Scrabble iTunes Link
This one just popped up on my radar a few days ago when I read it was on sale from $4.99 to 99c. I like when apps go on sale AND already have good reviews. I am already addicted to the darn game now – how often can you play a single word and get 99 points!

It has some sharing features like friends on Facebook and local network, but I haven’t really had time to figure out if they work well. I did play with a friend using the play and pass feature and that was fine. Play against the computer and lose chunks of your life!!!

Zite iTunes link
This is your online magazine that is customizable to your interests. You can hook in your Twitter news-feed, Google Reader, Delicious or Read It Later accounts and then choose subject areas from a list that will interest you. The great thing about this app is each time you open an article to read you can rate whether you liked it and it will use this to give you more stories like it in the future. Bit like Netflix recommendation engine, but in the background.

Stories are sharable on social media, email the article or even save it to your favorite offline reading service like Evernote, Instapaper or one of the accounts you already linked. As the iPad is an ideal content consuming gadget, these kind of apps are going to become more popular as everyone tries to find more ways to deal with social media overload.

Pulse iTunes link
I like to stay up to date on what the current happenings are in tech, social media, politics, news in general and some entertainment fun. Pulse is the app that helps me with this. Create pages with different feeds from the content areas you like best. You can choose feeds individually or pick a generic bundle for a general category – like sport.

You can arrange the feeds how you want and have as many or as few on a page as you want. Slide along a feed to see picture and headline, tap on the story that interests you and you get the details. Depending on the origin of the feed you will get the entire story or a link to the original article.

Stories can be favorited and saved in your account. Again you can link in your social media accounts so you can share stories with 1 click or email them. Great source for content curation for your own Twitter feed too.

Solar Walk iTunes link
This was one of those apps that was featured in an Apple commercial – how often can you say you actually pay enough attention to a commercial these days to remember to look for something online featured in it? I am no Apple fangirl, but credit due to them for really clear, informative and useful commercials!

Anyway, Solar Walk is just a fun app that shows the solar system and the planets (and moon’s and asteroids and space junk) and you can timeline where everything was or will be. The graphics really show of the iPad display and it gets kinda mesmerizing! The really cool things are the included movies that educate on how the tides are influenced by the sun and moon, or how the seasons work depending on your location to the equator. All things you probably vaguely remember from school, but this app makes it much more visually fun!

Planetary iTunes link
If Solar Walk has you hooked then how about an app that visualizes your music collection as a solar system? Sounds a bit strange, but the visuals and uniqueness make it worth playing with.

BikeBrain – iPhone app – iTunes link
So with it being New Year and all, that means the resolutions come out and get dusted of once again. Yes, exercise more. My long time mantra since moving to America over 10 years ago! I need some motivation for this kind of thing and if there is app for that then all the better.

BikeBrain, naturally enough, is marketed to the cyclist, but I have found it is equally suitable for the dog walker or jogger. Start the app at the beginning of your outing and it will keep track of your route, speed, distance and calories. When done you hit the finish button and it lets you name your outing and save details so you can see how well-intentioned everything started out!

The downside is you suddenly realize the walk you have been taking the dog on was not a mile long, more like a 1/3 of that – oops! No wonder the little brat is still so full of beanz all evening.

Heart Rate – iPhone app – iTunes link
Now that you are busy walking the dog, or heaven forbid jogging, wouldn’t it be nice to know if you are giving your heart a workout too? Heart Rate is an app that uses your iPhone camera to sense your heart beat. No idea if it is really accurate, but it is kinda fun to show your friends how light through your finger can be used to detect a pulse!

Those are a run down of the apps I have been playing with lately. I haven’t covered any of the ones I talked about in earlier blogs – like Evernote, Flipboard and Dropbox because, well, I already talked about them.

Wishing you all a very Happy New Year

Fiona

The very thought of being limited like this made me break out in a cold sweat. You have to understand I was leaving a 250+ channel satellite setup with multiple dual tuner HD DVR’s, internet connected HDTV and set top boxes, internet viewable DVR iPad app  option and wicked home theater surround sound gig. I even had a bluetooth connector for my receiver so I could listen to iPad streamed music.

Yes, I was very proud of my geeked out den setup. Having at least 25 hours of recorded TV shows at any time I rarely watched live TV. I was rarely bored with TV because they were all shows I chose to record because I liked them!

How was I going to cope with a move to basic cable? It almost kept me awake at night considering the implications…

Now I have been on basic cable for a month and can’t say I really miss my original setup. I have been trying to figure out why this transition has actually been quite calming. I almost felt bound to watch the shows I had recorded before so that space could be freed up on the DVR for more episodes. Now if I miss an episode – oh well, too bad. It isn’t the end of the world! Who knew.

So I still have Roku with Netflix and I did purchase a subscription to Hulu+ so I can get some ‘DVR like’ functionality for a few shows. The Closer is one of my faves and is not on Hulu+, I can get some recordings on the TNT website or I could buy the episodes from iTunes, but really I have little interest.

Having super fast internet speeds gives me more than enough entertainment on my iPad now. My Kindle app had more money spent on ebooks last month than I normally spend in a year! Sure, I actually have to sit through commercial breaks now but it’s amazing what a high score you can get on Bejewelled in a few minutes!

Before I had Dish Network and I have to say I liked them. Customer service was always good and I didn’t think they were too much of a rip off. I always figured when I bought another house I would resume with Dish or a cable provider again. Now though, I don’t think I will. It almost feels like a great ball and chain has been released from my leg – I don’t have to sit and watch 4 hours of House just to get through the season. A new season of Rizolli and Isles – great, can’t see it but I can buy an episode if I absolutely can’t live without it!

Admittedly, I would not have given up my setup for basic cable if I had not been forced to make a choice. I had expected that after a few weeks I would be so aggravated I would offer to pay the extra money for the ‘real’ TV package!

Course then I surfed over to the Comcast website and started looking at the options. You want HOW MUCH for some channels? Oh, that is just the introductory price. Hmmm, so when the 2 years is up, what will this triple play $99 change to? Oh, a heck of a lot more – right. What if I only need it for a few months – oh that package is available but it will cost more to give you the right to cancel – okay dokey.

Forget it – if I find I am not using Hulu+ much I just click the cancel button and it is gone – no late fees, no cancellation fees, no equipment return fees.

The only show I have a slight pang for is kind of embarrassing to admit. I could have said Criminal Minds, or CSI or even The Closer, but no. The show that makes me wonder how they are doing is …. Operation Repo!

• They don’t really understand that much about what a QR code can do and
• I always get this “WOW” from them when I show them!

So this blog is my dedication to the QR code and what, so far, I have seen it do.

What is a QR Code?

QR stands for Quick Response and the square two-dimensional code can be decoded by using a QR code reader on your smartphone. Simple answer is they are those square barcode looking things you see around, however they can hold more information and hence do more than a simple barcode.

How does it work?

To be able to process a QR code you will need a smartphone with a camera , internet access and a QR code reader. Many smartphones come preloaded with a reader app.  Wayne Sutton has a great blog posting covering reader apps for all different phones: QR Readers

Once you have a reader on your phone, start it up and take a picture of a QR code. Try to keep your hand steady! Depending on both the software and the QR code contents, after scanning it can take up to 30 seconds to decode the code.

This is one of my QR codes that takes you to my social aggregator site ItsMyURLs.com

What can QR codes do?

Unlike a simple barcode, the QR code is able to contain far more information. This means that there are all sorts of ways to use a code and make it do more for you. For instance, you can have a QR code that takes you to a website, creates contact information, open a YouTube video and more. It seems like every week there is another service or option added for the codes. Here is a list I have seen for a few now:

• Calendar event,
• Contact information,
• Email address,
• Geo location,
• Phone number,
• SMS,
• Text,
• URL,
• WiFi network.

Did you notice that last one – WiFi? I hadn’t come across this before and tried it out – I was able to create a QR code that when scanned with connect you to my secure WiFi network – without me having to share the password with anyone! So maybe you have a store and want people to have internet access – secure internet access: Create a QR code for your network that people can scan to connect to your WiFi.

You want your own QR code now?

Come on, stop pretending you don’t want to have your very own QR code! Great thing is, they are free to read and free to create! There a heaps of sites out there offering all sorts of free QR codes. These sites can generate codes that will open a map of your restaurant location, send an SMS or set up a predefined tweet.

I’m all for not reinventing the wheel if I don’t have to, so I am going to direct you to some sites I have found useful:

• Top 10 Free Online QR Code Generators – this is my current favorite site!
• Free QR Code Creators and Readers

Why QR code popularity?

Or why is the QR code market expanding so rapidly?

• More and more people are equipped with a smartphone
• More people are accessing the web from their mobile devices
• Marketers are discovering it is a simple tool that can be tracked easily
• Consumers like the ease of mobile surfing via the QR code – take me to your website!
• Put it on your business card and share contact details easily at networking events

I was at Home Depot last week and noticed they have QR codes on the plastic tags on each planter. I, being excited by such things, whipped out my phone and did the scan dance. Up popped a website that told me all about the growing needs and habitat of the plant I was looking at! How many times do you throw the little tabbies away when you plant everything and then don’t know if you should cut it back in Spring or Fall? Now I could use the QR code to go to the website, email that link and hey presto, best gardener EVER!

Some of the things people are doing with QR codes are really exciting. There is a restaurant in Boston that is using squid ink to make QR codes that go on the dinner plates. When you scan it you will go to a website with recipes and ingredients. Some can even source the boat the fish you are eating was caught by!

Mobile website considerations

An important point to remember about QR codes is that any URL you  point to is likely going to be accessed via a mobile device – make sure the site is mobile optimized!

This became apparent to me after I had added a QR code to my business cards. I was using an aggregator site to link to all my social media accounts. Site is very pretty, but was a hog to load on my smartphone and way too small to read without a lot of pinch and zooming! Not exactly that first impression you want to give people.

At one of my visits to Mass Innovations nights I saw the real deal: ItsMyURLs

A social media aggregator site that doesn’t do just social media accounts, but any URL you want – and it is optimized for mobile use! It is free to create an advertising supported account or a small yearly fee for an ad free site. For any sites you add, you can see how many times someone clicked on the link. Oh, and did I mention, they will generate a QR code for you!!!

Dynamic QR codes and analytics

Most of the sites I have been talking about to generate a QR code will make a static code: if your website changes, so to will your QR code need to be updated. Bit inconvenient if you have taken the time to print up or advertise specific codes all over your literature! The solution to this is using a dynamic QR code.

There is a free site out there called BWscan.com that allows you to generate QR codes and then assign websites to them. Which means you can keep the same QR code, but change where it will take people -  on the fly. What they really excel at though is for campaign management. For each QR code you set up , you can assign campaign start and end dates and get real time stats on how often the code is scanned, how many unique users and map their location. Their website has a very good page on case studies highlighting some examples of the different ways QR codes can be used.

Custom QR codes

So for you now experienced and seasoned QR coders, the next step is to create a custom QR code. Once you see one, you want it too! Here is my new custom QR code:

Fiona's custom QR code

Snazzy huh?

How much did this puppy cost me? $0

Yup, you can even get these for free! Here is the magic website:

BeQRrius

Click on the tab Graphical and you can upload an image to be added to your QR code.

While you are on the site though, take a look at what else you can do – create a QR code to map to an address, send a text message, etc.

Summary

Got a feeling this is one of my longer posting, but that is because there are so many little things to get in there and show you. I am able to use my dynamic QR codes to switch between a website about me, downloading contact information or joining my WiFi network – all depending on where I am going to be.

You could be using a QR code with a coupon for discounts on your products or services – then track how many times that code is being scanned. Or you could use it like Best Buy and Home Depot to provide consumers instant access to more detailed product information and reviews in store.

I have a feeling that the QR code function is only going to grow as more genius people come up with ever greater ways to apply them to the world around us. Have you seen any other examples of QR code magic around?

Got a QR code reader/generator you want to talk up – put it in the comments…

I did finally manage to drag myself away from the chocolate whoopies, and caught up with a few people. Then the presentations started in the main Microsoft NERD center room. A few of the products/services caught my interest including VoKnow. This seems like a really useful idea for anyone who doesn’t have time to sit and read the news or events that interest them, i.e. commuters. VoKnow is like Pandora for news – you sign-up and create customized channels covering topics like news, weather and even your Twitter stream – and VoKnow will read them aloud to you. Better than listening to the radio because you decide what topics you want to hear about, pause, rewind or fast forward – they have a growing list of channels to choose from. When asked about costs we found out the service is free and the app is free – can’t beat that! Business model is based on infrequent ads playing during the audio stream. I liked the idea so much I just signed up!

Plug is another mobile service that really got me interested. The idea is to connect more deeply with events you are attending – network with people with the same interests as you, get a direct Twitter stream of the event you are attending, complete surveys during the event sent by the organizer. Plug integrates with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn bringing in limited profile information to help match other event attendees. For event organizers, they can have all information about the event and attendees in one place. They can share event agenda, update information in real-time on the event ‘wall’, share location maps and directions and gather analytics such as the number of connections made at the event, amount of interaction and feedback from attendees. Mobile is the future and this is a great step down the right path of where things are headed and it is free for the app.

Lastly, I couldn’t help but stop by the Hello Ladies table. Ever since I saw they were coming to this event I have been following them and receiving the daily headlines. They gear themselves as the online magazine for smart, busy women. The articles they have are not the junk trash from the grocery checkout nor are they too highbrow to disengage you. They cover stories and blogs on topics that most professional women can read, enjoy and discuss further by commenting on the articles.

Interestingly, QR codes were a big feature of the evening with each table getting their own QR code. QR Codes are those black and white fuzzy looking boxes you see around places more and more. By scanning it with your phone, a tweet was created about the product automatically! The tweet can be edited before it is sent, so overall I think this is a neat idea. It would have been even neater if I hadn’t left my phone charging on the kitchen table when I left the house! Felt quite naked without it.

The after party was at the Za bar round the corner. Hadn’t been there before, but I did sample their pizza and I can testify that it was rather good. Had a great evening talking to everyone there, and very surprisingly for me, I didn’t get home until after midnight. It was worth it though!!!

Looking forward to the next Mass Inno night on April 13th at another new location!!!

See you there…

The night is set up with a collection of tables for each product or service, and short demonstrations from the most voted for product. Some very interesting products and new services that were showcased and I wanted to talk about a couple that caught my eye.

Spreadable spreadable.com is a word of mouth type referral engine tool. Add a referral button to your website that allows all your happy customers to refer friends to you. The cool thing is that you can customize the message that is sent to the friends – so you get your company/product brand message clearly out there the way you want it. The Spreadable widget can also allow a different customized message depending on whether the referral is via email or a social site like Facebook or Twitter. Reporting is included and you can see how many referral went out, who your biggest (and most important) referrer is in case you want to reward them, and where the majority of your referrals appear – social network, email, mobile, etc.

You can get a free 30 day trial on their website, so it is worth giving it a try. They still have some work to do on it, but seem to be on track for things like the ability to customize discount coupons and tracking how many purchasers came from a specific promotion link. Overall, I think this looks like a great product with the potential to really grow a brand market – turning your customers into your brand advocates.

Another presentation was from Active Interview activeinterview.com who are bringing a new technique to helping you find that perfect candidate to fill your job opening. Instead of just shlepping through endless resumes, you can ask candidates specific questions and see their video responses. You can see scoring for all candidate submissions and because it is all online, all stakeholders can have a chance to review/score and comment on candidates.

The dashboard for each job opening results is easy and intuitive to understand. Each candidate is listed with some details and more importantly, the average score from reviewers and whether the candidate moves forward in the recruiting process.

Depending on the type of job opening you have this may be a great way to quickly determine the best candidates to bring in for face-to-face interviews. Younger and outgoing types may be best suited for this, but maybe people in general are getting more familiar with webcams images of themselves!!! I think this looks like a product that will find it’s market and really take off – as a long as LinkedIn or Facebook don’t gobble it up first!

I found a great free tool that let’s me backup the Ipad contacts and restore them to my new Touch. Now I have my contacts on all devices AND backed up to the cloud in case of emergencies! IDriveLite is the free app that does all this. IDrive also gives you free storage for files and photos, but I don’t really need that.

I like easy and free solutions! Now if only there was an app for my Google bookmarks we would all be set!
www.idrivelite.com

I came across this almost by accident, one of those emails from Amazon recommending new electronics. I was initially about to delete it, but since I had never heard of Ooma I decided to investigate.

What Is Ooma?
Ooma uses your Internet connection to make phone calls. This means you can get rid of that nasty expensive land line that you don’t use much!

How Does It Work?
The really great thing about Ooma over alternatives you might have heard about, like MagicJack or Vonage, is that it let’s you use the current phones. The actual Ooma box sits between your Internet line and your router. Then you can plug in your current phone and you can use it just like you had plugged the phone into your land line jack. If you have a wireless setup with multiple handsets connected they will work just the same.

How Is Call Quality?
I have been using Ooma at home for over a year now and can say the call quality is great. Since the Ooma box sits between the Internet and router, it is able to monitor line activity and maintain call quality even if there are movies being streamed on your Internet line. When you pick up the phone there is a little jingle noise that let’s you know you are using Ooma.

How Much Does It Cost?
All US and Canada calls are free! The actual Ooma box varies in cost, currently about $200 – $250 depending on where you purchase it and coupons available. Since I bought the package last year, I pay no monthly fee. Now there is a monthly fee to cover the taxes and federal fee – think it is $3.50 a month. For international calls you can purchase a plan which is a good deal if you are making lots of calls. I, however, just use the prepaid option which still gives me calls to UK for 3.2c per minute – on par with calling cards I used to use.

Can I Keep My Current Number?
When you sign up for service you can also purchase the number porting service which allows you to port your current number to you Ooma phone service. Otherwise, you will be assigned a new number. What would be smart to do would be port your number to your Google Voice account and then have it forward your calls to your Ooma and cell numbers!

What Services Do I Get?
Ooma has a Premier monthly package you can subscribe to for $9.99. This gives you the ability to forward calls to another number, add more lines, etc. The basic service I have gives me caller ID and the Ooma answer machine. This does me fine and I have had no reason to upgrade to the other package.

When you buy Ooma in the box you get the main box and what they call a scout box. The scout let’s you use Ooma from any other room. As I have wireless handsets around the house I didn’t need it for this. I do have satellite TV service though which requires a constant phone line connection. I hooked up Ooma main set in my electronics cabinet (where I hide the modem, router, wireless router and big bulky electrical strip) and then put the scout box in the TV room and also use it as the answer machine. Honest, it wasn’t that complicated, but I like to have everything gadgetized in my house!

Answer Machine?
Yes, you get the answer machine, but even better it the Ooma Lounge which is the online account management piece. Here you can set up your email address and when someone leaves you a message on the answering machine you will get an email! You can either dial your phone number and prompt through to listen to the message of go to the Lounge online and listen to it there. Nothing worse than getting home and hearing a message to call someone, but now it’s too late. This way you can get immediate notification to check your messages.

Where Can I Buy Ooma?
Best Buy locations now carry Ooma packages, or you can get them from Amazon. Current Ooma users usually have refer a friend coupons that you can use to get a discount too.

I would highly recommend Ooma to anyone and can’t believe it is not more popular – probably because they don’t invest in advertising quite like Vonage and MagicJack. Well I am quite happy to give them a free plug here: http://www.ooma.com

Oh, I almost forgot, they have an Ipad add that let’s you make calls anywhere using your Ooma account from your Ipad – with the built in speakers and microphone!

• Have you come across other services you like?
• Do you prefer to purchase and stream or subscribe and stream?

Continuing on my series of posts on technology tools to help you work and live, this next tool is great:  www.Evernote.com

The great part is that you can save notes in to different folders (notebooks) so that you can keep everything relevant together. Planning a bathroom makeover? Keep everything related to that in one notebook. You can have a note with the room dimensions, keep notes on design ideas, clip screenshots or photos of things you see and like. Everything altogether and accessible were ever you are.

In a meeting where the team has been brainstorming ideas on a whiteboard? Take a photo of the whiteboard, upload it and Evernote makes the text searchable – right from the photo! Recorded the meeting too? Upload the recording to Evernote and you have the entire meeting saved. At a conference and getting business card? Take photos of them or scan them later, upload it to a notebook and all that text is searchable.

Another great feature is the ability to tag all your notes. Sometimes a note could be relevant to more than one notebook, so give it more than one tag. You can sort notes by notebook, date, tags or search through them all.

So how much does this cost?
How does FREE suit you? There is the premium version too for a whopping $5 a month, or $45 for a year. The free account gives you unlimited notes, but max of 40mb of uploads a month, premium ups that limit to 500mb a month. Free allows certain file extensions like images and PDF, premium enables them all. Going premium also gives you some nice features like secure encryption, ability to share notes with others for editing and PDF searching.

I haven’t gone premium just yet, but probably will soon. Right now I am writing this blog in Evernote so that I can add to it whenever the mood strikes. Now that I have a smartphone I am playing with the photo taking of receipts, whiteboards, etc and uploading them and testing out how good the text recognition is. Happy to report that it is damn fine for free!

A new feature I just noticed they have available form premium accounts is the ability to add Microsoft Office documents. Then you could access and edit(?) them from anywhere too. That in itself is almost worth the $5!

Not always got wifi when you need to access a note? On the Touch app you can favorite a note and that makes it available offline. The iPad caches all notes visited so they are always available. This was great for me when I was traveling – could keep my itinery, boarding passes, luggage tags and maps of visiting areas all as a favorite in my Touch. Even took scans of my passport and credit cards in case they got stolen. Even if my Touch was to have got stolen, I could access these documents from any Internet cafe by logging into the Evernote website.

Last month I cleared the clutter out of my filing drawer and scanned all those car service invoices. Now they are all in a notebook, tagged by the year of the service.

I installed the firefox clip tool which let’s you automatically add a note of either the whole webpage you are on or just the text you have highlighted. It can connect to your Facebook and Twitter accounts so that you can save information from your streams. Like RSS feeds? There is a connection for that too so that you can save the feed and edit to keep just the important links.

When you signup for an account you will get an Evernote email address to use so that you can automatically add notes via email. Looking in the user forums there also looks liken there is a way the automatically sync a local folder to upload new files automatically to Evernote. However, it does seem to involve a little scripting, so may not be ideal for a new user.

How stable is the company?
Seem to be doing well and they are always developing new extensions or adding to the apps that will work with them. Don’t really see a downside to it, even at $5 a month.