A colleague of mine did this and I thought it was a fantastic idea. Here is my QR vCard.
QR vCard
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Category Archives: Wireless
QR Codes
Today at work I was playing around with my new Verizon iPhone 4 and found a suite of apps related to scanning QR codes. These codes are square speckled two-dimensional bar codes that can contain a surprising amount of information.
I found a great site and discovered that it had a paired iOS app:
QR Code Creator Site: http://bit.ly/dziTfL
QR Code App: http://bit.ly/h97j6H
If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you should check them out!
So that got us started on possibly weaving QR codes in a lot of our promotional materials. Some of the ideas I’ve entertained revolving around these codes are:
- History of a building, photos of its construction, where the funding came from and some of the neat things about the building that people might like to know.
- Raffle codes on the back of WMU game tickets, we insert a random QR that people have to SMS or Email to enter a raffle to win a prize, or something.
- If these codes are up on billboards, we could provide a full vCard for WMU including admissions, our website, and other contact information.
As I got to thinking about the QR codes, it’s an avenue to enable printed material to have a digital effect, in a way it completes a round-trip for information. The path from digital to physical is usually via printers, and this is a way for physical to cross back into digital. The information technology, marketing, and pure geek factor are all very high – it’s very exciting!
Ringtones & People – Update
It’s too funny to let the turkeys get me down. Here are the assignments so far:
- Scott – Katy Perry Firework
- Mom – Rhythym of My Heart
- Norm – Imagine
- Jeffery – Buggles “Video Killed the Radio Star”
- Dad – Imperial March
- Little Chris – Guster’s Center of Attention *inside joke*
- Sister – Fur Elise
- General Ringtone – Aflac’s Goat “nah, naah, naaaah”
The difference between iPods and iPhones
Now that I have my new iPhone, I’m thrilled to have it and using it is wonderful. While I’ve been working with it I’ve run into a strange oddity and a workaround for it. The oddity came when I tried to create my own iPhone-compatible ringtones. The creation of iPhone custom ringtones are in themselves needlessly fussy procedure. First you find the music you want, trim it to 40 seconds, then convert it to AAC format. Then you tear it out of iTunes, change the extension from m4a to m4r and then insert that back into the device for assignment.
What gets me about the ringtone creation is how involved and outrageously fussy it is. It wasn’t meant to be this way, the design clearly points to strict control. When Apple makes something easy, it’s ridiculously easy. This is something different. This is capitalism. Apple went a long way to make this obfuscation stick and the proof is in the obnoxious lengths that you have to go through if you don’t want to buy a ringtone from the iTunes store.
I ran into another issue with my new iPhone. I plugged it into my MacBook and tried to add the newly manufactured ringtone to the device. Then I discovered a rather new and odd limitation. An iPhone apparently fixates on the iTunes library that it first sees, it is with this library that you can turn on “Manage Manually” mode with an iPhone. Any other library locks the phone out but offers you the option of continuing by wiping your device and re-fixating on a new iTunes library. I quickly came up with a great way to beat Apple at this oddity, I created a new iTunes library from scratch (just the directory structure and some key files) and placed it on my Dropbox. Then using the option-key goaded iTunes to start from a different library, pointed it to my Dropbox-iTunes folder and now I have a work-on-any-machine-Manual-Manage iTunes skeleton that allows me to insert homemade ringtones into my new iPhone.
What a long way around for something that should be simple. Apple, if you are listening, the solution is only lengthy and annoying. It’s been paved by your own software and the only piece missing is either a USB memory stick or Dropbox. How easy would it have been to design this with the same vigor that you designed everything else? Eventually your customers find ways around this sort of thing, doesn’t that inevitability mean it’s not worth pursuing in the first place?
Humph.
Fitting Punishments
Last night I couldn’t get the idea of punishing my Blackberry out of my mind. I was running over scenarios of destruction in my mind. How could I best bring my emotional needs to bear on this repugnant and abominable device? I thought of many things:
- Taking the Blackberry out to the dock with our office sledgehammer and dashing it in a flurry of epithets and cussing. Screaming while I extracted a primal retribution for all the ways the device let me down and angered me.
- Building a little bonfire and setting the piece of crap on fire. Watching it burn, drinking a very fine bottle of wine and when it’s all burned down to ash, putting it out manually.
- Giving it a Viking Funeral, putting it on a little wooden boat and setting that on fire and pushing it off to float in a lake or pond.
- Violent but paced deconstruction. Getting out my tools and pulling the device apart and unscrewing everything and when it’s in a neat pile, beating it with a hammer.
Then I thought about maybe having my assistant video me turning my Blackberry into a pile of slag in some of the less-personal-approaches to destroying it. Then as I laid there last night thinking about it, a part of me piped up about how if there was a video, first it would be hilarious, very Office Space of me, but it would also be rather incriminating as I would be technically destroying a workplace device.
As I continued to play scenarios through my head I started thinking about truly sadistic things I could do to this obnoxious horrible device and it hit me. It gives me a different non-destructive path to take that actually is more spiritually torturous. I have resolved to consign my Blackberry to a Velveteen Rabbit Hell. I will remove it’s battery and I will put it in a dirty disused cardboard box and I will lock it away in a locker nobody ever uses and I will forget all about it. It will stay in the box, inert, forgotten, and effectively gone from my life. Everyone wins. No video of me destroying it, no crime, nothing to upset anyone and I still get to punish it, long-term. When I do remember it I will relish its silent cardboard grave.
Waiting is the hardest part
Waiting for Verizon. It’s the hardest part of my February so far. For those who have been keeping track, the IRS came and tried to strangle our wireless infrastructure to death, but apparently failed. I’ve been on-again-off-again with Verizon but now we’re firmly on-again. I’ve sent neatly wrapped missives to management but have yet to hear any response.
All of this would be maddening if Verizon was ready. Thankfully it isn’t maddening because Verizon isn’t ready. In fact, from what I’ve seen from my local Verizon sales rep, they don’t even have a vocabulary yet, let alone any plans or packages for sale. So while I struggle with this nominal Blackberry, I watch the time tick away waiting for Verizon to get off their duff and give us details on plans. Then I can take that information to management and maybe goose them into action.
Last night was a problem because I couldn’t make an outbound call with my minimally acceptable Sprint service on my Blackberry. I had to turn off Automatic Roaming, go up to the upper level of my house where I could get the weakest of signals and make a call to order pizza for dinner. Sprint’s network is wretchedly bad, and it almost never was the case before.
I haven’t the heart to call Sprint and tell them what I’m planning. So far all they know is that the IRS is likely going to be the reason why we close our contract. It’s a total straw-man, and as far as today, a rather nifty fabrication. The last time I told them I was contemplating leaving Sprint for Verizon they sent my sales rep, a VP of sales, and a third fellow who had the word “synergy” in his title, or something to that effect. Truth to be told, I don’t have a problem with my Sprint sales rep, or the VP of sales that came to visit, but that third guy was aggressive, abrasive, and thoroughly an unpleasant human being. If Sprint ever gets around to thinking about why they lost my business they can look no further than this third-man they brought with them. Leaving him in his cubicle may be the best move for their future business, if they have any after Verizon poaches every single one of their customers.
I couldn’t properly express to Sprint exactly why the iPhone on Verizon was so compelling. They kept on pushing Android on their network — Are you serious? Verizon is a double-dunk. The device has pretty much already sold me. The Verizon network is the other half of the power-shot and the fact that Verizon is willing to drop the pretense and become a commodity wireless service vendor means the biggest fear I had about the iPhone on Verizon went up in smoke. They aren’t going to nail it down, cover it with obnoxious Verizon “VZ” bullshit, they are going to simply put the device on their network and let the chips fall where they may.
This is like a hat-trick from heaven. Sprint pre-occupied with an IRS straw-man, iPhone on Verizon, and Verizon keeping their ugly branding out of the pot. Bam Bam BAM! If anyone wants to know why, that’s why. A hat-trick.
Now if only Verizon would get back to me… tick tock tick tock gentlemen!