QR Codes Beginning To Be Included On Condoms

After reporting on the expanding use of QR Codes in other areas, I did not think there would be too many other uses which would be surprising to us. That has changed today after I read about the use of QR Code Condoms where they are encouraging those using them to record their "activity" location. While there are varying opinions, the use of condoms to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases or unwanted pregnancies is supported by a wide group of people. So it should not be a surprise when planned parenthood came out with this new promotion. It takes the idea of a QR code and combines it with a location check in which one could see as similar to Foursquare. This is something which is unique and most certain to draw some attention to it.

The QR codes on each individual condom package will, when scanned. send the person to the Wear Did You Wear It web site. This is truly a new and unique usage of a QR code. It comes from Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest. They had distributed 55,000 condoms a few weeks back to colleges and universities in the area with the QR codes included on them. Given the growing popularity of QR Codes, it is not a surprise that people did scan the QR Code. That process directed them to the Wear Did You Wear It web site. The check in web site lets people enter information anonymously and there is very little information collected, but does include location, age and gender along with some other drop down lists to chose from.

The check-ins show up on a map on the website that is searchable by gender, orientation, approximate age, location, and other filters. In the past week the response has been incredible. Check-ins have come in from 48 out of 50 states and from six continents!

The resulting list of collected information may be meaningful to some and is collected data which can be used to attempt to interpret "activities". Given that they are already collecting information from 6 continents and 48 of the 50 US states, they have a body of information already. Distribution of the QR Code condoms in other areas of the US or international locations is going to add more data to the collection they already have been able to gather. You can go to the site and view the results interactively by filtering on the results based on the categories they have. All of this is being reported by ZD Net.

Not only can the encounter be recorded on the map, but proud teenage Tweeters can send their link out in to the Twitterverse, or Facebook fans can make sure everyone knows what they’ve been up to.

In this mobile world where younger age groups have grown up with social media communication, this becomes a natural fit for them and this one is likely to expand that collection of information much further. The use of QR Codes in this endeavor is a unique one and looks to be very successful.

Samsung Creating New Mobile Device Categories

Mobile Device Trending

We have seen new categories of devices being created and the one that comes to mind is that of Apple and how they established the tablet category with the release of the iPad. Apple has also attempted to combine categories together such as combining the iPod with the iPhone so that it reduces the number of devices which you have to carry with you. They were extremely successful in doing that. These kinds of things are going to continue as technology continues to improve. It seems that Samsung is attempting to create new categories with their Samsung Galaxy Note.

The Galaxy Note is the combination of a smart phone and a mini-tablet to create something new and unique. The note has created what Samsung is calling the "Phablet" category and it was recently released in the US. It is being heavily advertised to promote the use of a stylus which has not been really accepted since the Palm Pilot. The Galaxy Note appears to be growing in use throughout the world while carving out a brand new niche category for the device. It is starting to look like Samsung is going to be successful in their efforts to promote the Galaxy Note.

We are now hearing about a whole other combination of devices from the Mobile World Congress where Samsung is announcing the Galaxy Beam which is the combination of a smart phone and a projection device. Contained in a single device, it presents a portable projection device for those who need something on the fly to show people a presentation or stream a movie. This could be viewed as a great item for business people who travel a lot and do not want to carry around projection equipment.

From a trending perspective, we now have a smart phone and mini-tablet combination in the Galaxy Note. We have a smart phone and projector combination from the Galaxy Beam. Both of these are sporting 4G LTE capabilities and dual core processors. It makes one wonder what the next trend is going to be with smart phones where technology merges together into a single device. We already have music players being combined with smart phones.

What do you think is going to be the next item added to a smart phone?

QR Codes Finding More Uses

It seems that QR Codes are showing up everywhere and some of the usages of QR Codes are pretty creative. The QR Code pictured here is from Starbucks in a game they had back in May of 2011. This was part of a clue type game called SRCH from Starbucks which had 6 rounds of play and then a final round. The QR Code was part of Round 1 in their game and had to be scanned as part of the game.

We have seen heavy usage of QR Codes by companies to promote products in stores and to provide consumers special deals when they scan the QR Code with a smart phone. But there are many other usages for QR Codes than one might imagine. It seems the idea has been around for years as a way to communicate with individuals. Take for example Nintendo, who used the QR Codes as a way to share Avatars. It would seem that it did not catch on, but the idea is notable. There is even Custom QR Codes where a customized QR Code gets created and it reminds one of the company behind it. One of their examples is for Angry Birds and if you scan the code, it will download the game to your iPhone. There are examples of Instgram and Shazam also contained at the link.

Jacked Up card games is another one where you can play games which are well known, but with a new twist where the deck of cards has a few individual cards which have QR Codes on them. This is a new twist on an old game and is expected to be released beginning in April. The idea is to have a Joker in the deck with a QR Code on it and if drawn, you would scan the QR Code with your iPhone or Android phone and get information back. That returned information could change the rules of the game on the fly and completely alter who might win. Here is a promotion video from Bicycle Cards.

Another usage which is starting to catch on in some parts of the world is the use of QR Codes in education. In Beatrice, Nebraska they are allowing the use of smart phones by 8th grade students in an effort to further their education. This is part of an effort to have students extending their interest and knowledge outside the classroom. Students scan QR Codes with their smart phones and can then be provided with a link to a YouTube video or an article that is relevant to current school teaching which is going on. This is an excellent way to extend education beyond the traditional textbooks to utilize something which students are doing outside the classroom. This is a unique example of how QR codes are for far more then company products.

In the world of QR Codes, there are more and more opportunities to take advantage of the technology in an ever expanding digital world.

Training Google To Crawl Your New Website

How To Series

Getting Google to pick up your posts within 30 minutes is something you have to train Google to perform so it will crawl your site more frequently.

Getting your site to be picked up by search engines is a very important part of the process. There are so many different things which may have an impact as to how much traffic your site might get and it is critical to get anything that you post to show up in Google Search in a reasonable period of time. One might ask what is reasonable and for every person you might ask, you would get a different answer. Much depends on how often you plan on posting things and what you desire. What I want to see is Google showing my searches within 30 minutes of posting them. So, in a very unscientific method, I created a new web site to see what I could do to get Google to show my posts in that time period. This is a WordPress site which was not previously set up and I started this once the site was set up. This testing has nothing to do with traffic to the site, only that Google shows my posts in a reasonable period of time.

Google and Webmaster Tools
Google is the big search engine that everyone focuses on to try and get their sites to show up in the search results on page 1. How you do that is the subject of SEO related articles and you can find that elsewhere. The first thing which you must do to get Google to find your site and have it show up in searches is set things up with Google Webmaster tools. There are other explanations on how to do that and you can find that elsewhere. Once you have been able to set up your site with Webmaster tools and configured what was necessary, you then need to add your sitemap to it. You will need to have a sitemap generated for your site in XML and with WordPress, there are a number of plugins which do this. We often use Google XML Sitemaps. The name of the file is normally sitemap.xml.

Google will crawl your site periodically and that is part of the problem with a new site. It is going to take some time for Google to start to crawl your site on a regular basis. When you first add your sitemap.xml file to the Webmaster tools, Google is going to crawl your site for the first time. It is after that which you want to train Google to crawl your site more frequently. I use the word "train" as you are trying to convince Google and all their algorithms to look at you site on an increasing basis.

You will want to post things at least 3 times a week to start and at various times of the day. Do not post things at the same time as Google will then learn to crawl your site at the same time everyday once it gets to that point. The key is to have Google crawling your site with 30 minutes of posting something. If you are striving for high volume traffic, you want it to pick up posts within a few minutes of them being posted.

The Training Test
Google is always reworking things, but here is what I did for a period of 40 days.

• Started posting articles everyday and attempted to maintain a minimum of 300 words in the articles.


• Missed posts on days 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 21, 36 and 37. This indicates that you do not have to post every day, but to establish your site it is probably a good idea.


• Links to the articles on days 13, 16 and 24. The value of links to your posts is an important item in driving traffic to your site and Google is seeing it as having value.


• At day 10, Google was crawling articles anywhere from 3 to 7 days. (1 to 10 days)


• At day 20, Google was crawling articles anywhere from about 3 days. (11 to 20 days)


• At day 30, Google was crawling articles anywhere from 1 to 3 days (21 to 30 days)


• After day 30, Google was display articles at the 30 minute mark. This is the goal when this started.


• At day 40, Google was displaying articles on average at the 10 minute mark

This test was only about getting Google to display a posted article within 30 minutes of it being put up and I was able to attain that value by “training” the crawling of the web site. This was not about driving traffic to the site as the site was getting 3 to 5 page views per day which was probably me looking at the posts, so most of the traffic came from my location, though Google Analytics is showing some traffic from other locations.

So this tells us that you can “train” Google to crawl your site more often to establish the baseline for that period forward. I have to assume that most web sites start out pretty good for the first 10 posts and then drop off which would indicate the improvement in crawling after day 10. .

Your results will vary as this was not a scientific endeavor and not an exact test. Checking for pages to appear in the Google Search was not done in a strict manner and the results may be better than what was recorded. This should give you hope in training Google Search on a brand new web site. If you are doing this on an existing web site, it may take longer to get similar results especially if you already have Webmaster Tools set up on the site because Google has history in place for the site.

Good luck.

How to Increase Your Klout Score

If Klout is important, then asking how you can raise your score is certainly a natural enough question. You might even be trying to decide how much you can guess about the algorithm and how you can turn your guesswork to your own advantage.

What is Klout?

Klout has been around since 2009, but it only really seems to have started gaining lots of ground and attention very recently. Suddenly, Klout scores are popping up everywhere, a sort of “bragging rights” metric that gives people a snapshot of how important they seem to be to the social media world. But what is Klout, exactly?

Klout is a free social media tool that lets you measure your effectiveness at engaging your audience with valuable content. It combines the best aspects of a pure “metrics” tool with the functionality of a social media platform. Of course, that’s not the real question. The real question is: how do you turn all of this into new leads and sales for your business?

Demonstrating Your Brand

One of Klout’s greatest strengths is its ability to show you exactly which topics you’re dominating as an influencer. If you’re not getting any topics at all then your focus is probably too broad. If you’re trending for all the wrong topics then you will know it is time to adjust what you’re doing. You can also gain more traction in a topic when someone else chooses to give you +K for it—a stamp of approval which indicates you’re giving your audience exactly what they’d like to see.

Measure Your True Reach

If you’ve ever wondered how many of your followers are actually paying attention to your content then Klout will prove very useful. Klout gives you something called a “true reach” score. You may have 1,000 followers on Twitter, but if only 3 of them are responding, sharing, or clicking then something is very wrong. Getting followers is easy. Standing out from the general noise is the hard part.

Another Source of Social Proof

You can display your Klout score across a number of forums. In fact, you currently have a score whether you’ve ever interacted with Klout or not. For better or for worse, Klout is starting to gain a lot of attention, and people will make assumptions: namely, that a higher Klout score indicates greater niche authority. Raising your Klout can’t happen unless you’re actively doing everything you can to create this kind of authority to begin with, however. It’s a clear case of success breeding success.

How to Increase Your Score on Klout

If you are new to Klout, the absolute fastest (and easiest) way to bump up your score is by adding all your social networks and services to your account: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, YouTube, Tumblr, Blogger, Wordpress, Flickr, Instagram and Last.fm. You may not have accounts with all these services, add as many as you can. I've seen many people double their score after connecting all their accounts.

You can start taking control of your Klout profile and score by visiting klout.com.

Once you've added all your social media accounts you should see your score go up. After that it's a little more involved to build your score. In truth, trying to make guesses about the Klout algorithm is the wrong way to go about things.  There is a social proof benefit to having a high Klout score, of course, but it’s not the end-all, be-all of what Klout has to offer. Klout is, first and foremost, a metric that measures your performance -a valuable  tool that tells you how well you are engaging your networks. It makes no sense to “game” your Klout score. Gaming the Klout system would do little more than reduce the usefulness of the measurement, which tells you whether or not anything you are sharing is actually worth reading in the eyes of your audience. If you want to see better numbers you’ve got to take the time and make the effort to put out better content.

Don't Worry About Your Score!

Having the mentality that you must grow your score iconically allows you to avoid some of the truly bad, shallow advice on Klout that you can find all over the internet. Some people advocate raising your Klout scores in ways that aren’t very respectful of other people. For example, some people advocate ignoring anyone whose scores are “too low,” because lower scores supposedly bring down your own scores.

One blogger even went so far as to say that people with low scores aren’t “important” enough to associate with. This kind of thinking reeks of the behavior of high school cliques. Such a mentality is too selfish to be conducive to the kind of relationship marketing that has transformed the relationship between customers and the people who provide their product and service. It also ignores the fact that the boost you get from Klout will only take you so far: if you’re not genuinely “about” helping your customers, if, instead, you’re all about what others can do for you, then your business isn’t like to succeed, even if you manage to get a Klout score of 100.

Klout will back this up, saying that the absolute best way to increase your Klout score is to “constantly offer great content that people want to share and respond to.” In other words—keep using social media effectively, and your Klout score will follow!