Reprisal of the QR Code

I'm working with my local bicycling club, the Illinois Valley Wheelmn, and Board and finding that I'm helping to bring a mobile smartphone perspective.  We have an excellent web site, newsletter, and advertising opportunities.  I recently suggested adding in a QR Code to which I received the response: What is that and why would we want it?  Below is the best brief answer I could give that was directly relevant.  I hope you find my reprisal of the QR Code equally useful.

Long URLs -> Short URLs

Many times, a URL (or URI) is too long to safely or easily include in an email, instant message, or text message.  If you're a mobile user like me, you don't like to type in long URLs on a tiny keyboard.  Even if you're not a mobile user, you've noticed that sometimes a forwarded email ends up breaking a long URL link.  To avoid these problems, you can use a URL shortener.  There are many URL shorteners out there.  Popular ones include tinyurl.com, bit.ly, and goo.gl, among others.  These sites make long URLs into short URLs that point to the same place.  

For example:

I wish to share a long Google Map URL such as:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=peoria,+il&aq=&sll=40.722283,-89.591789&sspn=0.199571,0.308647&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Peoria,+Illinois&ll=40.694175,-89.589043&spn=0.199655,0.308647&z=12 

I would choose to shorten it.  I go to http://goo.gl and paste that long URL into the top box and it returns a short one to me:

http://goo.gl/zwfDJ

Test both of these URLs.  Notice that they go to the same place.  This will work every time.

Now, our (truly wonderful) IVW web site already has a great, short URL: http://www.ivwheelmn.org/  There is no need for a URL shortener.  However, Goo.gl offers an additional bonus feature of their URL shortener: a QR Code generator.

What is a QR Code?

You can read the full Wikipedia entry if you'd like, but essentially a QR Code is a 2-dimensional code able to be scanned by camera phones and barcode readers.  (See attached QR Code for the IVW web site.)  They've been around for quite some time.  If you start to look for them in the corners of magazine pages, advertisements, posters, fliers, etc. you'll notice them.  QR codes contain different kinds of information and can be used to start some kind of action, such as going to a particular web site.  

Scanning or Capturing a QR Code

Many mobile smartphones have free software you can download and use to "scan" or "capture" a QR Code.  Doing that then allows your phone to go directly to the desired web site.  It's terribly convenient for mobile users because it removes the barrier of typing in a URL which is prone to mistakes given the small form factor of mobile devices and less-than-ideal keyboards (if any).  If you have a smartphone and want to download a free QR Code scanner, I suggest going to your phone's marketplace or App store and searching for "QR Code scanner" and select the most downloaded or highest-rated free software available.  I use "ShopSavvy" on my Android phone because it also lets me do live price comparisons between stores and online retailers.

Goo.gl + ".qr"

Overall, using Goo.gl and appending ".qr" to the resulting short URL is slick, easy, and can be done for anything from anywhere.  For smartphone users like myself, it's a timesaver and makes me 100% more likely to follow-through to a web site.  If the QR Code is digitally displayed on my phone, I just press on the QR code itself; if I see a QR code on a store poster, in a magazine, or in a newspaper, I use my phone's camera to scan it and it automatically directs me to the website on my phone.  

Illinois Valley Wheelm'n
http://www.ivwheelmn.org/

Recap

The reason I created a Goo.gl short URL for IVW was so we could use the subsequently generated QR Code: http://goo.gl/zwfDJ.qr in future advertisements, publications, and more.  We should always use the full IVW web site URL (http://www.ivwheelmn.org/) when directing others to the IVW web site.  Why?  Because it's a great web site with a great URL and renders very well on my mobile phone.  In general, the only QR Code you (or anyone in our group) really needs for inclusion into newsletters, fliers, mailers, advertisements, etc. are these two (they are the same):

The QR Code: http://goo.gl/YqQuT.qr 
1. Attached is the above QR code saved as a PNG file.

Please let me know if anyone else has any questions.  Have a happy Valentine's Day!

Op-Ed Columnist - The Alpha Geeks - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - The Alpha Geeks - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com
[Permalink]

The future historians of the nerd ascendancy will likely note that the great empowerment phase began in the 1980s with the rise of Microsoft and the digital economy.

Create an ETD Using Adobe Acrobat

Create an ETD Using Adobe Acrobat

Attention all Grad Students! This is a VERY USEFUL site!

Point all those weary and tired graduate students to this page when they are ready to convert their document into the acceptable ETD format. It's a heck of a lot easier to do it this way than to do it in MS Word 2007--trust me, I'd know.

Trendalyzer's Other "Like" Tools

RSOE EDIS - Emergency and Disaster Havaria Information Service - AlertMap: http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index.php?lang=eng

Rich Internet Applications for Language Learning: http://clear.msu.edu/teaching/online/ria/ RIAs are web pages with multimedia interactivity embedded into them. CLEAR's RIA can be created with no programming at all.

Interactive Map: http://www.cer.jhu.edu/index.cfm?pageID=351 The Interactive Map Tool is loosely based on a map metaphor, but isn’t bound to just creating maps. It allows the user to create a hierarchical structure of informational pages that can be nested. Nested pages can include anything from plain images to video and audio files, all with accompanying description text. The sites created in the Interactive Map Tool helps students understand the connections between concepts and spatial context in a way unlike any other. The Interactive Map Tool is loosely based on a map metaphor, but isn’t bound to just creating maps. It allows the user to create a hierarchical structure of informational pages that can be nested. Nested pages can include anything from plain images to video and audio files, all with accompanying description text. The sites created in the Interactive Map Tool helps students understand the connections between concepts and spatial context in a way unlike any other.

MIIM Project: http://maps.umn.edu/ Open Source Web Mapping in K-16 Education. MIIM is a web-based application that introduces K-12 and post-secondary students to principles of geography and GIS. MIIM makes use of several open-source projects, including Mapbender, MapServer, and PostgreSQL.

Tracing the Visitor's Eye: http://www.girardin.org/fabien/tracing/ So far the investigation of spatio-temporal patterns of people mainly rendered a quantitative understanding of the city. In our study, we intend to leverage implicit spatio-temporal data (i.e. latitude, longitude and timestamp) with the richness of people-generated information. Our approach is to consider that uploading, tagging and disclosing the location of a photo can be interpreted as an act of communication rather than a pure implicit history of physical presence. For this purpose, we retrieved from Flickr, large amounts of photo taken by thousands of users in the world’s most photographed cities. Based on the time, explicit location and people’s description of their photos, we design geovisualizations. They reveal patterns of tourists and citizens consuming a city, such as the flow of people between city attractions (see figures below), the monuments areas of influence or what is happening with day/night and working/weekend periodicity.

2008-Horizon-Report.pdf (application/pdf Object)

The Horizon Report 2008 edition has been released! It is available for download and the Horizon Project wiki is also online. Soon the report will be coming to FDI to be distributed among all faculty enrolled in the spring/summer tracks.

The Horizon Report is a collaboration between the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. As stated in the Horizon Report itself, "[t]he project uses qualitative research methods to identify the technologies selected for inclusion in each report, beginning with a survey of the work of other organizations and a review of the literature with an eye to spotting interesting emerging technologies" (2008, p. 8). It covers the key emerging technologies, the critical challenges we will face, significant trends (on the rise and in the past), and an analysis of the past five years of trends found in the recent evolution of emerging technologies.

How to Describe Web 2.0 to Administrators

http://www.mtl-peters.net/blog/?p=181

"Web 2.0 is sometimes called the “Read Write Web”. I call it the “Read, Write, Speak, Listen Web”. It is an Internet that is no longer about passive viewing and linking . This new Interactive Internet is transforming the manner in which people all over the world are interacting, communicating and collaborating. In the last two to three years, we have witnessed an explosion of new information and knowledge available to anyone with an Internet connection. As educators, we cannot ignore the fact that our students are consumers, distributors, remixers, and creators of content from and to the Internet. They need models and guidance from trusted adults as they interact with others and with information. Reasons why educators should include web 2.0 tools and environments (i.e. blogs, wikis, forums, learning management systems, voicethread, podcasts) as part of classroom practices include: relevance to real world practices, access to authentic audiences, opportunities to learn and practice appropriate online conduct, global citizenship skills, information literacy skills of evaluation and authentication, skills in anchoring and filtering information, and opportunities to collaborate, as well as experience learning gains."

"Gapminder" (which is actuallyTrendalyzer software)

Gapminder World 2006 is what everyone at TED was talking about. It's not the actual talk about "3rd world countries" that got everyone excited, it was the use of animated, visual data that got all the attention. To be clear, the software in question is not called Gapminder; Gapminder Foundation is the Swedish company that started this. What powers this kind of data mashup is the Trendalyzer software (acquired by Google in March 2007) that enables Gapminder to do what it's doing with the data, but really, you're not interested in all of that. You just want to see it working for yourself to understand that you want it.

About this Talk

You've never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called "developing world" using extraordinary animation software developed by his Gapminder Foundation. The Trendalyzer software (recently acquired by Google) turns complex global trends into lively animations, making decades of data pop. Asian countries, as colorful bubbles, float across the grid -- toward better national health and wealth. Animated bell curves representing national income distribution squish and flatten. In Rosling's hands, global trends -- life expectancy, child mortality, poverty rates -- become clear, intuitive and even playful. NEW: Download this talk in full SD resolution >>