QR Codes?

Quick Response Codes, or more commonly 'QR Codes', are fancy bar codes that can be read by smart phone cameras.

The most common use is to make a web address easily readable. Like this one:

There are three uses that seem to make good sense. The first use is to be put on your business card. You can send people right to your website without any typing.

The next is on direct mail pieces such as flyers and catalogs. Your existing or potential customers get get straight to the part of your web site where they can get more information on what ever product or service they are looking at. Maybe more importanly, you can track how many times it has been scanned and if you do it right who likely scanned it.

Finally, QR codes on your product packaging. Give your customer access to the latest information on your product when they are making the purchase decision. No one types long cryptic web addresses -- just a simple click of the smart phone app.

Reading a QR Code

Reading a QR code is simple if you phone has the right software. Many of the new BlackBerry phones have a scanner built-in. From the BlackBerry Messenger menu, select 'scan a group barcode'. Then hold the phone up to the QR code until it fills the screen. If it works, it will open your phone's browser and take you the encoded web site.

For iPhones, Android phones and other smart phones, search for 'qr code' in your apps -- you are sure to find several.

Imperfect Technology

Depending on how the QR code is created and how good the camera is on your phone, your software  might have difficulty reading it. If you are trying to read the code on this web page and are having difficulty, enlarge the page by pressing Ctrl and the +/= key. When you are done you can press Ctrl and the zero key to return it to normal size.

As the resolution increases on the smart phone cameras, fewer phones will have trouble reading them. It is not unrealistic to think that by the end of 2011 all smart phones will be sold QR code ready.

In the next post, we will show you how to encode your own information in a QR code.

Time to Think About Your Move to Windows 7

Today is Windows 7 first birthday. Happy Birthday Winny Seven!

I know it seems much longer but really it was only released to retail on October 22, 2009. The power of hype.

People are dreading the day they have to give up their trusted Windows XP. Even with the many security flaws, XP has been Microsoft's most popular operating system and subjectively the most reliable.

But, XP is getting old. It was released October 25, 2001 -- nine years ago. April 8, 2014 is the last day Microsoft will provide security updates for Windows XP -- less than four years from now. Which means, other companies who create software will stop supporting installations on Windows XP before the 2014 deadline.

Every business buys new computer equipment from time-to-time. Windows 7 comes pre-installed on new computers which means you will end up with a mixed environment. Some old, some new machines, different operating systems and different software versions.

Rather than managing IT day-to-day, problem-to-problem, I strongly recommend having an IT plan. In the long run, it will cost you less to run your IT if you have a plan.

Few companies can purchase all new hardware, software and operating systems so you have to upgrade when you can. If you purchase a computer that fits in an overall strategy you can avoid incompatible systems and by having similar equipment, the maintenance cost and complexity can be reduced.

The question you have to ask yourself: are you going to have a bigger mess next year at this time or will you have better managed IT investments?

You cannot hold on to Windows XP forever. Give it some thought today.

Easiest Volunteer Work Ever!

SIFE SLC (short for Students in Free Enterprise St. Lawrence College Kingston), is doing a fantastic job of using social media to make a major contribution to a local food bank.

Their campaign is called iClick uEat.

By Tweeting, Facebooking and LinkedIning (are those words?), they are getting huge numbers of people to vote in the Pepsi Refresh Challenge to get $100,000 for one of my all time favourite charities: Partners In Mission Food Bank.

For the next few weeks, take a moment to click on the Pepsi Refresh Everything site.

There is no easier way to help a great cause. Please vote. Today.

Twitter for Business - Part II

In my last post, I recommended you start on Twitter by "listening". Hopefully, for the past month you’ve been following celebrities, news stations, sports, gurus of all sorts and the people that you find interesting. You should be getting a feel for which tweets draw your attention and which ones don't.

Some people will engage you and maybe even make you want to reply. Some tweets you will have found interesting and enticed you to share with other people (retweet).

But, big but: the most important ones to take note of are the ones you didn’t notice. Yes, did not notice. Go back and look at your Twitter feed. What ones did you skip over?

No picture or a hard to recognize picture. Blatant, in your face, self-serving advertising messages. “Hey, look at me! Buy my junk!” Boring, automated tweets.

One example of what not to do is an iconic car dealer in Kingston – Taylor Auto Mall. As I was writing this post, they tweeted this:

They have invested the time but not the thought. A well branded background and a recognizable logo are wasted with an ALL CAPS shout of a spam tweet. I stopped following them a few weeks ago because their spammy mentions (mentions are tweets with the @ symbol and a Twitter account name like @weehooey) about their employee pricing.

It is a common mistake on Twitter to take what you are doing elsewhere and Tweet it as is. Doesn't work. Taylor Auto Mall has a little over 300 followers. Who might follow them? Loyal customers with a hunger for more GM, more cars and more trucks is my guess (there are others but the customers are who Taylor tweets for). Give them something of interest. Give them a reward for following you.

Messages that sound like other media get filtered out. Our brains have years and years of experience filtering out advertising messages; television, radio, newspapers, magazines, the web with their ads, and now Twitter.

The difference between other media and Twitter is that you can easily stop listening to those people that abuse the privilege of having you as a follower. With ads on the radio, you have to still listen if you want the music the station is playing.

So what do you tweet? It depends on who your customers are.

Like anything else in business you need to have a strategy. Your strategy has to be focused around providing value and engagement with your followers who are your customers (or prospective customers).

CNN has content people want. They make it easy for you get the up-to-date news. You can scan through your Twitter feed at your convenience along with your stuff from the others you follow on Twitter.

One of my favourite type of tweets for small business is restaurants. They can post their daily special or their theme night. Deciding where to go for lunch? I would love my favourite restaurants to tweet their lunch specials.

Be interesting, engaging, entertaining and informative. If you can't do that, retweet someone who can (maybe add some comments). There is no rule that says you have to tweet everyday. Tweet when it makes sense and when you have something of value.

Like so many things in the social media arena, Twitter is about listening and giving first: create engagemnt. In the process of giving and listening, over time, you’ll begin to receive. Leave your advertising messages at the door because people won't follow just to hear your commercials over again and if they don’t follow, you’re wasting your time.

You can follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/weehooey

What is the Purpose of Twitter for Business People?

Twitter is a communication tool and its purpose is communication. That simple and, I guess, that complex.

Business owners and managers, forget what you think you know Twitter. It is not about tellling people you stubbed your toe or you are eating a pickle -- it is not about endless trivial, annoying messages. Twitter is streams of customized, democratic, bite-sized, morsels of ideas, thoughts and information. Bear with me and I will explain the difference.

I follow CNN Breaking News on Twitter. I can check my Twitter account at the computer, with my iPad or my BlackBerry. CNN has been sending short headlines all day long. I scan through them, find what interests me and follow the link in the Twitter post to get the whole article or video clip on the CNN website. I get the latest news -- fresh.

Along with CNN, I have CBC News, Seth Godin's Blog Posts and 198 others that include industry experts, friends, competitors, social media gurus and a few funny people. I don't follow people who spew painfully boring minutiae of their lives. I follow the interesting, the inspiring and the educational. And, when I choose... I stop following.

In my Twitter account, I find post after post of the cool, funny, important and fascinating with links to websites that expand on the 140 character posts. It is like a huge newspaper that is published every minute for me and only me.

Hopefully, now you see Twitter differently -- more of a consolidated source of customized information.

But isn't Twitter for broadcasting? Sure is. But, you had better understand how your customers might be listening before you start talking and the best way is to start listening yourself.

My next post will be: Talking with Your Customers on Twitter

Follow up to this post (July 29th): A related article in Social Media Today.

Branding and Your Email Address

A recent blog post at ZDNet, talks about how your personal branding is effected by the free 'personal' email services. While it talks about young people looking for jobs, it applies even more to businesses.

Every piece of communication from you to your business contacts helps to form your brand. Good or bad. When they get an email from acmeplumbing1972@hotmail.com, what do you think it says to them? I read it as, "Please don't send me an email. My kid set it up for me and I forget to check it." On the other hand, john.smith@acmeplumbing.ca demonstrates s a level of professionalism -- the smaller your business the greater the effect.

For under $20, you can register a domain name (i.e. www.yourcompany.com) and set up a free email addresses and web site with Google Apps and Blogger. If you don't know how or don't want to, we can help you and it will cost less than $100.

A Fax for the Faxless

Recently, I setup a new vendor account online and after completing the long online form, I had to download a PDF, print it, sign it and... fax it back??? I was shocked.

Fax it back? I am an IT company, why would I have a fax machine? They sell IT stuff, why would they want a fax? It didn't even give me the option to scan and email the document. Fax and fax only.

Thankfully, there is a simple and free solution: faxzero.com

You can send two free faxes per day, each fax can be up to three pages and they get the right to put their ad on the fax. If you want to send a longer fax or just can't have their advertisement on the cover pages -- you can pay a little extra. For $1.99 via PayPal, you can send up to 15 pages and avoid the ads.

If any company (especially an IT company) demands communication by fax then let them read an ad or two.

... I wonder if they use adding machines to tally up my orders too?

Google Analytics: for the same reason I sometimes shop at Wal-Mart

I am a long way from being a shopaholic. In fact, I hate shopping. When it comes time to buying toilet paper, I'm not shopping around or clipping coupons – I drive straight to Wal-Mart ten minutes before closing, walk right to the aisle, grab the largest package and head straight for cashier. Done in under five minutes. Occasionally, it will be six minutes because I need tooth paste too.

Google Analytics is a simple but powerful tool for learning about your website visitors. Most people have no idea who visits their website or why. Google Analytics can quickly and painlessly tell you a wealth of information about your visitors.

Like when I shop for toilet paper, I always go straight to Google and setup Google Analytics. I need something that will work well and I need to know I won't regret my decision. It is likely there are better deals on toilet paper than at Wal-Mart but, at Wal-Mart, I will never find out that I paid five bucks too much nor the product is terrible. I know Wal-Mart is going to keep their product decent and competitive because: that is what Wal-Mart does.

Likewise, I am certain there are web statistics packages better than Google Analytics. However, looking, testing and switching is not worth the marginal gain. Google Analytics has a simple, easy to understand interface. Google filters out web crawlers so your numbers are not artificially inflated. It will email summary reports so you do not have to remember to check the stats. Most importantly, Google is going to work hard to keep Analytics a good product – it is what Google does.

If you are like every other owner, manager and executive director, you don't have time to make a project out of getting your web stats. Tell the person who manages your website to setup Google Analytics and have it email you a report once a month. Done. One more thing off your "should list".

QuickBooks Backup -- Free

No one ever has time to backup QuickBooks. It isn't fun to backup. You can always do it tomorrow -- unless your computer crashes.

I understand, I don't enjoy doing my backups either. But I prefer backups to rebuilding months of data and losing hours or days of work.

Intuit has done a good job of making QuickBooks backup easier within the software. They have even added a US$4.95 per month online backup service. But, sixty bucks a year to backup just QuickBooks?

Many people back up to external drives but any damage to your office (water, fire, etc) and that data can be lost. Some people have had their external drives stolen.

All of my customers using QuickBooks have files that are less than 250MB - many have less than 25MB. There are free online backup solutions which provide up to 2GB (2000MB) of backup. The one I use for customers with QuickBooks and/or Microsoft Outlook is iDrive Basic. It has the ability to backup QuickBooks (and Outlook) even when you are using the program. It also has user-side encryption (which means only you can see your data).

If you are using QuickBooks and need a better backup, take a look at iDrive Basic. Of course, if you want assistance, I am available: send me an email.

Please see my disclosure. 

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS is HERE!

Lucid Lynx is out of the cage a day early!

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (code name Lucid Lynx) is very cool new version and it is ready for download right now.

For the first time ever, I participated as beta-tester and the sneak peak at a great operating system has been worth the work. I have been getting very excited to roll out the finished product to my clients who are using Ubuntu.

The Lynx is a social cat: built-in Twitter & Facebook. And it is super fast on new machines.

A great operating systems just got better.

FreshBooks Rocks!

I love FreshBooks!

FreshBooks is a web-based invoicing/billing application.

It has been a few months since I started using FreshBooks and I really love it. Not that I have done a lot of invoicing -- I have a small number of great clients -- but the invoicing I have done has been a pleasure. Yep, a pleasure.

The other day, I finished a job for a customer and he asked if he could pay -- of course I was happy to accept. While he wrote the cheque out, I logged into FreshBooks, recorded the time and created the invoice. He handed me the cheque and asked if I could send him the invoice. With a huge smile, I said, "It is in your inbox".

The thought of using QuickBooks for my IT consulting business was not something I was excited about. I wanted something simple and something I could run on Ubuntu. FreshBooks is simple and being Internet based, I can use it on Windows, Mac or Linux machines.

FreshBooks boasts many useful features. Some of the ones I use:

• Easy time tracking (with a timer).
• Email invoicing.
• Automated email reminders to customers.
• Expense tracking
• Customers can pay online
• Down & dirty profit & loss statements

They got me hooked when I tried the free account which allowed me to bill up to three clients.

If you are tired of creating invoices in a word processor and keeping track of them in a spreadsheet, you definitely need to check out FreshBooks.

Please see my disclosure.

Time to Give Open Office a Try

With the official release of Microsoft Office 2010 just around the corner, what better time to give Open Office a try? Why spend hundreds of dollars to upgrade your word processor, spread sheet and presentation software when Open Office is available free?

It has all the functionality that most users will need and has the look an feel of Office 2003 -- an interface that many users have told me they prefer to the new 'ribbon' look introduced in Office 2007.

Open Office has been spreading like wildfire. In high school, my son was taught computers using Open Office. Well over half my customers have some machines with Open Office and some have completely adopted it.

Before you shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars to "upgrade" -- take some time, download a copy and enjoy.

Make Your Old Computer New

Are you one of the thousands of people who can't bear to throw out your old computer but it is too slow or too messed up to use?

There is a simple solution.

Install a new, lighter operating system. We have taken ten year old computers that could not run Microsoft Windows fast enough to be usable and installed Ubuntu – presto a new computer. 

These old computers with Ubuntu are great for kids. You don't have to worry about viruses or the instant messaging software messing it up. It comes with a word processor, spreadsheet, web browser, music player and games.

Have you ever been in your workshop and want to Google some help on a project you are working on? Your old computer with wireless and Ubuntu make a great choice for the workshop. No worries about a bit of grease or saw dust getting on the keyboard – you were going to toss it out anyway.

Your business can use those computers too. Need another computer in shipping & receiving but can't justify a new one? How about in the lunch room for the production staff? That old laptop might be handy at the job site. Set one up at the front counter and run your marketing messages while your customers wait.

Need to share files between offices securely? A couple of old computers can be converted into a sophisticated virtual private network (VPN) using SmoothWall -- which happens to be free.

Many computers are sent to recycling before their time. Before you recycle your old computer, think about having us setup you with with Ubuntu. Not every old computer will work with Ubuntu but most old computers are worth considering for a new operating system.

LG HBM 210 Bluetooth Headset Passkey

NOTE: I have written this post specifically to be indexed by search engines to hopefully help all those who purchase an LG HBM 210 headset and later can't find the passkey.

If you find this helpful, please consider donating a buck or two:

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The people who know me could quickly tell you my answer to many things technical is: "Just Google it"

During a boxing day sale at Future Shop, my son bought the LG HBM 210 Bluetooth Headset at the great price of $9.99 -- I see it advertised for $29.99 now. They had a nearly empty bin so they must have sold a pile of these headsets.

It did not take him long to decide that texting was more his style (he is 15 years old with unlimited text and prepaid voice) and I inherited headset. The manual was long gone and I had never used a Bluetooth headset before. With no idea how to pair it with the phone... I just Googled it.

To my great surprise, LG does not make the manual nor the quick start card available on their website. There were many sites offering to sell a copy of the manual. I wasn't going to give up that easily.

You needed a pass code or passkey to pair Bluetooth devices -- I knew that much. On back was a sticker with "1177". I found a forum post which said that usually the passkey was printed on the sticker on the back. I tried a lot of variations and nothing.

Finally, after some hard Googling, I found an obscure post which said that some devices have the pass code "0000" -- I was relieved to find it worked.
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Small Office File Server Alternative - Network Attached Storage (NAS)

A small office with as few as two computers can have enough shared data that a file server computer might make sense.

Often computer techs will recommend an expensive, fast computer with a pair high capacity hard drives which are 'mirrored' for protection. Without trying, you are well over $1000 and quite possibly in to several thousand dollars plus the regular service of the computer.

Small business owners think and inexpensive external hard drive will work. Couple hundred bucks and you are off. What they often miss is that the USB connections can be painfully slow compared to a hard drive mounted in a computer.

For many small organizations, a network attached storage (NAS) device would do the job great. I recently installed a NAS at a company which was running out of space on its server. We moved the data to a NAS with two 1 TB (1000 GB) drives that were mirrored. The cost? About $500 for the device and about an hour to set-up. It has the access speed near a computer with only a bit more cost than an external drive.

Not to mention, the NAS is only slightly larger than an external hard drive savings considerable space and energy compared to full-blown server.

If your files are cramped for space or scattered all around your small network, give us a call to discuss whether a network attached storage device is right for your business.