Quick Response (QR) Codes are the next step in integrating the physical and digital worlds. With a click and an app anyone can use their smartphone to read one of these matrix style bar codes. We have had good luck with i-nigma 4 on the iPhone and QR Droid on the Android OS.

And generating a bar code for a website, phone number, SMS, or block of text can be just as easy. I use http://qrcode.kaywa.com/, but there are many options available.

The QR codes were originally developed by Denso-Wave in Japan to …

LinkedIn, Pandora, Groupon, and Zynga are all big names on the modern web, and each has filed with the SEC to hold an IPO. But who are these giants? What do they do, and where do their profits come from.

www.linkedin.com

LinkedIn is the social network for business professionals. When users join they create a profile that summarizes their experiences and accomplishments. According to the LinkedIn website, it has more than 80 million members spread throughout 200 countries. However, unlike most social media platforms, members must know each other or …

Predictions for the New Year
2011 promises to be an interesting year in the world of the internet. A number of developing trends are nearing their crest, soon to break upon the population as a whole, while mergers and legal proceedings stand to reshape the way in which the internet works.
1. HTML 5.0 will become the de facto language for new websites
The time is right for the change to HTML 5.0. Over the past two years iPhones and iPads have been pushing mobile internet users towards non-Flash animation solution, and with the upcoming release of Internet Explorer 9 the …

App was voted Word of the Year for 2010. (App being the abbreviated form of the noun application, software for a computer or phone operating system).

Each year, the American Dialect Society votes for the “vocabulary item” (it needn’t be a single word) that was  “…newly prominent or notable in the past year…” .  In 2009, it was Tweet. For 2010, it’s App.

Let’s take a look at some of the contenders:
Most Creative

spillion An immense number, calculated out of the gallons of oil spilled in the Gulf. Leading to spillionaire, someone made rich through the spill cleanup fund.

Most Euphemistic…

2010 Predictions in Review
A year ago I made several predictions about how the online world of 2010 would shape up. As the year comes to a close I thought it would be a good idea to see how close I came to the mark.
1. Smart Phone Bandwidth will become more expensive
True! -  In January, both AT&T and Verison redesigned their mobile pricing plans in a way that increased the cost of unlimited data, and in June AT&T did away with unlimited data plans altogether.
2. HTML 5.0 will become the de facto language for cutting edge …

Have you ever wished that giving someone your contact information with an iPhone or Android were as simple as handing them a business card?

With Bump, it is.

Bump uses the built in GPS in modern smart phones to tell when two such devices are in the same place at the same time. If they both vibrate at once (say, by bumping one against the other) it will let you connect your phones to transfer contacts cards, event invitations, photos, and social media account information.

In other words, just about anything you might want to put on your business card …

“Next,” “next,” “next,” if you’re like most people, your eyes probably glazed over after the second slide, perhaps even sooner. Imagine, then, how difficult it would be to capture your audience’s attention if you are the second presenter, or third, or tenth….

Prezi (www.prezi.com), provides a different way to organize and present your visual support. Instead of making several distinct slides, a Prezi presentation consists of a single large image that contains the whole of your visual presentation. Instead of advancing slides, you can zoom in on one part of your image to focus on one aspect of the …

This week’s Online Ore comes to us from programmer Zac Matthews.

Zac likes using delicious.com (or del.icio.us) to track the pages he wants to bookmark.  Delicious is a social bookmarking tool.  When you bookmark a web page, you can see what tags other users have applied, how many users have bookmarked it, and how they have rated it.  You then get a chance to apply your own tags or ratings to the site.

Even if you don’t use the social elements of Delicious, it can still be used to store …

Earlier this month Google unleashed its newest search innovation, instant search. Every single keystroke will trigger a different search function based on Google’s popular auto-complete function.
What Does Google Instant Change About Searching the Web
Let’s be honest, Google Instant is a wonderful innovation for anyone who likes conducting research online. There is effectively no delay in search time, and your search results will get refined with every single touch of your keyboard. In essence, Google Instant lets you the searcher decide when your results are sufficiently on-task to justify following the revealed links.
What Google Instant Will Do To …

This is the million dollar question — well, maybe not a million dollars, but quality video isn’t cheap. So making a good decision about whether to pursue a video production project or not is important because the stakes are high. In my experience, creating video content for a client’s website often costs more than 25% of the total cost of producing the website in the first place. Logically speaking, the video content should account for a great deal of the overall impact and effectiveness of the site.

Let’s take, for instance, a website that is built around marketing a single product. …