Get your QR codes — market like you’ve never marketed before

10 October 2011 David Leave a comment

QR codes. What are they? They are those funky pixelated boxes you’ve been seeing for a while now.. and they are showing up everywhere. Most recently, on the top of one of my favorite beers!

IronHorse QR — QR Code for Iron Horse Brewery

Again, what are they? They are Quick Response codes, and they are designed so that smart phone users can get information on anything, simply by scanning the image with a QR app (there are plenty of free ones available for most any smart phone), which will then take you to a website, or give you a phone number, or some text, or even send you an SMS message! They are very versatile indeed!

So, you might be saying to yourself.. so what!??!. Punch in a URL and you get the same deal. Well.. there’s the thing, you don’t NEED to punch in any URL (possibly misspelling it and going to the wrong place.. like.. whitehouse.com… which used to be a PORN website, not White House, and that’s all you need to know), you just scan it and viola. There you are!

Give me a couple examples of why I should care, you say? Well, let me try to illustrate:

** You are a college student, and you want to find a roommate to help you with the rent. You print up a flyer and post it up at the school. You want to talk to these people, but you don’t want to give up your phone #, at least until you chat with them on e-mail. So, do you print out your e-mail address and hope they take the time to punch it in? Or maybe you *do* want your phone# up there…. either way, you could simply put a QR code on the flyer with your preferred contact method and viola.. smart phone users (i.e. lazy people) can just scan it. No need to type anything. They get in touch with you, you rent the room and the world is a happy place.

** You’re a business owner and want to make it easy for people to reach you. You put your phone number on your business card, your e-mail address and your website. But what if your website is http://thisismyreallylongbusinessnamepleaseletsdobusiness.com well.. unless you want to register and setup another domain.. you’re going to find that most people won’t take the time to punch that in. Or if they do, they will get it wrong. Either way, you’re losing a business opportunity. QR code to the rescue. Place one of these little black boxes on your card and make it EASY for them to get in tough with you. No more worries about a long URL. No more worries about them making a mistake. Simple scan, and they are in touch.

Here are a couple of articles on QR codes if you’d like to do some more reading:

Spotted Everywhere: Small Square Pixelated Codes

QR Codes: Game Changer or Passing Fad?

Target implements QR codes in print ads to engage readers

I think you get the picture. And if you don’t, I doubt there is much hope you’ll ever get “the picture” or a QR code for yourself… right? Now, if you DO “get the picture” you probably want to know how to get one of these codes? Do you call the local government official and register for one? Do you call your lawyer to submit the paperwork, pay $500 and wait a month to get something back? NO, you do a quick Google search and find one of the MANY free sits online that will do this for you.

Too lazy to do that? Well, here is one that I used. Seemed simple enough. And they even give you a little bit of HTML code you can put in your own blog to help direct others to their cool tool (that’s called marketing for those of you in South Florida).

qrcode

So, check it out… like mine right above… it’s easy, it’s free, and it could help you promote your business.

Kaywa QR Code Generator

Now.. it’s time for you get a little square.

Technology

IPad, Tool with no Purpose or Technology Masterpiece

8 October 2011 David Leave a comment

Unpublished from last year. this entry was started on this iPad when I purchased it almost exactly one year ago today. At the end of the article Is an update on how this first year with the devices has been.

October 2010
What is that weird little device that seems to serve no purpose? It’s not a laptop, not phone, not a book nor hot plate.

Well, I am about to find out, and those of you following my blog can too. In fact I’m typing this blog entry with one right now. It’s only spent 4 days in my care to date, but so far this weird ‘little’ thing has engendered itself to me, my kids and a couple of other people whom have had some time to really try one out, beyond a little demo at the local electronics retailer

Even if this becomes little more than an eBook reader, I feel good about the investment. I do think this will find a place in my daily technology and recreation routines.

For instance, I can say already that it’s a fantastic way to enjoy a streamed movie or TV show anywhere you have some network but no TV. My first test of this was to enjoy 3 episodes of Galactica, streamed by Netflix to the iPad. I loved it.

I’ll have much more to say about it as I try out some daily business tasks. One of the first will be setting up some sample photography galleries to show prospective clients.

Another will be use of the device in the day to day administration of systems and IT management.

Stick around as I explore the ups and downs of the iPad over the next month or so.

Along with the iPad I am testing out Apples new Apple TV. Both are getting rave reviews in my house right now.

October 2011

iPad

It’s been a year with the iPad and I find it far more useful today than I had anticipated. it finds duty as a video blog reader (keeping up on the latest on CSS3 and HTML5 is a lot more comfortable to do on the couch with the little iPad than in my office at the laptop), as a second device to keep reference material handy while developing websites, and also as a very handy entertainment device.

An example of it’s utility would be as a very handy repository of Radio Control reference, setup and instruction documentation while at the race track. not needing to haul around my expensive laptop, power supplies for a long day, and the space a laptop would take up in the pits are all reasons the iPad shines.

in fact , I am comfortably using it to update this blog entry. I just wish I’d kept on task with the plan to write reviews as I explored this very cool device. and now with iOS 5 installed,it’s even
more useful (for instance I can send SMS like iMessage communications to other iOS5 devices over WiFi (no. cellular network required).

AppleTV

In short. it’s fantastic. So happy and impressed am I with the AppleTV that I’ve recommended it to (and sometimes installed for) friends and family. It’s ability to access and deliver online content to the comfort of a living room.

Integration with Netflix was impressive enough that I totally cancelled my cable, switched to DSL and saved myself several hundred dollars a year. My kids and I have not missed it at all. If I need to get any sort of broadcast news, I can pull true HD off the air for free, with a $5 set of old-school rabbit ears. Talk about bargain.

If you enjoy YouTube, Vimeo or Internet Radio, Apple TV has that covered as well. It’s an integrated entertainment system in a box little more than a pack of cards I size. You do need an HDMI compatible TV / entertainment system to take advantage of this awesome little black box that pulls content off a CAT5 cable or WiFi network. You do need a high speed Internet connection of some type for it to function.

That’s all for today’s update. I’ll make an honest effort to write a more detailed review of each, but we are having a rare sunny day and I’m going to go and take advantage of that!!

photography, racing

American Le Mans at Laguna Seca

21 September 2011 David Leave a comment

Saturday’s ALMS 6-hour endurance race at Monterey’s famous Laguna Secs was fantastic. The GT class was the most closely contested race I’ve seen in a long time, where the lead changed between the last turn and and the start finish, right in front of the main grandstands! Talk about excitement!

Watching, and photographing racing at night was a first for me. A learning experience, and despite this being my first attempt, I’m still happy with some of the images I was able to capture. Most of that I need to attribute to Canon’s fantastic 200mm f2.8 L glass (which I obtained from the L.A. Times a few years back).

So.. without further yammering, here are just a few of the shots that I’ve processed so far, that I like. Keep in mind that Word Press re-compresses the images so you lose clarity… when I get unlazy enough to replace Word Press with a better CRM (when.. maybe never…) this sort of thing will not be such an irritation to me.

In the mean time, it is what it is, and these are the results:

Astin Martin 007 - The name is Bond, James Bond.

Class champion M3 passing an LMP car entering Turn 2

Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid - it completely dominated GT.

One of two Patron Ferraris, this one entering turn 2

Corvette loser-mobile — Corvette attempting an honorable mention finish, enters turn 2

racing

American Le Mans – a few shots from qualifying

17 September 2011 David Leave a comment

I shot over 500 photos yesterday at ALMS qualifying and practice. Here are few of those shots:

One hot car!

This happened early in the first qualifying session. The British, known for finding ways to make things leak, make the Jaguar, which dumped most of it’s oil on the track in the first turn:

British Fire - oil leak catches fire exiting turn 1.

Start Finish line into Turn 1

Turn 2 Action

American Le Mans - Turn 2 at Laguna Seca

Photos from the Paddock

Cyber Crime, Technology

Important Browser Security Updates – CA revocation for DigiNotar

7 September 2011 David Leave a comment

Over that last couple of days, most (hopefully all) of the Web clients (browsers) are being updated to revoke the CA (Certificat Authority) for DigiNotar. It’s important that you perform this update.

The reason is simple. They were hacked last week, and several bogus CERTs (SSL private/public key generated certificates used in secure HTTP communications) were issued for some very high profile websites.

You can read the gory geeky details on a recent Slashdot thread [ HERE ]. Additional information about the CA revocation can be read [ HERE ].

If you hadn’t already manually deleted the CA from your mail and web browsing applications, be sure to apply this update. If you have not been automatically notified of an update (SeaMonkey, Firefox and Thunderbird have all updated in the last 72 hours) I recommend you head to the home website of your favorite browser and see if a security update is available.

Helpful Browser Download Links

Safari

Google Chrome

FireFox

SeaMonkey

Opera

Internet Explorer

If you are still reading, you must be asking yourself, “Why is this important?”. It’s quite simple really (and actually rather complex, but I’ll try not to baffle with technobabble).

Hopefully, any time you communicate with a website that uses any type of password, you are ensuring you are communicating using SSL (Secure Socket Layer), which applies a certain degree of security by encrypting your traffic. The mechanics of this required that the website you are communicating with has a valid SSL Certificate issues for, and properly installed on their website.

Now, anyone can create their own SSL certificate by running a couple of X509 / keygen commands, and with a few lines of coded added to their web-browser, get it installed. Sounds simple enough still, right? The problem with that is, unless there is a centralized repository of people trusted to make these certificates, *anyone* could create a certificate for say.. BankofAmerica.com install it on *their* webserver, and apply some other social engineering techniques to fool you into thinking you are securely communicating with the bank, when in fact you are sending your data to, or even through (also known as a Man-in-the-Middle attack) some third party. With a few other hacks, they might even take over full DNS control of the BankofAmerica.com domain (this happened to UPS.COM just this past weekend, in case you wonder how that can happen). Bottom line, you want to know for CERTAIN that the site you are communicating with has a good, valid CERT issued by a reputable CERT issuing authority, not just some no-name criminal somewhere in Eastern Europe.

This trust is based on vetted, trusted, Certificate Authorities. If you want to look at he list of these trusted CA’s on your browser, it’s going to look at little mind boggling. Anyone on that list that issues a CERT for a website is automatically trusted by your software (and everyone else’s software too, unless you manually remove / revoke CA’s yourself, like I’ve done), so if anyone in that list has a compromised SSL signing system, then any CERT generated by that authority can no longer be trusted. This is the case with DigiNotar.

People far better at writing than I explain this further here: DigiNotar certificate authority breach: Why it matters [ link ]. I recommend you read it and learn a little something about how the web really works. I also suggest that if you are in business and depend on your website, you get some PROTECTION for your DNS with a product like this!: ActiveTrust DNS

racing, Radio Control, RC Trucks

TONIGHT! Final Round – Treads Gone Wild!

27 August 2011 David Leave a comment

Tonight is it! The final round of the Treads Gone Wild Summer Race Series at Bremerton R/C Raceway. If you have even the slightest curiosity about local R/C off-road racing, tonight is the night to check it out!.

LOCATION:

Bremerton R/C Raceway
1123 N Wycoff Ave
Bremerton
WA
98312
USA

Telephone: 360.627.8703

Competition in the series is tough, and the class champions will be decided tonight! Adding the excitement, for the first time at BRCR, we’ll be racing Triple-A Mains! What does that mean? It’s quite simple really. Following the standard qualifying cycle, racers will be started in qualifying order, in THREE separate A-Main races. The best 2 finishes will be used to decide the night’s winner, whom will take double points (60 points for the winner), and most likely the serious championship!

Classes that will be racing tonight for the big win:

Stock Short Course ( 17.5 motor limit no boost )
Mod Short Course
4×4 Short Course
Stock Buggy ( 17.5 motor limit no boost )
Mod Buggy
Mod Truck
Novice ——- (No points in novice class)

It’s going to be an exciting night of racing!

Qualifiers start at 6:00 PM

Mains should be underway by 9:00 PM

Don’t miss out!

racing, Radio Control, RC Trucks

Treads Gone Wild summer race series is heating up!

14 August 2011 David Leave a comment

Round 3 of TGW is now in the books, and it’s becoming a very VERY tight series. Two rounds left and unfortunately, I’m in danger of losing my 3rd place standing in the series.

Bryan is how tied with me for third, and he’s brought his A-game, winning last nights A-Main.

I qualified 5th running my black and yellow Cow Car 3 Kyosho Ultima SC-R Short Course, controlled with a Spectrum 2.4GHz DX-3R DSM2 controller.

Here is the video of last nights race:

Race Video – Round 3 of “Treads Gone Wild” Stock Short Course

Watch the battle between me and the green Kawasaki truck of Bryan Schoening (whom I’m now tied for 3rd with in the series).

Stock Short Course “Treads Gone Wild” Series Points Standing

     STOCK S/C  (17.5 no boost)
					   
NAME	ROUND 1	ROUND 2	ROUND 3	ROUND 4	ROUND 5 	POINTS	PLACE	   
PHIL VANDEVER	30	30	25			85	1	   
DANIEL CORRENTI	25	21	21			67	2	   
DAVID DEMARTINI	21	16	18			55	3	   
BRYAN SCHOENING	0	25	30			55	3	   
JOE HASELBERGER	16	14	14			44	5	   
CHARLIE KRAUS	18	12	13			43	6	   
BRYAN HONSTAIN	13	11	11			35	7	   
PAUL HUDSON	0	18	0			18	8	   
JAKE EVERSON	0	0	16			16	9	   
GRACE HONSTAIN	14	0	0			14	10	   
RICH EVANS	0	13	0			13	11

Despite some mistakes in driving, the Kyosho Ultima SC-R is a nearly unstoppable machine. In fact the series points leader is also running a Kyosho SC, which seriously mitigates any advantage in running the best short course R/C truck money can buy. Regardless, it was a worthwhile change out from the SC-10. By changing trucks I went (virtually overnight) from a back of the pack running to a consitant podium finisher, and have a handful of wins, something that seemed impossible for me to accomplish with the SC-10.

Radio Control, RC Trucks

Evolution of a theme – New race body debuts at “Treads Gone Wild”

31 July 2011 David 1 Comment

With the slow destruction of my old race body, the damage done to the very old temporary body, and the debut of the BRCR Summer Race Series “Treads Gone Wild”, it was high time for a new body. But, time was not on my side, so my original plan of a complex and amusing theme was out the window.

When I originally started to race the first Cow Body truck a few months back, it was a big hit at the track. Despite it’s very simple design, and the multitude of very nicely done air-brushed artwork on other trucks, the amazing acceptance was, to say the least, surprising!

Short Course racing takes it’s toll on these little Lexan bodies, so replacement is just part of the hobby. The neat part is that you are not stuck with a design forever. The bad part is that you can’t keep using your awesome design forever. I purchased a couple of new bodies on sale, and set them aside for the future. You never know when one will develop a catastrophic crack and need to be quickly replaced. With speeds of 30 MPH+, aerodynamics actually does matter.

“Cow Car 1” suffered a pretty nasty break in the rear mounting locations, and had to be retired about a month ago. But I was not ready with my new design concept, so I pulled an old Traxxis Slash body out of the dustbin of bodies past (for reference Traxxis is a good basher brand, but it does not have a reputation for real race performance). It was a musing for a while. People were shocked to see a crappy old Traxxis running so well and so smoothly on the track. LOL. Little did they know, at first, that it was covering arguably the best Short Course currently made, a Kyosho SC-R. But the body is pretty cheap to start with, and it was not long before the stresses of a very competitive race class took it’s toll too. Again, I was not ready with a new design.

After procrastinating for months, and with the start of a new Summer Race Series at our track “Treads Gone Wild“, despite my air-brushing skills being squarely in question, I had to come up with something fast! I literally had but a handful of hours to get a concept, design the pattern, lay it on the body and paint it up! Traxxis body was severely damaged in practice Friday night (so was the truck, but that’s another story), so I could not simple use the Traxxis body for the opening of the serious, and I had to fix the truck too. All in the matter of a few hours yesterday morning. Plus, it was the first warm sunny weekend day this year, so I also had to squeeze in some motorcycle riding. Had to act fast.

The “Cow Car” theme had stuck, racer announcers started to call me “Cow Car Dave”, and people expected to see me cowing it up. But I didn’t want to do the same old thing, again. Plus I wanted to experiment around with some design elements, like flames or tears. I spent some time looking at all the awesome designs in this RCTech air brushing thread, and It hit me. I could do both! So, I did!

In less than 3 hours, I knocked out this little gem, combining my first attempt at airbrushing rips, and adding drop shadows, but still sticking with the “Cow Car” theme (between “Cow Car 3”, shown here, and Cow Car 1, I also painted up a Cow Car for my daughter… more on that later.)

TA DA!

It’s pretty rough, and there are a lot of mistakes in it. Some of it because I was rushing, most of it because this is only the 2nd body I’ve tried to airbrush (the first body was “Cow Car 2”, in the middle).

A lot of people liked the design, and I do too. I got my rips, my neon color and stuck with the Cow theme. All in all, pretty good. But, now, I’m really starting to enjoy the air brushing thing, and I want to keep practicing, and paining more bodies, but, I have all the bodies I need for my race vehicles. I guess I could just go and buy more bodies, paint them up and maybe sell them for cost at the track, so that I can practice, and not go broke doing it.

Finally, here is the full family of Cows, 1, 2 and 3 (left to right).

Cow.Car.Family — Original Cow Car, Strawberry Cow Car, TGW Cow Car

Software Development, Technology

OSX Lion (10.7) Arrives

22 July 2011 David Leave a comment

The LION has arrived, and is being installed on millions of devices around the world. Or, so it would seem based on how long it took to download the 3+ Gigabyte latest version of Apple’s OSX operating system. And at the reduced (by $100 from the last update) price of $30, I imagine it’s going to fly off the virtual shelves. I say that because, for the first time, there are NO CD install options (or so said Apple during WWDC 2011). Watch that long but informative video here:

WWDC 2011 – LION, iOS5, iCloud Preview

Before I ramble on about some of my favorite features, it’s important to point out that this upgraded is not for everyone. Slower Code 2 Duo systems will see a little slowdown in how things run. Even on my early Core 2 Duo system with a measly 2GB of memory, it’s not much more than an occasional annoyance when things load. Once everything is up and running, I don’t see any performance hit. The new version is also limited to certain processor classes, so unless you have one of these processors, the installation instructions say you won’t be able to enjoy the latest:

Supported Processors

Core 2 Duo
i3
i5
i7

Once you download the software, it took about 40 minutes to complete the installation. It’s a hands-off install (I ran mine overnight) once you have it started. You can walk away, come back about 1 hour later and you are ready to go. No nasty multiple restarts and driver re-installs or trash like that.

By now, you might be wondering, or saying out loud “So what? How do I buy this supposedly great upgrade?!?”. It’s not a single step operation, but overall all it’s pretty simple.

The first thing you will need to do is run the Software Update:

Selecting Software Update — Select the 'Software Update' option from Apple dropdown.

This will upgrade your Apple App Store (seen down there in the taskbar, this is not the same thing as your Apple iTunes App store for handheld devices).

Find the App Store in Taskbar (3rd from right in mine)

From there, you will easily find the LION product you can purchase.

Apple App Store - LION download is VERY easy to find.

If you have not yet purchased it under your Apple ID, then you will be offered the product at around $30. Now, here is the part that I really like, if you have already purchased the upgrade (such as me), you don’t have to pay for it again, to install it on another device that you own, and have linked to your Apple ID! This is fantastic! Not only is it very inexpensive, the installation process is designed to work well for families and people with multiple systems. Something a competitor might learn something from…. (although I’m sure they would screw it up 1000-way to Sunday, LOL).

Once installed, you are flooded with 250 NEW features in the latest incarnation of OSX. That’s not 250 enhancements, that 250 NEW Features! Wow. So, what are those features? I’m not going to list all 250. I’m not even going to spend much time trying to describe them myself, so I’ll direct you do the Apple website, and you can pick the ones YOU are interested in:

250+ New Features in OSX LION

Now, the ones I’ve really enjoy so far are these:

Launchpad

[details] I like to keep the items I run often in my taskbar, but there is not room to keep everything I might ever run there. When I want to go find some seldom used app, I used to have to use the Finder, open Applications and poke through list. NOT ANY MORE! With a simple 4-finger swipe on the track pad (or clicking that rocket icon you might have noticed in my screen shot above) you are given an iOS (that’s iPhone/iPad/iPod style interface for the techno-neophytes that are now lost). ALL of the apps are there. If you have too many to fit on one page, well, you just swap left and right, find what you want an LAUNCH! It’s a really cool feature!

You can see that Apps in sub-directories are presented in the same method as they are on the iOS OS. When Apple said they took usability lessons from iOS and brought them to LION, it was much more than just some marketing hype. It’s real, and it works.

Mission Control

[details] Spaces has been changed too, and now it’s Mission Control. Like multiple desktops (like me) then you can access, add, remove them with a simple 3-finger up-swipe to see all your desktops:

It’s easy to move running apps from space to space too, and you might notice the dashboard is the first desktop on the right, so you can get there using spaces. So, why is that cool? Well, to shift from space to space it’s a simple matter of a 3-finger swipe left or right to access the space you want. Again, it’s just that simple!

Autosave

[details] This is such an awesome, intelligent, useful feature. Gone are the days of you cursing because you forgot to save a document, and for some reason the application closed, maybe because you restarted and forgot it was open (although the OS will remind you), or the system crashed (I’ve NEVER had my MAC crash.. EVER), or you simple hit the wrong button and didn’t save! OH NO. Well, this has you covered. Gone are the annoying popups (do you want to save?), because it will save it for you, when you need it to. Combined with Versions.. you have a very secure and safe environment in which to create, anything.

Versions

[details] And it will save different versions of your document AS YOU EDIT, so you can revert back to a previous state at any time. If you are familiar with time machine, you’ll understand how it works. I don’t have a demo to show you on my computer (yet) but I’ve tested it on another. This is one you want to read about for sure!

Having used the new OS for only 24 hours how, I’ve just scratched the surface of the new capabilities. I will say with complete confidence, I am glad that I upgraded, I’m using the Launch Pad and Mission Control heavily already.

Software Development

iOS SDK with XCODE 4.2 is a huge change from version 3.x

16 July 2011 David Leave a comment

Wow.. talk about a learning curve. The new iOS SDK 4.x (new to me, have not been writing iPhone apps much this year) is a radical change from the version I learned with.

I don’t doubt that I’ll find my around and start re-compiling my code with the new SDK for both iOS4 and iOS5 soon, but right now, I’m stalled trying to do something pretty simple like adding a 3rd view to the Tabbed interface. Once I get my old code ported to the new SDK, tested for 4.3, I’ll start working on the 5.0 version to be released later on this year.

At least the weather outside is HORRIBLE, so I’m not missing out on any quality MC riding today. :/

David DeMartini actual