In the same way that websites, then MySpace URLs, and more recently Facebook pages started appearing in TV, magazine and newspapers ads, we're starting to see more QR codes appear in traditional advertisements. QR codes have been spotted on direct mail pieces, movie posters, business cards and in Times Square. Whether they'll have the staying power of your website or of your MySpace page has yet to be determined, but while they still enjoy the buzz of the "next big thing," you can take advantage of QR codes in marketing your small business. What is a QR code? A QR code is a 2-D barcode that can be scanned by a smart phone's camera and transfer information. Based on the type of code it is, it might direct the viewer to a website, make a phone call, deliver a vCard or more. How can I market my small business with QR codes? QR codes are fairly new here in the states (no surprise, they're big in Japan), so many people won't recognize them when they see them or won't have a smart phone with a QR reader installed, which limits their impact. Most current advertisements that use QR codes still have to explain how they work, and the steps the person has to take to access this additional information. Because of this, you need to determine if QR codes are a good fit for your business and your audience. If you feel there's a place for QR codes in your marketing toolbox, here are some creative suggestions on how you can take advantage of QR codes. QR Codes on business cards. OK, not the most creative idea ever. In fact, this is probably the de facto way many businesses use QR codes. Rather than overload a business card with all of your contact info you could include the bare minimum for reaching you, then create a QR code that leads people to your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Plaxo, Yelp, FourSqure, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Whrrl, and MySpace profiles. Little muss, little fuss. Scavenger hunts. Again, for some reason this appears on every list of QR code marketing ideas. Probably because scavenger hunts are fun and engaging, although a lot easier to write about than to administer. Still, for destination marketing, a scavenger hunt approach can be a great way to get visitors to check out places they might not otherwise go. Labeling. Somewhere, a restaurant patron is enjoying wine from your vineyard. They notice the QR code on the bottle and quickly scan it. That takes them to a mobile site where they can learn more about your wine, your vineyard, and links to where you can buy a case for delivery...all before the check comes. Storefront displays. Few retail businesses are open 24/7. Don't (fully) disappoint potential customers after you've left for the day. Create a Shop Online Now! QR code and put it in your storefront window. One quick scan and you've turned a potential lost sale into an online customer who's going to share a lot more of their contact information with you. Promotions, discounts and giveaways. If you want to encourage patronage from the iPhone and Android set, you could create discounts that are specific to the QR codes. You could run these codes in advertisements or post them throughout your store. You could even turn them into a "retweet" so that your shoppers share their discount with their followers. Laptop stickers. Slap a QR sticker of your vCard or website to your laptop, making it easier for other geeks to connect with you when you're at SXSW or the local coffee shop. T-shirts. Put your QR code on your t-shirt (or parka, in Maine) for some shameless self-promotion. Or, make a bigger impression by printing up 100 t-shirts and put them on 100 interns and have them attend a public event like a ballgame, street fair or campaign stop. For more engagement from the crowd, put different messages on the shirts, so people take more scans of more of your codes. Get funky with your QR Code design. QR codes allow a little wiggle room, meaning that you can "hack" the code itself. A famous, early example is the BBC's QR Code. However, you can play around with the QR code once it's been generated in an image editing tool like Photoshop and work in your own logo or brand. Always be sure to test your QR code before printing up a few thousand copies, however. Use QR codes to get Likes and Follows. You can create mobile-friendly landing pages with Facebook like buttons or lead them to your Twitter page for a quick follow. The name of the game is engagement, so a like or follow can create a long-term marketing opportunity. Caveat: so far the Like buttons that QR tags generate lead to the Facebook website rather than the mobile app. I don't know about you, but I rarely log into Facebook's website from my phone, so that requires extra steps the average person may not be willing to take. Supplement your retail space. QR codes next to pieces of art could help art galleries move more art, or museums replace those aging audio tape tours. Hardware stores could link to how-to videos on YouTube of how to use specific power tools. Groceries could link to pages that talk about how their products were sourced, and perhaps to interviews of the farmers who grew the food. Electronic shops could bring visitors to review sites so they could get unbiased reviews of stocked products. Or to an e-commerce site where shoppers could buy out-of-stock items. Book stores could link to their own reviews of books on their blog. Increase e-commerce sales. Since QR codes can lead to URLs, you can create a code that will populate a shopping cart with specific products. (Assuming your e-commerce solution can handle that.) Build your email subscriber list. Use your QR code to send people to your email signup. Just make sure you give people a compelling reason to subscribe to your list...otherwise you will have just wasted their time. Not the best way to engage your audience. Get the phone ringing. QR codes can also make a phone call. (Oh, imagine the mischief!) If you want to get the phones ringing--at your business or at campaign headquarters--you can create a code that will dial a predetermined number. Likewise, QR codes can generate SMS text messages. As you can see, there are plenty of ways to use QR codes to connect and engage your audience. QR codes can provide additional information, including photos, reviews, directions and event dates and times. There's a certain amount of fun and surprise with QR Codes, so that you can take advantage of a "what's behind door number one" mentality.

Using streaming video is a choice driven by many factors… Streaming Video over the internet is in essence a task that has been occurring for the last ten years. But with the recent updates in technology and broadband being available around the world, only recently is it now considered a top trend for the internet. It’s available for everyone to learn and use. Businesses and organizations, both small and large, are using streaming video for communicating, training, informing, educating, promoting and selling services and products across the internet. One major decision an organization or business must make is what their major usage of video on the internet will be for them. This decision is usually the determining factor on whether or not the information is offered on-demand or live. What Is On-demand Streaming? On demand means that viewers click on a link for that video and actually watch it either immediately on the website or as it progressively plays in their media player on their computer. The event that is being displayed as video actually has occurred another time and not necessarily the same day of viewing when doing on-demand. Many television stations will state coming live to you from….but this is not really occurring at the time you are watching it. It was taped live and being presented at a later date. This is referred to as ‘simulated live’. When you watch American Idol on television, it states it is live from wherever they are that day, but actually it was taped months ago. What Is Live Streaming? Live streaming is when it is actually happening at that moment you are watching it. A live stream is delivered to it’s viewers within seconds of it happening. Many sports games now are coming ‘live’ over the internet. They are happening at that exact time. Events can be streamed live from one side of the world to the other with high quality viewing. Our company did a stream of a live sporting event in Germany and viewers watched it in Canada, Europe and the United States. It was occurring live at that time, and viewers watched it as it happened. Corporations are doing live trainings from their headquarters in one country to offices in other countries – live and on-demand. Universities and Colleges are doing long-distance training of courses live with interaction amongst students and professors from one side of the world to another. Live streaming is being used in many ways for events around the world. When the new Pope was inducted it was one of the largest live streaming events in the world over the internet. Cost Can Be a Determining Factor Many live events take a more experienced, and professional crew to produce as encoding (compressing and decompressing to send that large file) is done at location prior to sending it over the internet. Content Delivery Networks (CDN’s) can be expensive if doing large on-demand or live streams of extreme length. Smaller video streams can be uploaded to your website using your own hosting service. Whether or not you have to use DRM (Digital Rights Management) is also another factor to consider. So there are a lot of factors involved in streaming on-demand and live video. So your first decision when consider streaming video over the internet is whether it can be on-demand or whether it must be live. Your event at hand will determine that and your viewers’ needs will also affect that decision. The extra costs for a live crew on location can be a determining factor also.

Design checklist What are the secrets of the successful websites? Why do some websites succeed while the others fail? Webmasters should always be asking themselves these questions and the answers are often more obvious than you may think. Below are 10 tips for better, more successful web sites. This checklist of website design tips covers the primary points that you must include in your website design plan if you want a successful site. Beyond these basic design steps you can customize your checklist to reflect your unique situation. Remember, this is the most important part of your design project. 1) Know your audience - Know who your market is and make certain that your site caters to their needs. It is critical that your site reflect the values of your potential customers and provides a pleasing experience for them. 2) Clearly identify the purpose of your website - Make certain your web site is focused on the goal, selling your product or service, conveying a message, etc. You must avoid digressing or wandering away from your primary purpose. Keep your focus! 3) Make your website personal - The most professionally designed site won’t sell if your customers don’t believe in you. Be honest in everything you do and don’t be afraid to tell your visitors about yourself. This personal touch will help you to gain their trust. 4) Loading times - You have between 10 and 30 seconds to capture your potential customers attention. To minimize your load time, keep graphics small. Compress them where possible and avoid graphic intensive pages. 5) Use a site map or directory page - Make your website navigation easy and intuitive. If your customer can not navigate your site to find what they want, they will go elsewhere. Your site map is also an open invitation to the search engines and helps them to index your site. 6) Content - Good content sells products and ideas. Review your copy often to insure it is delivering the intended message. Keep your text simple and always double check your spelling and grammar. 7) Consistency - Make sure the site is consistent in look, feel and design. Keep colors and themes consistent throughout the site. This simple step is the key to developing an internet identity and serves to provide your visitor with an experience that is unique to you and your message. 8) Update and check all links - Make sure that your site and your links are always working. Check all of your website’s links regularly because dead links will hurt you in the search engines and damage your credibility. 9) Start Simple - When you start to build your site and add information and products to it, do it one page at a time, completing each page as much as possible as you go. This will save you time down the road and help you to keep your message clearly focused. 10) Optimize website - 85% of all web users find what they are looking for via the top search engines. The closer you are to the top of the search results the more visitors you will receive. Make sure that your page is designed to maximize your placement. Think ahead Implementing the ten steps above probably will not make your site as successful as one of the big websites overnight. But, if they are implemented correctly and integrated into an overall website design and/or marketing scheme, you should see a marked improvement in your website traffic over time. Persistence pays especially on the web.

The question whether Apple iPhone or Android is a better operating system is being discussed in newspapers, magazines and most prominently on the internet. The iPhone vs Android war has assumed prime significance as according to com score data despite Apple launching the ambitious iPhone 4G, its market share dipped again. iPhone and Android both are in competition with each other to dominate the smartphone industry. Some of the latest reports are not so heartening for Apple. Canalys an analysis firm found out that out of the total number of mobile phones shipped in the third quarter of U.S., 44% were Android based compared to iPhone's 26%. Nielsen too released a study stating that Android phones outsold all other smartphone platforms. Despite all these surveys pointing towards an increased popularity of Android phones, die hard iPhone fans still believe that iPhone is something that comes out once in a generation and thus is invincible. We certainly can't conclude who is the winner in this iPhone vs Android rivalry, but we can help a bit in comparing various features of both the operating systems. One thing that is to be remembered is, there are hundreds of phones that use Android operating system as compared to Apple's four iPhones. Let us take a look at which is better - iPhone or Android. iPhone or Android? User-Friendly On an ease-of-use perspective, most of the critics believe that using applications on the iPhone is much easier than Android devices. Even if iPhone is your first smartphone, the experience will be cleaner and simpler. Android, as it is still coming up, just needs to fine tune a bit. Control Android phones allow you to bring widgets to your home screen to have recent updates, without you having to launch a dedicated application. iPhone on the other hand rules with an iron fist. Apple provides tools and guidelines but enforces them rigidly and then the apps can get rejected as well. Android is an open source software for installing applications from even outside the market. Multitasking Android is better suited for multitasking as compared to Android. You can even install a new application with another one running in the background. iPhone on the other hand is a bit rigid as far as multitasking is concerned. Applications The Apple apps store has about 200,000 applications as compared to Android's 100,000. While apps can be free or paid for in Apple apps store, Android has the advantage that all the apps are free. Choice of Phones If you want an iPhone operating system, you have a limited choice of phones. One can choose either iPhone 4G or the iPhone 3GS. The older iPhones, iPhone 2.5G and iPhone 3G run on older iPhone operating system. As far as Android phones are concerned, one can choose from hundreds of phones available in the market. While Apple comes out with a new iPhone every year, new Android phones are released every month. Let us compare some of the features of Android market vs App store. iPhone OS vs Android OS Feature iPhone iOS 4 Android 2.2 3rd party multitasking Yes Yes Wi-fi tethering No Yes (carriers may charge) Photo editing Yes 3rd party Live wallpapers No Yes MS exchange support Yes Yes SMS threads Yes Yes Adobe flash support No Yes Home screen folders Yes Yes System wide orientation lock Yes No The first iPhone came out in the 2007 and since then it has been the most desirable phone in the market. While the Apple Apps store is known for its applications and games, many people feel that Android's open source platform is a something that iPhone lacks. By open source we mean that developers have a much better control over the phone. For example, if the flash player was missing on Android like it is on iPhone, developers could develop one without waiting for Google to build or permit developing one. The proponents of both these operating systems often claim that their operating system is better than the other. As far as we are concerned, we think in the end, it boils down to the consumers and their preferences. No two customers are alike, that is why some may appreciate Apple's better control, while some like Android's open source strategy. In this battle of iPhone vs Android, the consumer is the king.

iPhone has been a rage among users ever since it was launched in 2007 and it continues to be the leading mobile device today with millions of applications in the App Store. It has revolutionized mobile computing by giving everybody an opportunity to develop their own applications for the platform. You probably want to develop your own iPhone application, but the question is – Where to begin? There are hundreds of books available on iPhone programming, but not all of them are good enough to give you a quick head-start. In this article, we’ll tell you about three excellent book on iPhone development, which can quickly get you started with iPhone (and even iPad!) application development. 1. Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK This is perhaps the best book for beginners in iPhone development. The book starts with the basics, walking you through the process of downloading and installing Apple’s free iPhone SDK, then stepping you though the creation of your first simple iPhone application. You’ll move on from there, mastering all the iPhone interface elements that you’ve come to know and love, such as buttons, switches, pickers, toolbars, sliders, etc. It will also introduce you to some more advanced topics like GPS API’s and accelerometer. It’s really a must have book for anyone interested in getting started quickly and efficiently with iPhone development. 2. iPhone Programming – The Big Nerd Ranch Guide This book leads you through essential tools and techniques for developing applications for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. You’ll learn about mapping services, accessing accelerometer data, handling multi-touch gestures, ways of sorting and loading data, communication with web services and localization. The book has numerous visual cues and code samples, which will help you get a hang of iPhone programming. It really deserves a place on your bookshelf. 3. Programming in Objective C The book is not iPhone specific, but it’s still very useful as you need to have a solid foundation in Objective C if you want to develop some really cool iPhone applications. The book assumes no prior programming knowledge and serves as an excellent guide for beginners. You’ll learn about the basics of Objective C programming, Foundation Framework and Cocoa and iPhone SDK.The separation of these main topics, Objective-C Language features and the Foundation Framework for example, almost guarantees that there won’t be much confusion if you are learning the language for the first time and that there will be a distinction between the topics and concepts for each section.