Incorrect Usage Of QR Codes

QR codes can go very wrong and hurt your business.

 
QR codes are a wonderful thing when used correctly and can generate addition business or sales which you might not otherwise have had. They are something new which only requires a smart phone with a camera and an app installed to interpret the scanned QR code. That is the consumer side of things. On the business side of things, you need to have a web site set up to receive those people who scan your QR code. That is the two sides of the process for using QR codes for your business. You want that web site to be optimized for mobile devices so that they have an excellent experience. But, there are a number of incorrect usages of QR codes which can hurt your business or the customer experience. Here are some of them.

QR Codes on billboards This is a highly visible way to get your message out to customers, but the lack of ability to actually take a usable picture of the QR code makes this form of usage worthless.

QR codes on subways or buses So, you are on the subway and there is a banner ad with a QR code. What are the odds you are going to stand up and take a picture of the QR code and get more details. Not very likely. If the ads are on the outside of a bus, there is no way you are going to be able to snap a picture as it is going by. The same applies to a QR Code on an ad on the outside of a taxis.

QR codes in magazines on airplanes You are on a plane and there is a QR code in a magazine. This is a mistake to put a QR code here. For now, you cannot have your smart phone operating in a wireless mode while the plane is in the air, making the investment a very poor one. People are not going to snap a picture.

QR Codes on headstones This is a great one to get people to pause and think about what is going on here. Where is this one going to take you? Down under? The only valid reason for QR codes on headstones is to give you information about the person who is buried there.

QR Codes sent in email So, you decide to send a QR code in an email to your clients or potential clients. The purpose of a QR code is to be snapped in a picture as part of the scan process. When the person opens the email on their smart phone, it is inside the smart phone and the camera is on the outside. Not a good combination.

QR Code takes you to a web site using flash This is another problem with QR codes when someone scans the QR code which takes them to a site using Adobe Flash. Not all phones are capable of viewing flash and if not, you just lost that person.

QR code takes you to a site not optimized for mobile devices This is the single biggest problem with web sites which are the end point for scanned QR codes. You have gotten the person to start the process and come to your site only to reach a web page which is difficult to view on a smart phone. You need to have your pages viewable on a smart phone and usable.

These are just some of the incorrect usages which can cause your QR campaign to self destruct very quickly. There are others, but you get the idea as to some of the potential problems with using QR Code incorrectly. It is very important to think through your usage of QR codes from the point of being scanned through and including the landing on a mobile enable site. That mobile enabled site must adhere to the same principles as a regular web site. If the person landing there does not see what they are looking for in a few seconds, they will be gone. Getting them to the site is half the battle. Keeping them there and engaged is the other half.

QR codes can be a great part of your business if the idea of using them is thought out and planned correctly. The usage of QR codes continues to grow. Make sure that you do not make the same type of mistakes as listed here.

Is There A Move From Contract To No Contract Phones?

US wireless carriers experience a drop in subscribers.

 
After many years of generally reporting gains for contract cell phone plans in the US, there was a drop in the 1st quarter for contract subscribers for the larger wireless carriers. While some may say that it is too earlier to say this is a trend, it could well show a shift which people are now willing to take given just how fast new phones are being released. It seems that just about everyone has a cell phone and some people have more than one and a tablet on top of that. Given how many there are, are we at a saturation point? In an Associated Press article, they have put together the information regarding the decline. But they have not drawn any conclusions from the information.

All Things D has taken the report and gone a step further by putting together a chart showing how the wireless carriers have done since 2006 and it is an interesting view. While it shows that this is not the first time that wireless carriers AT&T and Verizon have seen a decline, this comes at a time when they should be seeing increases in contract subscribers. This is because there are a number of great phones on the market and more seem to be showing up every other week. So, with all the great smart phones showing up, it makes one wonder why there has been a downturn.

It is a known fact that a percentage of contract cell phone owners use little of the allocated minutes for voice and tiered data plans. It is that group which subsidizes those users who consistently push up to the allocations for their contract plans for voice and data. In recent years, the data portion has been seeing over use as smart phones become faster and contain far more features. Add in 4G LTE, and some of the heavy users are tearing up the airwaves with their streaming video activities.

The idea of a no contract phone has been catching on, even though it has been slowly. Many do not need to have the large number of voice minutes or data plans which are part of the normal contract plans offered by the carriers. While you do get the phone at a reduced price, you are paying for that reduced price a little at a time each month of your contract. Under the no contract model, you pay a much higher price for the phone up front, but then you are not locked into a contract, but rather prepay for minutes for voice and amounts for data usage. This is a much different model than what many are used to.

But with all the changing of wireless plans to the tiered data plans and rumored increases in plan fees, people are going to start looking at some other options for their smart phones. I am on a grandfathered unlimited data plan with Verizon Wireless and today there has been a lot of talk about them working towards eliminating unlimited data and that is a concern. No, not really, as I do not use that much data that it would make a huge difference. But there are many who do and they are going to be concerned.

It is people like me who are not abusing the data plans and am concerned about getting locked into a 2 year contract. I have written about the need to return to 1 year wireless contracts because of how fast new phones are being released. The annual roll out of a new iPhone as an example would make 1 year contracts a great deal. Right now, the early termination fees force many to stay on their current 2 year contract and wait. That is because at the moment, the no contract options have not been showing up with the latest phones.

But the phones have slowly been getting better. If the no contract phones begin to arrive with some of the latest phones, there may well be a shift to the no contract model and away from the 2 year contracts wireless carriers stick people with today. If the wireless industry suffers a 2nd quarter decline as well, then one can assume that the shift has begun. We are half way through the 2nd quarter already and there are continuing reports of declining sales for the iPhone and probably others. It may only be a matter of time.

Do you believe we are going to see a shift to no contract phones?

Is This A Picture Of The Android Fragmentation Effect?

The discussions regarding Android Fragmentation have been moving upward this month, especially because of the most recent numbers coming from Google's own Android Developer site. The numbers for ICS adoption as of the beginning of the month show Android 4.0 with a 4.9% share of Android devices. That is less than 5% and it has been on the market for more than 5 months. That is very telling and we may not see it in double digit territory when they report at the beginning of June. That brings us to the topic about Android Fragmentation and just how bad it actually is. Open Signal Maps has created a chart which we are showing here. This chart represents the 3,997 unique devices they have found which have downloaded their OpenSignalMaps to a device.

If you look at this, it is overwhelming as to what we are seeing. The one green square represents the GT-i1900 which is Samsung's Galaxy S2 device which is very popular. Of the 3,997 devices, they have figured that 1,363 represent those Android devices which have a custom ROM build and installed before the download of their app. Even if you discount those custom ROM's, that still leaves 2,634 unique devices which they have to deal with in the app so that it will operate correctly. That is a staggering number of devices to have to deal with. They have to deal with 599 phone brands being sold with Samsung being the largest brand name with 40% of the market. Everything goes down from there.

So, you might ask what is the point of all of this. While the company could choose not to support some of the smaller brands, it would cause them to miss out on potential sales. Other smaller companies probably do just that which means that if you have a brand name phone which has a very small market share, you may not even have the opportunity to purchase an app from one of the app companies because they do not support your phone. And that is the point. With all these various phone models, it makes it more difficult for developers. You then have to factor in the Android Fragmentation effect with the potential for each phone model to have at least 2 Android OS versions which can operate on the phone which have been officially released by phone manufacturers. That starts multiplying things out and gives you an idea as to just how tough it is for app developers.

You then add to all the various phone brands, various versions of the phones and then all the various versions of the Android OS and it presents challenges to app companies. On top of all that is now the various screen sizes which have to factor into the mix of things which they are trying to resolve. On top of that are the various screen resolutions as well and you start to understand the challenges of developing apps for Android phones.

While the physical devices stay static once a phone is released, the OS is changing which has to be support and more of a problem it becomes for a company developing an app. If they have been in the market for years, their app has already been developed for existing Android versions, so they would only have to address the latest version. But for a new company trying to develop an app for the Android OS family, this is a daunting task.

While all the news for developers is not bad, it is all these challenges which cause some to not develop for Android. We can hope that Google can change some of this and it looks like they may be moving in that direction. Rumors of Google selling Nexus phones with Jelly Bean may force this to change in the future.

The discussion on this will be continued by many.

Are Wireless Carriers Responsible For Fragmentation?

Carriers release few updates for phones as compared to the OS updates created.

 
And it is the lack of updates being released which should be raising some big concerns amongst all the manufacturers of phones. While there is no empirical proof of the number of updates which smart phone owners never seem to get, there are enough examples of this which point out problems. The upgrade process for the OS on a smart phone should be multiple times over the course of a year and yet it seems that there is often only a single update. That is unless you have an Apple iPhone where they force these on wireless carriers and prevent them from adding their items to the puzzle. For Android devices, this is turning into a big problem which is not going to go away until some things change in the process.

It seems that wireless carriers are at odds with the largest OS provider in Google's Android OS. Recently, there has been some finger pointing between AT&T and Google which in this case made AT&T look bad. This is all over the problems with the slow roll out of Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0). The slow roll out is a big problem for Google right now as they only have 4.9% of Android devices on the latest OS for all active Android phones. Given that Android 4.0 has been out since November on the Galaxy Nexus, it makes one wonder exactly what is going on.

This seems to point squarely at wireless carriers for the delays, though manufacturers of smart phones are to blame as well. They all seem to want to add their pieces to the Android OS and that slows things down. There is the development time and then testing for each step along the way. If a problem is discovered in testing, it goes back to development for a fix and then a repeat of the process. If this process were to be changed so that the stock Android 4.0 was used and no other changes to the OS were done other than to support the individual hardware, that would significantly speed up the process. Or would it.

In a post from Gotta Be Mobile by Adam Mills, he is relating his experiences with his Galaxy Nexus which he purchased from Verizon 5 months ago. Since he purchased the phone, he has not seen an update from Verizon. Not one. He is currently running Android 4.0.2 which came with the phone when he purchased it. Since that time, Android 4.0.3 and Android 4.0.4 has been released. Android 4.0.4 started rolling out to Galaxy Nexus phones, but only for the GSM version. To date, there has been no release of the latest version of Ice Cream Sandwich at Verizon since the Galaxy Nexus was launched. This is a very bad sign.

I owned a Blackberry Storm for a time which I purchased from Verizon back in January of 2009. This was a few months after the 9530 model was released and it had a number of reported bugs associated with the phone which could be easily fixed by a software update. Ever 3 or 4 weeks, there was another updated OS from Blackberry to fix problems, but these were never released by Verizon. This seemed to continue for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, in October 2009 came the official word that Verizon was releasing the 5.0.0.328 OS update for the Blackberry Storm. This was great to download and fix problems, but that was the last update for the phone that I ever saw.

This is not to pick on Verizon as all the other wireless carriers in the US have probably done the same thing at one time or another. And it is probably more widespread than we would all like to believe. The pattern that I am seeing is that you get one significant software update and that is it. You are done until you purchase your next phone. I am sure I am blowing this out of proportion, but then again maybe I am not. In an article about Android Orphans, the number of devices which are one or more versions behind is not how it should be. I am sure that you can find other examples of this by doing some searches on the web.

The idea of only getting a single OS update on a phone is very discouraging and something must change. If not, people are going to start looking elsewhere for a phone where they are able to get multiple updates over the course of the year. And a phone where they get a major update close to an annual basis. At the moment, Apple is the only one that has been able to fulfill that and Google had better take notice. I am not an iPhone supporter and prefer the Android OS, but the idea of only getting a single update from my wireless carrier is discouraging.

Have you had a similar experience of only getting a single OS update to your phone?

1 Year Wireless Contracts Needed With New Phones

As high end phones are released on a recurring basis, it is time for the return of 1 year wireless contracts in the US.

 
We are evolving in the mobile device world and while I am focusing on wireless carriers here in the US, this does apply around the world. With the likes of Apple operating on a annual release cycle for the iPhone, there needs to be a return in the wireless carrier community to 1 year wireless contract. I know that you can probably find them for some carriers, but they are not wide spread and the largest carriers are not selling them. The idea of offering a 1 year wireless contract from the consumer point of view is the direction where things should be headed. But for the wireless carriers, it is not nearly as profitable for them because of the much higher termination fees when you want to purchase a new phone in less than 2 years. They realize just how much money they can make from those individuals who are more than willing to buy a new Apple iPhone whenever a new one comes out. And when they do, the wireless carriers point to the early termination clause and collect a lot of money.

All of this is going to be increasing as a topic of conversation and that is because of all the great new smart phones which are coming out. You only have to look at Apple and the new iPhones that come out close to the annual date of the previous version. Some times it is longer and some times it is shorter, but this is becoming the norm. Take for example the coming Galaxy S3 which is the successor to the Galaxy S2. Or the Apple iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S which came out late, almost 16 months later. There is the various Droid models coming out this year, some of which are earlier than the annual period, such as the Droid 3 and the Droid 4 which came about 7 months later. Technology improvements are starting to happen at a far faster pace than before. Moore's Law is now being applied to mobile devices.

It is not like there has not been 1 year contracts being offered by wireless carriers in the US. Sprint reversed their 1 year wireless contract last fall and with that left another hole in the options for people. This was made effective on October 2nd. This was pretty much only to renew your existing contract for another year, not for signing up for a new service. This was a great deal for Sprint customers, but no more. Verizon Wireless ended their 1 year contract back on April 2nd, 2011 and it too was a great way to purchase a new phone on an annual basis. All of that has fallen away and it is now time for wireless carriers to revisit the idea of 1 year wireless contracts.

In the event that wireless carriers in the US were to bring back 1 year wireless contracts, we know that the subsidized price of the smart phone would be much less than with a 2 year contract than a 1 year contract. This would be the expected result of a change like this. The market wants to see this with the quickly changing technology which is out. When you buy a smart phone today, there is something better coming 6 months later. By the time that you get to 1 year later, there is even more improved technology available and usually from the same manufacturer as the phone you own. But you are locked in a 2 year contract. Those who purchased the latest iPhone will want to purchase the latest iPhone 5 when it comes out, but they have few choices. They can terminate their current contract and pay the early termination fee or wait until their 2 year contract expires. Not much of a choice.

All of this points out the need to return to the option of purchasing a 1 or 2 contract for phone services. It is that option which will give people the option to get a new phone every year if they so choose. Sure, the 1 year contract will cost more. But, technology is changing so fast now it requires a 1 yer contract to take advantage of that changing technology. How we convince wireless carriers to offer that is an unknown and only public pressure may be the only thing which can get them to change.

Do you want to see 1 year phone contracts again?
 

Password Strategies: Increasing Your Password Protection

Hacking tools are getting better which means that you have to improve how you protect yourself.

As technology improves, so does the power of computers and just how fast they can perform calculations. As a result, the tools which hackers use to guess passwords improves. As we have learned, nothing can stop all possible attacks against a computer or network. The only way to stop things from attacking your computer is to disconnect from the Internet or network. If someone can physically access your computer, they can probably gain access if they have the right skills and tools. Being a small business owner, implementing a good password policy or plan is key to protecting your computers. There are many other things which can be done, but passwords are a critical part of the process.
Even a firewall is a great tool, but if you do not change the default logon and password which comes with it, you are opening yourself up to get hacked. While groups like Anonymous have successfully hacked into web sites, it makes it even more important than ever to protect yourself. Passwords is one area where you need to make sure you are setting your passwords with enough complexity to make it much harder for it to be cracked. In order to do that, there are certain basic principles which you need to follow. While not every place you have a password will allow you to implement these kinds of techniques, you need to do everything you can to make it very hard to get your password.

One of the biggest items is to not have words or phases as part of your passwords which are easily guessed or associated with you. The name of your pet is one that people often use. There are dictionary attacks which use a list of common passwords in an automated fashion to guess a password. As a result, you need to use a combination of letters (upper and lower case), numbers and special characters to make up your password. This is the first step in protecting yourself from attackers who are trying to get into your account or computer. If you do anything less than having a password with a mix of these characters, you are making it much easier for those who are out in the wild trying to gain access to someone's password to gain access.

The next thing you need to look at is the length of the password you are using. While some sites limit the length, you need to make sure it is at least 8 characters in length. Anything less makes it easier for someone to guess. That is the old belief as to password length. That has been replaced with the belief it should be 12 characters at minimum. You have to remember the longer a password is in length, the harder it is to crack. There has been the password length versus password complexity debate that has been going on for many years and will continue. I prefer to have both a long and complex password, but that does not mean I will be safe long term. You have to keep re-evaluating your password strategy at least once a year to see if it meets the demands that are being placed on it.

The real issue is how long it will take someone to crack your password. Given improving technology, hackers can use it to their advantage. Brute force attacks will take years as your password length exceeds 12 characters and is not all just letters. The more numbers and special characters that you can include all the better to protect yourself. This is about making sure the door stays locked for what you have control over.

Just looking at the web alone, there are so many different places where we use passwords. You definitely do not want to use the same password more than once. If you do and they guess that password in one location, they can try to access other locations to gain access. We have so many different places where we have passwords, such as email accounts, Social Networking (such as Facebook) and a host of other online sites where we might makes purchases (such as Amazon). It is important for you to understand the risks of not have long and complex passwords to protect yourself.

You do not leave your front door unlocked to you home when you are away. You lock it to make it much harder for someone to break in. The same applies to passwords as you want to make it as difficult as possible for them to gain access.

Dropbox Extends Free 50 GB Storage To Galaxy Tab 2 10.1

With Samsung partnership, another new Galaxy product gets free space.

 
Since Google Drive has come to market, it seems that Dropbox has been working overtime to maintain their market leadership. Their cloud sharing software is run on more platforms than others providers of like products, but the market has been getting crowded of late. As a result, Dropbox is finding it more difficult to maintain their market lead. Now comes word they are offering up to 50 GB of free space when you purchase the new Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 tablet. This comes on the heels of them offering 50 GB of storage for 2 years with the purchase of the Galaxy S3. That news brought a lot of interest as a result.

It would appear that offering free space is how Dropbox is going to maintain their presence in the market. This latest offering for the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 tablet is only for a period of 1 year and not the 2 years offered for the Galaxy S3. It is still a great deal as you are saving the normal charges of $9.99 per month or the annual fee of $99. Either way, you are saving a lot of money and if you look at it as a savings off the price of the coming tablet, it makes it even more of a bargain. This free storage fits in with the needs of moving information around and is becoming very popular.

For Dropbox, this is a great move and where they are expanding, they remain in the news as people report on it. As with any storage, there is a tendency to fill up the space and a majority of people are likely to continue using it after the 1 year period is up and pay for the privilege. That is a great way to grow the business. And by associating the free space with new products, they are getting more free advertising.

The Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 tablet is going to be out this weekend and along with that comes some great pricing at $399.99. To put that into perspective, the current Apple iPad sells for $499 for a similar WiFi only version with 16 GB. Throwing in the savings for the free cloud storage from Dropbox and it makes this an even better deal. You should see this online this weekend at Best Buy, Walmart, Office Depot and others. Office Depot is showing the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 on pre-order for the $399.99 price with the free 50 GB of Dropbox storage for the first year.

As shown below from the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 features page, the promotion of the free offer is being prominently shown on the site. This recent deal may also be extending to the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 tablet as there are reports of people getting the up to 50 GB of free storage as well. On some forums, it is being reported that when you install the Dropbox app on the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, you then get the expansion of your storage to 50 GB. Not everyone is indicating success in expanding their total storage.

For now, the Samsung and Dropbox relationship looks like it will benefit those purchasing the selected products from Samsung with the free space. So it raises the question of whether the offer for free storage is going to cause people to take more of a look at the associated Samsung products?