QR Codes: The Bridge Between Print and New Media

Those of you who know me personally, know that I work in the commercial printing industry. As technology advances and content quickly migrates to the web, we see the printing business declining. But QR codes, while not a savior of the industry, can help integrate print media into fast-paced internet and mobile marketing campaigns

You’ve seen them by now, the funky, square 2D barcodes known as Quick Response Codes (QR codes for short). They’re popping up everywhere in physical media: magazines, newspapers, movie posters, and even billboards. When scanned with a camera-equipped mobile phone, the codes can send users to any variety of online destinations through their phone’s mobile web browser where they may find more information, see photos, or watch movies.

QR codes are most often seen as the black and white bitmapped images like the one on the left. But designers are getting more creative with them now, like the code cleverly placed inside Iron Man's armor in the movie poster on the right.

Status Syncing: Twitter to MySpace, Facebook to Yahoo

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about how I believe smaller social networking sites shouldn’t allow their users to sync content with Facebook and Twitter because it diverts traffic away from their own sites (read that blog). Lately I’ve noticed a trend in the opposite direction, with smaller or struggling networks pulling status updates from the larger, more popular sites. The smaller sites must hope that aggregating content will give users reason to hang around on their pages longer, thus being exposed to THEIR advertising.

Synced tweets show up in the MySpace "Stream" marked with the Twitter T.

KGB Gets Windows 7, Russian Spies on Facebook!

Okay, it’s not really the KGB anymore. But the Russian Security Service made an unusual request of American-based Microsoft this week. They want the full source code to the Windows 7 operating system. Microsoft is delivering without issue. It is the company’s policy to entrust the unlocked source code of any of its products to any government that wants it. Including Russia, and even China in the past. This isn’t really all that strange. But it is ironic just a few weeks after ten Russian “spies” were discovered on American soil and sent packing back to the good old U.S.S.R.

Photos of Anna Chapman lifted from her social networking sites surfaced in the media almost immediately after her arrest.

Marketing Your Business on Facebook? You Want Fans, Not Friends!

It’s no secret that social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have become one of the most popular, not to mention least expensive, ways to promote your business online. In the rush to jump on the social networking bandwagon though, many businesses are making a fatal mistake in establishing their presence on Facebook. Instead of setting up Facebook “fan pages,” they’re using personal Facebook accounts. Using regular Facebook accounts to promote your business is against the Facebook terms of service. They can and will shut down business pages for making this error!

Administrate your "pages" on Facebook.

UPDATE :: Google is Back in China

China renewed Google’s internet content provider license this week. This July 4th I wrote a blog post about digital freedoms enjoyed here in the United States and some of those rights that are suppressed in other countries (read that blog). One of my prime examples was China’s censoring of Google search results. Google had found a loophole in the censorship by redirecting Chinese traffic to its servers in Hong Kong. But in response China blocked all access to Google search results from any country.

http://www.google.cn/

Bing-tastic!!! – My Fifteen Minutes of Fame in the SEO Spotlight

Yesterday was a big day for me, and the Podzmedia blog. One of my blog posts was at one point as high as number three in the search results on Bing, Microsoft’s search engine! Some of you may have seen the post about the Cisco Cius tablet that I posted late Tuesday night (read that blog). Wednesday morning I noticed that five visits to the blog had been the result of search queries for “cisco cius.” So I searched for the term on Google and Yahoo from home. No luck. Podzmedia was nowhere to be found in the first several pages of results on either search engine.

UPDATE :: LG Joins Cisco Cius in Android Tablet Club

Last night I wrote a blog post about the Cisco Cius Android-powered tablet computing device and how we can expect an onslaught of similar devices to compete against the Apple iPad (read that blog). Today I heard that LG has announced they too are working on an Android-powered tablet to be released in late 2010.

Cisco Cius Could be an iPad Killer… If It Wanted To Be

Google’s Android operating system has become a popular system for many smartphones rivaling Apple’s iPhone. Soon Android will be rivaling the iPad also as a number of manufacturers are announcing work on Android-driven tablet devices. One such device is the Cisco Cius. So far Cisco is treading lightly in the tablet market, calling its Cius an Android tablet for business users. With its impressive list of features, one has to wonder why they aren’t mass-marketing it as an iPad killer.

Cisco Cius

Prince: “The Internet is Completely Over”

You’re probably thinking, “WHAT?!?”. I was too when I read the quotes from the 80’s pop star this morning. Prince’s comments are from a May interview with Peter Willis of the British newspaper The Mirror. His latest album, 20TEN, was released exclusively in CD format as a giveaway in issues of The Mirror.

UPDATE – Sex.com Up for Sale… Again

The sex.com domain name is up for sale once again. The long and tangled story of the domain is a prime example of cyber-squatting. Valued for the likelihood of web surfers typing in the web address on a whim, sex.com has been tangled up in legal battles and domain sales almost since it was registered. No true commerce has actually ever taken place on the site.