3 QR code uses for everyday life

04/27/2011 By Scott Wendling 2 Comments

QR codes are the talk of the business community. All you need is a camera phone and a code reader app. It’s incredibly easy to generate qr codes. With all the excitement it’s easy to get caught up in business uses and ignore the personal implications of QR codes. After you generate your QR codes and apply them to your business try these 3 practical QR code applications.

1. Keep track of valuables

Have you ever lost your smart phone, lap top, camera or other digital valuables? This is a great time to use QR codes. A year ago I got out of my car and my iPhone fell to the ground as I walked into a store. I didn’t realize it was missing until it was too late. Fortunately the person that found it actually called to give it back. However, when I got it back the browser had been to many porn and spam sites. All my contacts and emails were also exposed. I turned pass codes on to secure my info but that created another problem: if I lose the phone people can’t find my contacts.

Recently I generated QR codes to retrofit my business cards before gong to SXSW. I had way more stickers than I needed so I was looking for other ways to use them. I looked down at my iPhone and over at my luggage. They are all now adorned with QR codes generated in about 1 minute. There are already libraries using QR codes to keep track of things.

2. Protect your vehicle

Ok, you can’t actually “protect” your vehicle with a QR code, but it can help identify the owner. When someone runs into a parked car they (hopefully) leave a note on the window with their name and information. If you generate a QR code for you car someone can scan it and instantly contact you. This way you can take care of a small accident right then rather than trying to contact someone after the fact. It can also be helpful if someone needs you to move your car and isn’t sure who the owner is. In 2010 the EPA was already talking about adding QR codes to vehicles, albeit for other reasons.

3. Organize storage

My basement is full of boxes. Boxes for Christmas, Halloween, old stuff I haven’t seen in years, and a rather random assortment of things. I can tell you what’s down there but I might not be able to find it very quick. Imagine if each box in your basement has a QR code on it. You scan the code and a list of everything in the box pops up. I wish these codes were around when I was moving but it’s never too late to start.

There are a few QR generator camera phone apps. Download one that allows you to generate a QR code from text. Type in a list of what’s in the box, generate the QR code, and email it to yourself. Then just print it off and stick it to the box. Viola, your cluttered storage area is now slightly more organized.

What else can I do with QR codes in my every day life?

Filed Under: Digital Tools, How To Tagged With: apps, barcodes, business, business cards, camera phone, code readers, generator, iphone, qr code, smart phones, smartphones

How to back up your Facebook info

03/31/2011 By Scott Wendling 3 Comments

How many pictures do you have on Facebook? Do you have any important conversations you wouldn’t want to lose? If you’re account is hacked, or simply subject to user error that deleted info on Facebook, would you be able to get it back? Unless you’ve somehow managed to archive your Facebook information pics, videos, events, friends, etc. are subject to being lost forever. But wait, there’s good news: you can back up Facebook!

That’s correct. You can actually backup everything you have uploaded or posted to Facebook. Follow this quick guide and sleep better knowing you won’t lose anything if something happens to your Facebook account.

First click your account tab.

Next click “Account Settings”.

On your Facebook account settings page you will see a line that says “Download your information” with a link to the right that says “learn more”.

After you click learn more you will see a page telling you about security that has a download button at the bottom.

After clicking that Facebook will let you know that it will take a while to gather all your photos, posts, messages, etc. from Facebook. Click the download button once again.

You’ll then be presented with a message telling you to expect an email. The email can take a while depending on how much stuff you have on Facebook. Mine took about an hour to arrive.

You will get an email from Facebook with a link to the download page.

You will be taken back to the download backup page you saw before except this time there will be a box to verify your email address.

You’ll once again see a download button. This time when you click it your Facebook information backup will be downloaded. It will be a .zip file that has the following Facebook information backed up in it:

Photos (.jpeg format)
Videos (MP4 format)
List of your events
List of every friends name
List of every private message conversation (this is a really long one)
Notes
All of your personal profile information
Everything on your wall (mine goes back a couple years, it’s extremely long)
A lot of technical files like CSS and HTML that won’t be very useful to most people

Filed Under: facebook, How To, Social Media Tagged With: archive Facebook, backup, backup Facebook, backup pictures, backup videos, facebook, facebook backup

Set up a free, quick, and easy QR for your business card

03/11/2011 By Scott Wendling 3 Comments

Scan This

QR codes are the hottest rage. A quick Google search will tell you a million and one reasons why. Once you figure out what a QR code is and how it can help you may think, “how the hell am I supposed to do this?” It’s easy to add QR codes to your marketing strategy, and here’s how:

Setting up your QR contact information

The first thing you need is a place to send people to when your QR code is scanned. The easiest way to start is to simply send contacts to a site with all of your contact information. From there they can find you on any social networks, your blog, website, phone number, or any other contact information you want them to have. Fortunately there is a free website that makes it easy to create a virtual business card.

Hubze.com offers a free service that allows you to create a virtual business card. You can add your photo, contact info, and any networks. From there it is easy for your contacts to find you on whichever social network they prefer. You will need to create a free account and then you will go through a quick walkthrough to pick your background, modify colors, upload your photo, and add your contact info and social networks. Your end product will look something like this:

Now that you’ve created your card you need to copy the url. It will be hubze.com/*username you chose*. You can also highlight the url in the address bar at the top, right click, then click copy.

Creating your QR code

Now that you have the info you want to share you need to generate your code. There are a lot of free services to generate you code, here’s a QR generator that’s very easy to use. You will notice that you can create a QR code for several things. For this virtual card you want to choose “url” in the drop down box. Simply paste the URL you copied of your business card page and hit generate. That’s it, you’ll see your code on the right.

If you want to use this code click the link that says download.

Adding your QR code to existing marketing materials

At this point you may be thinking, “That was easy, but now I have to redo all my business cards and brochures.” That could be expensive. Instead I offer a simple solution that will save you tons of money and allow you to easily change your codes in the future: mailing labels. I prefer the 1 1/’ x 4′. You can get two per label this way. Simply cut and add to your business card, brochure, suitcase, or wherever you want people to find it.

Do you have any suggestions for creating QR codes? Perhaps a favorite app for your iPhone or Android phone?

Filed Under: Digital Tools, How To, Networking Tagged With: business card, contacts, Networking, QR, QR codes, vcard, virtual card

How to post to your Facebook page as yourself

12/17/2010 By Scott Wendling 7 Comments

A huge gripe and pain in the butt on Facebook is commenting on a page you administer as yourself and not the actual page. Facebook may be planning to change this as they accidently rolled out some changes, but for the moment all hope seems lost. But have no fear, there is a workaround! It is incredibly easy but not many people know how to do it, or at least few talk about it. The way to post on a Facebook page as yourself and not the business is: Use the Facebook iPhone application!

Go to one of your pages and make a comment. It will make the post as with your personal profile. This doesn’t work with the mobile Facebook site or if you upload a picture. I have not tried it with any other applications. Let me know if another application works for you.

Filed Under: facebook, How To Tagged With: facebook, facebook page, Page update, workaround

3 ways to get real fans and followers at conferences

11/04/2010 By Scott Wendling Leave a Comment

Real Twitter followers are not easy to come by. There are a ton of robots and people out there willing to instantly follow you back, but what good does that do besides inflate the ego? These followers are not likely to read your tweets or click your links. What you want are real Twitter followers, people that will respond, retweet, and provide valuable information to you. Conferences are a great place to find new followers and tweeters to follow. But with so much to do at the conference it is difficult to keep up with everything. Here’s 3 ways to grow your real people Twitter network at conferences:

1. Foursquare

If you don’t already have a Foursquare account get one. You don’t have to use it anywhere else but a conference is the best place to start. All you have to do is check in at the conference then look at who else is checked in. Go through the list and add invite all these people. This exposes you to them and creates an opportunity for them to look at your twitter profile.

2. Hashtags

Every conference has a hashtag if it has tweeters. It is usually the name or truncated version. For example: Nardisgras is #Nardigras & 140 Conference is #140conf. Find out what it is and create a twitter search on your smart phone (if you don’t have a smart phone get one). Save the twitter search and look at it every now and then. Respond to what other people have tweeted and retweet anything interesting. You also need to send out tweets with the hashtag in them. Share the experience of whatever you’re doing. If a speakers says something you really like quote it, if you see an awesome gadget on the floor take a picture and tweet it. Remember to put the conference #hashtag on everything!

3. Tweetadder

TweetAdder(affiliate link) is an automated Twitter follower/following tool. TweetAdder allows you to search for users in many different ways and then load them into a list to be followed. Use the keyword search ability and search for the hashtag for the conference. Add the search to the automated search list. TweetAdder will slowly follows these users. You can also set TweetAdder to unfollow people that don’t follow you back after the conference is over.

Using these three tools people have the potential to see you in several places. The more places they see you the more likely they are to follow you. When you get home from the conference you can go through your following list and get rid of anyone you don’t like. What else do you do at conferences to gain followers?

Filed Under: Events, How To, Twitter Tagged With: conference, featured, followers, foursquare, Hashtags, network, tweet, Tweetadder