Five Ways Nonprofits Can Use Qr Codes

QR codes have been gaining popularity among marketers. You’ve probably see dozens of QR codes on your way to work. They are commonly used now on billboards at bus stops that advertise a movie or consumer product. You may have also seen QR codes when travelling and visiting tourist spots such as museums, walking tours, etc.  So, should nonprofits be experimenting with QR codes as another marketing vehicle too? Absolutely.

Before we dive into how nonprofits can incorporate QR codes into their marketing and outreach and discuss fees, it’s important to define what a QR code is from a technical perspective. QR Code stands for Quick Response Code.  It’s “a matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) that is readable by QR scanners, mobile phones with a camera, and smartphones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background, and the encoded information can be text, URL or other data. QR codes present a valuable method of adding web based content (basically any URL) to real-world messages, objects or locations," says digital strategist Upasna Gautam on the Eventbrite blog. 

“QR codes allow you to land a visitor much farther down whatever funnel of engagement you’re interested in moving them through. Rather than trusting a visitor to type in www.yoursite.com, a QR code can send them directly to the specific page you’d like them to see," said Henry Quinn at the Idealware Blog.”

A QR code can link directly to music, video, news—on or off your site—it can activate a phone call, send an SMS, open forums for conversation or social networking—anything that’s online and that’s going increase their engagement with your organization, you can put in front of a user with a phone, immediately, with one click, said Quinn.

Five Ways Nonprofits Can Use QR Codes

There are a variety of ways for nonprofits to use QR codes in their marketing and outreach. Here are few suggestions to think about experimenting with for your next multi-channel campaign.

1. Direct Mail: Sending out a direct mail appeal to your membership? Great, tag on a QR code in a visible place on the direct mail piece to encourage people to make a donation on your website. This is another great way to capture your offline donors email addresses so you can foster relationships with them online too. Note: The donation page should be a unique donation page so that you can track the response rates from the QR code.

Five Ways Nonprofits Can Use QR Codes

Backlink: http://www.frogloop.com/care2blog/2011/8/9/five-ways-nonprofits-can-use-qr-codes.html

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Android Or iPhone? Here's What The Big Names In Tech Use

We mined the Twitter accounts of the technology and startup elite to figure out their choices on the age-old question: Android or iPhone?

Or even Blackberry and Windows Phone 7, perhaps?

You may be surprised at what we found out.

Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare: iPhone

Dennis Crowley tweets from his iPhone to talk about Dirk Nowitzki.

Fred Wilson, principal of Union Square Ventures: Android

Fred uses an Android device to tweet about good-smelling parks.

Steve Case, co-founder of AOL: iPhone

Case uses an iPhone to tweet about entrepreneurs.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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See Also:

• The Truth About iOS 5: Apple Can't Be Beat
• 10 Things In iOS 5 Apple Is Still Hiding From You
• Our 5 Favorite iPhone Games This Week

Android Or iPhone? Here's What The Big Names In Tech Use

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How To Use LivingSocial Instant Deals And Buy Lunch For A Dollar

LivingSocial is one of the big players in the daily deals space, and today they sponsored Dollar Lunch Day.

The company recently rolled out its Instant Deals product, a time and location based discount on lunch at different restaurants in your city.

Dollar Lunch Day is LivingSocial's chance to showcase how this product works. We took it for a test drive today, and we were impressed with how easy it was.

Head over to https://livingsocial.com/instant/ to find a deal you want. Click on "buy now."

Log in with your LivingSocial account or create a new one.

Your confirmation email has all the information you need to collect your deal. If you don't have a smartphone, click on the option to have your order number texted to you.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

For the latest gadget news, visit SAI: Tools. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

See Also:

• Everything You Need To Know About Apple's iCloud, Including What The Hell It Actually Is
• 10 Apps Apple Just Killed With iOS 5
• You Can Try iCloud For Free Now! Here's How It Works

How To Use LivingSocial Instant Deals And Buy Lunch For A Dollar

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Want To Use Google Apps? Better Upgrade Your Web Browser (GOOG)

Google Apps will drop support for older browsers starting August 1 according to a post on the company's blog.

Google says it's making the change because newer technologies like HTML5 are required for new features in Google Apps, and that older browser just "don't have the chops."

Culling support for older browsers also means that Google doesn't have to do as much testing when it releases new features.

So on August 1, Google will support only the current and one-prior "major" release of each browser. (For instance, Internet Explorer 7 will no longer be supported, as IE8 and IE9 have come out since.)The company won't guarantee that new features will work right in older browsers.

This is actually kind of a big deal for companies who have standardized on Google Apps -- it now means that every time a new version of their preferred browser comes out, they will have to upgrade users who are on the two-ago release.

Ironically, it could be a particularly big problem for Google's own Chrome browser, which gets a major release every few months.

Avoiding time-consuming desktop software upgrades is one of the big justifications for cloud computing apps like Google Apps. But this is a good reminder that even Web apps rely on one very important piece of desktop software -- the Web browser.

For the latest tech news, visit SAI: Silicon Alley Insider. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Eric Schmidt Is A Mac, Not A PC
• Here's What Happens In Households With Both An iPad And An Android Tablet
• Google Was Ready To Pay $100 Million To Record Labels

Want To Use Google Apps? Better Upgrade Your Web Browser (GOOG)

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Comment on Need Some Part Time Work? Use Your iPhone by Tim

if iPhone users are at a point of having to look for some extra money, they really ought to look at dropping the costly iPhone with its data plan and apps, and switch to a cheaper Razr

Comment on Need Some Part Time Work? Use Your iPhone by Tim

Backlink: http://gigaom.com/2011/05/04/need-some-part-time-work-use-your-iphone/#comment-621727

Comment on AT&T; Bandwidth Caps Are Here: How Much Data Do You Use? by Janko Roettgers

Karl, would be interesting to see how these numbers compare to AT&T;'s official meter...

Comment on AT&T; Bandwidth Caps Are Here: How Much Data Do You Use? by Janko Roettgers

Backlink: http://gigaom.com/broadband/att-caps-bandwidth-meter-survey/#comment-621022

CHARTS OF THE WEEK: Here's How Twitter Employees Use Twitter

Click here to see this week's charts as a slideshow →

Or select individually:

• Here's How Twitter Employees Use Twitter

• One Reason Investors Are Fleeing Research In Motion

• Google's Stagnant Search Share

• What Happens When An Unprofitable Company IPOs?

• Google's Cash Cost Per Employee Hits An All Time High

Here's How Twitter Employees Use Twitter

Twitter employees, naturally, use Twitter differently than the rest of us. But in what ways? Specifically, which apps do they use to tweet?

To find out, we used Twitter's API to analyze approximately 2,700 tweets from the Twitter staff list that were sent last week, including tweets from during the week and weekend, day and night. We then mined each tweet for its "source," so we can see which apps Twitter employee users tweet from, and compared this to the general public.

The tweets we analyzed came from 54 different sources, ranging from Twitter's official clients to third-party apps like TweetDeck and websites like Yelp, Instapaper, and Quora.

The most popular client was Twitter's website, which accounted for 32% of tweets. That's pretty similar to the general public, which uses Twitter.com to send 35% of tweets, according to Sysomos.

But that's where Twitter employees and the general public stop tweeting like each other.

Among Twitter employees, Twitter for iPhone generated 22% of the tweets, about twice as much as the general public. Employees used Twitter for Mac to send 18% of their tweets, versus 0.4% for the general public. (Probably especially during the week, when Twitter employees are sitting around the office, tweeting at each other.) And while the general public uses TweetDeck to send 13% of its tweets, Twitter employees used it for just 2% of their tweets.

Overall, Twitter employees use Twitter's official apps to send more than 86% of their tweets, while the general public uses them to send about 58% of their tweets. Given their employment at the company, and their role in creating and testing the apps, that discrepancy is not surprising.

One Reason Investors Are Fleeing Research In Motion

In yesterday's New York Times, Research In Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis complained that his company didn't get enough respect. He moaned that despite routinely delivering solid results, "people don’t appreciate our profits" or "our growth."

While RIM's growth is indeed solid, it's not nearly as strong as Apple's. iPhone sales growth, measured on a year-over-year basis, has been stronger than RIM's for nine out of the last ten quarters.

Couple that with the fact that Android is steamrolling RIM, and that RIM is embarking on a massive, risky, and necessary technology transition, and it's obvious why this "negative sentiment" surrounds RIM.

Google's Stagnant Search Share

New data from comScore shows Google's share of the U.S. search market has remained flat, stuck in the 66% percent range.

This is a problem for Google because it still gets the vast majority of its profits from search. Yes, the overall search market continues to grow, as does revenue per search. But, it's clear Google is not going to completely dominate the search market.

If Google's stock is ever going to start soaring again, Google will have to prove it has a second real profitable business beyond search.

Meanwhile, Microsoft's Bing search engine has managed to pick up a few percentage points of search share in the last year. But it's paying an unbelievable amount for those few points of share, and it's taking away share from its partner, Yahoo.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

For the latest tech news, visit SAI: Silicon Alley Insider. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

See Also:

• The Guy Who Says He Owns 50% Of Facebook Just Filed A Boatload Of New Evidence -- And It's Breathtaking
• Here's The Sweet SoHo Spot Where Wannabe Entrepreneurs Can Eat, Drink And Form Companies For Dirt Cheap
• How Facebook And The iPhone App Store Transformed PopCap's $100 Million Gaming Business

CHARTS OF THE WEEK: Here's How Twitter Employees Use Twitter

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