendants. The first Florida crackers arrived in 1763 when Spain traded Florida to Great Britain. The British divided the territory into East Florida and West Florida, and began to aggressively recruit settlers to the area, offering free land and financial backing for export-oriented businesses. The territory passed back to the Spanish crown in 1783, and then to the US government in 1819. Spanish rule in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was only nominal and the territory was wild and lawless.

The town was awesome I felt like going back in time if there has not been something amazing modern.

In front of each house was a sign with two QR codes.




One code for English and one code for Spanish.

The visitor had to scan one of the codes which redirected to a website with an audio file.
The audio file was (for each house) about 5 minutes and explained the history of the house.
I have to say it worked perfect with my iPhone 4, however some Android users had problems because the phone could not find a program to run the mp3 files.

A complete list of the audio files can be found here.

It was a perfect use of QR code. I stopped and watched how many people actually tried to scan the codes. I counted in a time period of 20 minutes 250 people going into the church but only 4 people even trying to scan the QR code which two of them had problems to get the audio file to work.
At least 20 people were wondering for what and what the QR code is.

Giving two more years and much more will do it.

The idea is really great. I remember that in the past i had to rent an audio guide to go through a museum, which did cost money and did never work well.

Nowadays we can scan a QR code and in some cases even use it in combination with augmented reality not only to hear the explanation but to see some extra layer of info on top of the art.

Technology as education, i love it.

- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69

HTML 5 or Flash?

I hear this question all the time and i believe it is the wrong question. We should always ask for best user experience before we ask us other questions.

Let us face, most of us don't like Flash, many of us can't say why, but we know we don't like it.

A few reasons why I don't like flash is that i am a Mac user and flash does crash my browsers very often. Flash pages do take sometimes too long to load, i just don't like the fancy load circle. A flash page has many times so many things going on that i don't know what i should do as an user, to navigate through the page. And I can't just right click and download a picture when I like it.

All these reasons don't have really to do with flash itself. It is the way designers are using flash. Many times a flash could load instantly without a waiting circle and then load all other parts. However many times designers tend to build one big flash instead of many small flash pieces which get called through the main flash.

As a project manager I don't like flash because any changes in the flash means recompiling the flash to swf and upload it again to the live server. Only flash designer can do updates and it takes forever to make a small text change.

But this is as well just a matter how the flash is developed. A lot of developers are using now for content in the flash XML. Which makes updates of images and content much easier without recompiling the flash piece.

So what is then the problem with flash, maybe too many users can't see flash because the browser does not support flash?

Not really, only a very low percentage of users do have web browsers which can't load flash.

Maybe the problem is SEO. Any content which is within a swf file are not searchable by google or bing. But this is not the reason neither. Flash pages can have no script text for search engines. It is a little bit more work but helps a lot.

HTML 5 is great, it works on any device, if the device supports flash or not.
However when we look at browser statistics then we see that 60% of users are using IE 8 or less which does not support HTML 5 and 22% are using FireFox 3.5 or less which means only partly HTML 5 support. This gives us a 18% chance that we reach consumers with HTML 5 supported browsers. This is a clear win for flash (right now).





Below are stats what HTML 5 support really means(Thank you Deep Blue Sky Blog)

Safari 4.0:



FireFox 3.5:




Google Chrome:



Opera 10:




Internet Explorer 6,7 and 8:




I want to talk a little more about websites and flash or not flash before i will talk about HTML 5.

As a company we should never have full flash pages only because it is cool. We should think when flash does make sense and when it is not necessary. Even without HTML 5, we can already utilize javacript (jquery) and DHTML to get cool effects.

I see many times jpg pictures in flash, even static images, why using flash just to show a slideshow?

Flash is great for vector graphics motions like comic book style, or to embed none Internet fonts. Flash is great that it looks on all browsers the same, but we can do this as well with CSS and proper html encoding. Flash is easy drag and drop to develop (sorry flash gurus, but most of the flash i see is not very complex).
Hover and mouse over can be done without flash. Please think twice before building something in flash, try to think if it can be done without flash. In 7 out of 10 flash pages I see, i know it can be done without flash.

And why again not flash? Faster to load, easier to change, better SEO experience, less crashes and it would work on the iPad.

IPad, the right moment to talk about HTML 5. HTML 5 will come standard and even Microsoft is saying they will go with HTML 5 and silverlight will be only be used in the future for mobile windows 7 app development.
But till then HTML 5 is only important for websites viewed on mobile devices. Many mobile devices don't support flash or only flash light. But just making a website in HTML 5 to support mobile devices is not the answer.
All but the iPad (or other big screen mobile devices) have too small screens that a regular page does not make sense. Plus these mobile devices have mostly touchscreen and for sure no mouse, this means many special effects we are used on PC websites don't work (like on mouse over). Even if your device would support flash the user experience would be bad if and user tries to navigate through a flash page which has mouse typical effects.

When we make the decision to support mobile devices, we need to have an alternative mobile page not a standard page without flash.

And this costs money, there are right now many different screen sizes we have to take in consideration when building a mobile page. We need as well to think what are the navigation interfaces, keyboard, touch screen, buttons etc.

As i mention in many reports, try to know your audience. Understand what device they use to get to your website. And don't look at your browser statistics. If your mobile web experience is bad, the users don't come back to the page with mobile devices. The web statistics might say that only 2.5% of your users are accessing the page through their smart phone, but if you don't have a smart phone version of your website then the % does not get higher. Who wants to navigate twice to a broken page or a page with bad mobile experience. The good part is, that most internet agencies don't have mobile versions of their site neither. See Nick Jones research

Don't ask your co workers anymore if HTML 5 or flash for your next relaunch or brand page. Ask how can we ensure each of our targeted user has the best user experience. Examples:
if you offer QR codes on your product packages then you need to have a mobile page.
If you sell something for an audience which does not surf the Internet mobile, then there is no need for a mobile page.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Spring Hill,United States

Use QR code but do it right

QR codes are getting more and more traction as I wrote last week. But many companies don't know how to get the consumer to use QR codes.

Yankee Group said that 41 percent of consumers in North America are likely to choose a phone with an advanced operating system for their next device. At that pick-up rate, smartphone volumes will make up about 38 percent of all handsets by 2013 in North America. In the U.S., the average consumer has had four phones, which increases their likelihood of wanting to have more sophisticated features for their fifth device.

But for QR codes smart phone is not necessary, only a phone which has a camera and a QR code reader available. However it is a good idea to target only smart phones because the user can choose which QR reader to use and these phones have better web browsers.

None smart phones mostly don't allow to install software and when a phone does not have a QR code reader then a camera does not help.

Before a company decides to utilize 2 dimensional barcodes, they have to know their target group. Aiming retired people or very low income households would not be a good group to introduce QR code. They won't have smart phones or are not aware of such technology.

QR codes can do a lot. Either guide the user to web page which educates the consumer to the promoted product, or a web page where the user can get coupons. A QR code can even start a download for a digital business card.

Another possibility is to have an app which the user has to download to get specials through QR code.

A company should not start to think to use a QR code but to think where a QR code can be helpful, to get more branding or more customers.

Very helpful are these codes on product displays in stores like Walmart where the retailer does not allow additional display space. The code is small enough to fit on packages or as an extra on a display.

Important is that, if the target groups is not very up to date, not only to print the barcode on the package or label, but as well to give the consumer a hint.

Very strong are sentences like "Want to know more? Then scan the code below".

Not everybody with a smart phone has a QR reader, therefore it is a good idea to engage the consumer to send a text message to 5555 (your short dial number) to receive a link to the promoted page, like "or text GETME to 5555".

Smart phones are like PCs 10 years back. We need to build the web page for different browsers and screen displays. There are right now a few common browsers for smart phones:
Safari, google chrome (android version), opera mini, skyfire and a few more.
Some of them might not be able to support flash. Either way the page should be much smaller in kilobyte size than a PC web browser page. Smart phones over wifi or 3G or Edge are not as fast as computers. The page should not take longer than 5 seconds to load.
Some smart phones have keyboards, some have only touch screen. All this should be taken in consideration when building a mobile web page.

A QR code should not link to a normal web page. Even if the smart phone has a full browser and a fast Internet connection, the screen (between 2.5 and 5inch) is too small to read a full page.

If you decide to have a TV commercial with your campaign, then include in the commercial some education about the QR code and how users can find special info by scanning a two dimensional code.

QR codes are not yet common enough to give the consumer only some product information, when introducing these codes the company should offer some incentives to scan the code. A good incentive might be a discount which the user can only get when scanning the code.

If it is good executed the consumer will post about this in Facebook, mySpace or Twitter and more people will look for the QR code in the store.

Talk on the company or product website about the code and where the user can download a barcode reader. Neo Reader, as an example, has for many phones a download. Neo Reader will recognize the phone, when the user uses his smart phone to navigate this page.
The user just needs to follow the instruction.

As a company you should as well post on your Facebook fan page that the company uses QR code, where they can't be found and what special offer the consumer gets by scanning the code. If you have a Twitter account then tweet about it as well.

The beauty behind a QR code is that you never need to change the code, you only need to change the content of the underlying page.

This means you can print the barcode with no problem on labels or packages and still have every month other messages behind.

It is important to change the results behind the code. If you don't do it then the user will not scan it anymore. A good interval is every 4 to 6 weeks.

If all your products will have QR codes on their package or a label, then it might be a good idea to build your own iPhone or Android app.
Having your own app allows you to do so much more with barcode. You can let consumers collect points or play with them scavenger hunt. The limit is the sky.
The only contra is. that you need to advertise for your application, because otherwise the consumer won't have it. There are over 250,000 iPhone apps and over 80,000 android apps, it would be lucky if many people find this app.

Make sure in the app is the possibility for the user to send a link to friends to invite them to get the application. Offer them a reason to send the invite and offer a reason to download. The reason can be as simple as to get a chance to win a car or complex as getting loyalty points. The more invites the more points which can be redeemed within the application.

Same for the people who received the link to the app, give them a chance to win a car or to get points when they sign the first time in your app.

Promote this app on your website in your commercials and on your social network.

I hope somebody will follow the recommendation, I am sure the success will speak for it.

Please check out goggles from google. This is the coolest app ever. It not only can scan and translate QR codes but you can make a picture of anything you want and google will search the Internet for it. I saw a painting I liked but did not know who painted it. I took a picture and used goggle. Within a blink of an eye i got the answer from google. Pretty cool.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Spring Hill,United States

QR Code the last missing piece between mobile, brick and mortar store, social and web

History:
QR does are two dimensional codes which are usually black and white and in a form of a square. The pixel within the square have data encoded, most likely an URL.
Smart phones with cameras can scan this code and display the encoded content. If it is an URL it will open a website.
The user needs to use either a QR scanner software or can use google goggles to scan the code.

QR codes started in Japan in 1994 when Denso invented the system. Since then the QR code usage in Japan grew extremely and is almost a standard feature on Business cards. Mostly these codes link to a page with a virtual business card which then the user can download to the phone. Japan has much longer than the US phones with cameras which is most important part to scan barcodes.

Today in Japan everybody from Mickey & Co. to Nike are getting in the act, and revolutionizing outdoor advertising in the process.








The Japanese standard for QR-Codes devised by Denso Wave is JIS X 0510 which was released in January of 1999. The corresponding ISO International Standard, ISO/IEC 18004, was then approved in June of 2000. The standard was then updated back in 2006. (ISO/IEC 18004:2006).

QR codes in Europe for advertising are since 2004 very common when camera phones started to be popular.
A Portuguese wineyard (Cortes de Cima) is printing QR codes on all their wine labels. Consumers can scan them in the store to get more detailed information about the wine.






In the US QR codes just now coming for commercial use and advertising. However companies like Philip Morris are using them since years on their cigarette packages for inventory counts and shipping. We don't have in America yet a standard for these codes like in Europe or Japan. Even Microsoft has their own code method.
The consumers here in the US get more and more interests as we can see in the search statistic at google for qr code search.





The future of QR codes
We are right now in a QR code hype and three years behind Europe and Japan. But finally we are understanding that QR code is the missing piece between on the road (mobile), brick and mortar store and Internet.
These little codes don't take a lot of space an can be scanned in any direction. But the underlying URL can bring a consumer to web pages with much more information than a store could display for each product.

Would it not be great to go to Target and find a toy for our son. But we are not sure if there are enough accessories for this toy available. We scan the code and on our smart phone opens a webpage with all accessories we could buy for this toy.

Or we scan the code, because we like the product so much, and automatically we are fans with this product Facebook page.

ItWowed.Me, a new smartphone technology platform developed by Majestic Media Ltd., allows businesses and brands to drive audiences to Facebook fan pages and convert them into fans.
"Like" something in real life? By placing a Quick Response (QR) code on real world objects, smartphone users can now scan these codes with their iPhone, Android, BlackBerry or any smartphone device and instantly "Like" the real world product or business on Facebook, thus sharing it with their friends on the social media site.

Verizon teamed with scanlife to promote a campaign to show how many apps are available for droid devices. It was an integrated campaign with print ads, banner ads and even ads on iPad. Within only three months they counted 150,000 scans. See the results here. This is a great success.

We read almost everyday about QR codes printed on walls in subways or QR codes in magazines. Polo Ralph Lauren was one of the first companies in US in 2008 who did a nation wide QR code campaign. All their print ads had codes which a consumer could scan to get directly to the product page of the advertised product to buy.

QR codes are as well perfect to combine augmented reality with real life and Internet.
Imagine you are at Walmart looking for a game and want to know the ratings and want to know what your friends are thinking about the game? Just scan the code and you instantly see the main character of the game in the screen in front of you telling you the average rating and who of your friends talked about it on facebook. The background of the screen is the store image live from your camera and the character is following your movements.
Or you want to buy a new bed, you take at home a picture of your bedroom. At the store you scan the code of a bed you like and it will instantly show up on the photo of your room. You move the bed a little around till you like the position. You save the image and send it as multi media message to your spouse who is 3000 miles away. Would this not be great?

Bottom line, the technology is easy to understand. Open the bar code scanner software and make a picture of the code and then everything else works like magic.
Brands can advertise and educate consumers without the need for more space than 2 inches of the product packaging.
This is all needed to connect the consumer with social, to offer the consumer more important information to make the buying decision or just to wake interests for the consumer to do something.

QR codes are so new and still rare in the US that even having QR codes on Internet ads will increase clicks on banners because the user wants to know what is behind this weird looking square.
The ad below got an average CTR of 1.34% which is 400% higher than industry standard and a scan rate of 0.47% which totals the interaction to 1.81%



In two years we don't talk anymore about QR codes they are just a part of our life.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Spring Hill,United States

Homeless goes digital

Everyday when I leave the office, to drive home, I have to stop at the traffic light of a big intersection.
There are always people like shown in the picture below who are asking for money.

I don't mind to give them money, but i never know the true story behind these people and if my money will be used as i expect.
And i have to admit I have seldom cash with me, that I would not be able to give them money, even if would like to.

But I have a solution, which would help them and people like me.

Why not creating a website which allows homeless people or people without job to sign up. When they sign up they have to prove their identity with either their social security number or through a mentor, somebody with social security number.

When signed up, the system will read the SSN to get employee status, home status and other information like how many children. The person must upload as well a photo of himself and nearby pickup store (you will soon know why).

The system will not disclose name, address or financial situation other than saying, bad, worse, good etc.

If a mentor creates the account for somebody then the referral (mentor) can put this information in for the homeless person.

I know most of the street people don't have a computer or even a phone. But a mentor can help with this just using a smartphone.

Each account gets a QR Code which can be printed. Again a mentor can print the QR code at a nearby copy shop and bring it back to the homeless.

The next time I drive by at homeless, the person will hold up the sign with a qr code.

I will take my phone, scan the barcode, see the picture and his employment status. And an indicator on it if it was created by a mentor. If i feel the image matches the person and the story is heart breaking I can hit a button how much I want to give this person (up to $20) paid directly through phone bill.
Then i choose for what (food, soda or clothes). As soon I am finished I get a confirmation email. And a donation receipt. It is important tat is a donation otherwise the homeless person would need to tax income.

The homeless person will get once a week to his favorite pickup store coupons for food, soda or clothes.

I would never need to have cash with me, I can anytime decide to help the person and instantly see if the person is lying or not. But the best thing is that i can ensure my donation gets not misused for alcohol or other unnecessary items.

Who ever build this website and app will be paid by the donation. The owner of the site will get 10% from each donation for administration costs.

What do you think? Let me know your thoughts.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com or follow me on Twitter schlotz69

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Spring Hill,United States

Barcodes on TV is not the answer

From the comfort of their sofas, mobile-phone users can scan a bar code embedded in commercials on certain evening shows on Bravo and instantly obtain additional information about a product and a discount to buy it.

The 45-second commercials by the online fashion retailer Bluefly show snippets of its “Closet Confessions” interviews with designers and celebrities like Bethenny Frankel, who appeared on “The Real Housewives of New York City,” and the Olympic figure skater Johnny Weir.



When the cellphone is pointed at the on-screen bar code, the user is linked to a complete closet-baring episode, which can run as long as five minutes, and offered a $30 discount on a $150 purchase at bluefly.com, which sells designer and other branded clothing and accessories.

The idea is brave, but not convenient.
Depending on your distance to TV and the size of your TV you have to get close to the TV, hold your phone still and try to scan the barcode. Even if the image would be big enough for doing the scan without getting up, the scan is hard to do because of the bright TV backlight.

Shazam and SciFi have the better approach by using sound. Shazam is a famous application to record some music and then get the author, group and song name back (their DB has over 1 Billion songs). But since a few weeks Shazam is offering with SciFi the ability to record a few seconds of (as example) Eureka and as a result the user gets extra info back (see one of my older blogs).

It is much more convenient and easier to use. The consumer does not need to get up or hold the phone in a weird position to get results.

Barcodes are great and have their place in our life, like product packages or print media where no sound is available. But TV commercials should not depend on barcodes. Most phones don't have a barcode reader, the consumer has to download it the first time, same for shazam. But shazam has already over 75 million users and 20 million smart phone users, more than any barcode app has.

And then there is the problem that in the US is no standard for 2 dimensional barcodes (qr codes). Microsoft has their color codes, some have only two color codes and then there is a third version which is a combination of both.
In Europe and Japan QR codes are regulated to one standard.

We will see more integration of mobile and TV and maybe all devices and Advertisement will follow us from device to device utilizing sound not barcodes.



- Posted using My iPad

Location:W Laurel St,Tampa,United States