QR codes have been widely used in Asia for some times, and Japan is going nuts over them! QR codes can appear on items such as food packaging, restaurants, bus stops, and real estate agents’ windows. When the codes are scanned, appropriate information is displayed on the smart phone, such as suggested recipes, calories and nutritional information, menus, bus timetables, and floor plans for real estate for sale.

Google wants the U.S. to be next to adopt! Starting this week, you’ll be able to scan away at up to 190,000 local businesses throughout the U.S. Google has mailed out window stickers with these QR codes to the most-searched for or clicked-on businesses in its local business directory. Anyone with a QR code reader in their phone can scan it to call up a Google Mobile local directory page . They generally include a map, phone number, directions, address, reviews, and a link to the store’s website. It’s pretty much a mobile version of Google Places. Google is also introducing the business coupons via QR codes. When the code is scanned the smart phone will display a coupon or voucher that can be redeemed in the store directly from the image on the screen. This will prove a great way to enitice someone who is standing outside your store to come in!

Google expects the QR code system to work effectively with the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android, but says it should work with many other smart phones as well. Google is giving away 40,000 Quickmark QR Code Reader apps for the iPhone, which normally cost $1.99 apiece. But you can essentially use any QR code reader. There are a bunch of free ones, and some on Android phones as well.

Find out more..

The random comments and posts that show up on blogs and forums are a result of a webmaster trying to boost their site’s page rank. He or she exploits an innocent site, by posting links like “Try this for free,” or “Take a vacation of a lifetime” in hopes to get users to click and view their site.  

But little do these spammers know that this kind of technique is very bad for business. A once- reliable web page is loosing credibility with each spam post and the quality of the World Wide Web is dwindling.  No one wants to read random comments or message about free getaways or prescription drugs when searching for recipes or garage door openers.

 What Spam Looks Like

Links in comment sections on blog or forum pages that are unrelated to the site are most likely spam. Random comments (posts that are short, impersonal and generic) and hyperlinks about prescription drugs, exercise tips, hair loss techniques, vacation getaways and etc. are probably spam as well. If after you leave a trustworthy comment on a site and a quick response with a link pops up, then this site has been infected with spam.  These spam ads are just hoping to get clicked on, to get some attention and bring some viewers to their homepages. Don’t give it. Nothing good will come of this. 

Promote your site…without using spam

Believe it or not you can still promote your site without becoming a hated spammer.

Improve your site. Display informative, original content that will benefit an audience. Utilize good search engine optimization strategies so your site shows up in Google and Yahoo. If your site is user friendly, appealing and optimization with keywords and phrases, users will take notice of this. People will link to your site over time.

I don’t want spam on my site

Because comments and messages are a vital piece to any website-they bring users together, ideas are shared and improvements are made-it’s crucial these sections are made secure. To help eliminate spam and retain your site’s integrity, try taking some quick action: 

• Don’t allow anonymous posting
• Use a comment moderation
• Refuse hyperlinks in comments

Already been infected…

Don’t fret. Take some time and energy and clean up your site and get rid of the spam posts that made it your site. Also, you can enlist some of the security measures mentioned in the above list to stop the spam.

Guilty of spamming?

If so, click on the “your site on the web” section. Look at where you’ve posted your link. Are there any suspicious messages posted on blogs or forums? If so, delete them. If this doesn’t work try and contact the site manager for that page to get rid of it.

As Video search is becoming more and more popular, Google wants webmasters who offer video content to be able to get their videos displayed in search results more easily. Both Facebook Share and Yahoo! SeachMonkey RDFa allow for webmasters to specify the important information for video indexing.

The formats are based on simple things like titles and descriptions within the HTML of a video page. Google does suggest that webmasters make their mark up on videos pages appear in the HTML without the execution of JavaScript or flash.

“While we’ve become smarter at discovering this information on our own, we’d certainly appreciate some hints directly from webmasters,” says Google’s Michael Cohen, Product Manager for the Video Search Team.

Google has also kicked off a series of Webmaster Central Blog posts, which are geared towards giving tips to get your videos indexed.

Find out more from the Google Webmaster Central Blog

Gmail has thousands and thousands of overlapping mail servers which can take the reins if one fails because the data is replicated and spread all around. However there are also request servers which route the requests for email to whichever server is available at the time.

It’s now been found that Google has blamed the down time on some recent changes to the request routers. Ironically, at least some of the changes were meant to improve Gmail’s ability to stay online, but Google underestimated the load these changes would place on the routers when it took a relatively small number of servers offline for upgrades.

Google engineering VP Ben Treynor says:

At about 12:30 pm Pacific a few of the request routers became overloaded and in effect told the rest of the system “stop sending us traffic, we’re too slow!”. This transferred the load onto the remaining request routers, causing a few more of them to also become overloaded, and within minutes nearly all of the request routers were overloaded. As a result, people couldn’t access Gmail via the web interface because their requests couldn’t be routed to a Gmail server. IMAP/POP access and mail processing continued to work normally because these requests don’t use the same routers.

I’d like to apologize to all of you — today’s outage was a Big Deal, and we’re treating it as such. We’ve already thoroughly investigated what happened, and we’re currently compiling a list of things we intend to fix or improve as a result of the investigation.

Looks like Google, although just becoming the third largest Web Mail Service in the U.S, isn’t immune to technical difficulties. They too can mess up every once in a while just like the best of us!

Unlike Google Voice, YouMail turns missed calls & voicemails into emails with caller info & MP3 audio attachments. YouMail includes an MP3 in an email format. All you have to do is open the email, listen to the attachment, archive (or don’t), and your done! Google voice however, gives you a written transcript of the message which is often inaccurate so you have to listen to the audio of the voicemail anyways, but the quality of the audio message is like listening to a robot!

Some features to point out about each:

YouMail:

-It has a visual voicemail application for the Blackberry, a big plus!

-You can set different outgoing voicemails and personal greetings for different contacts

-You can listen to your voicemails from anywhere online in MP3 quality

-You can block any of those annoying unwanted callers

-You can share your voicemails with others.

Google Voice:

-You get written transcription of all messages (although not always accurate)

-You get to pick 1 centralized number for all of your phones

-You can listen in to voice mail as it’s being recorded

-When your busy, you can just set your calls to do-not-disturb mode

-It’s from Google!

So let’s see, with Google Voice you will have to: get a new phone number, read your voicemails via a transcript, and probably after all that listen to the original voicemail anyway to get the real gist of the message.

The bottom line here is, do you go with your first instinct and use YouMail, or give Google Voice a try?

Donwload YouMail here

When you think about hospitals and Dr’s visits, you know how much paperwork is involved. With the latest feature added by Google, Google Health now let’s users upload scanned paper medical documents right to thier profiles and help organize all the paperwork in one location. Google Health hopes to become a secure central location to store medical records on the web.

Sign up for Google Health

Simply installing CamStudio will allow PC Users to record all audio and visual activity on and save in the AVI file format. and using its built-in SWF Producer allows you to export small sized Adobe SWF files.

A few ways to use this great open source screen recording software include:

• Create tutorial and demonstration videos
• You can create video tutorials for how to do something for a particular business or academic application
• Record problems to submit to your Information Technology staff

Grab it for yourself at http://camstudio.org/

The largest resistance has been reserved for the most logical transition: our old friend television. It’s not studios or networks, but the general public who are simply not watching television on their computers. Many networks have tried to air their shows independently on their own websites but that never did catch on. Sometimes the lack of interest had to do with the programs or sites not being user friendly, but mostly they had to do with the target audience.

You Do Hulu

More often than not websites target the younger demographics. In terms of television and movies, Hulu has begun simultaneously directing ads to both the young and the older generations. By keeping their website simple but engaging, they have reached the unreachable; they have taught that old dog a new trick.

Hulu was not the first to try to air television shows, but it is the first to succeed. Hulu did something rather revolutionary; they gave the people what they wanted. They offered television and movies with extremely limited interruptions and even gave viewers the option of watching their program straight through (after viewing a slightly longer commercial at the beginning). Their website design is extremely user friendly. It has a simple aesthetic, making it easy to browse, and the advertisements are arranged without cluttering or confusing.

Hulu’s continued success depends on a number of variables. With a website like Hulu and the success they have had, competitors are sure to appear. Their partners, the television networks, have stock in Hulu, and are getting their shows more and more exposure because of the online “on demand” set up of the website.

Aggressive Ads and Convenient Contracts

With the aggressive television ad campaign featuring Alec Baldwin and other celebrities, Hulu is maintaining its status as the leader in streaming television and movies. But because of the foundation of Hulu, long term success is not guaranteed. The website makes money off of advertisements, and the product they offer, television shows, are owned by separate networks, who are also their partners. If those networks decide to pull their programs and start their own website, then Hulu is left without a product, and advertisers will quickly pull their ads leaving Hulu with nothing. This point has undercut almost every acclamation Hulu has racked up from various critics.

The best shot a website like this has at making it long term lies in the hands of the contracts with the networks to distribute their shows. Short of that, the only other option left is to market aggressively so they can be the dominant name, if not the only name, in the online on-demand industry. By being the only option, and a force to be reckoned with, networks will keep supplying Hulu with their shows and Hulu will continue to make money.

Eric Feng, the Senior VP at Hulu, is taking the proper steps to ensuring the consistent success of the website. Though still dependent on outside networks and advertisers, Hulu is marketing themselves so they are desirable to the networks because of their attractiveness to viewers. So networks like NBC and FOX who are rivals on the television are partners on Hulu because they have no other option. Hulu just needs to keep it that way.