My good friends from the awesome band Cutting Jade (remember them, 10 Seconds) have just released their latest video for the song “Crazy”
The song comes off their latest album, “From Nothing” and feautrs a rather, well, Crazy Video. Check it out !
[youtube id=”3MrabAI9r2M”]
Keep an eye out for the new Cutting Jade website launching soon
If you use a US iTunes account, and have a “fake” address, you may be getting an error that says you have an “Invalid Address” when trying to purchase or update apps. It looks like Apple has implemented address validation on your iTunes account, and I have had quite a few people contact me today about this issue.
The reason this is happening, is because your address is not in fact a valid physical address. You will need to update your details either through iTunes (iTunes Link) or using the App store app on your iPhone/iPad.
Your address needs to be valid, so I would suggest finding one an address that actually does exist, like your favorite hotel or Fast Food Resturant :)
If you are getting an error using a Valid address, try changing “Street” or “Drive” to “St” or “Dr” or vice versa.
Make sure you your new address’s telephone number matches your new address as well.
Good luck :)
If this post helped you in any way, please consider a small donation via PayPal to help pay for site costs & maintenance
A while back I did a test of a couple of QR Code apps, and eventually came up with a list of the Top 5 iPhone QR Code apps. The tests were pretty comprehensive, so I thought my test was done. Until I came across Qrafter (iTunes Link). This app seems to blow all the others out the water with no issues !! Scans every single format I tested.
The app is developed by Kerem Erkan, from Turkey, and offers a whole whack of features. Here is some info from the app store:
Features:
Qrafter can extract the following information from the codes it scans:
You can also buy an advanced functionality pack for $1.99, which allows you to regenerate your QR code that you have snapped, as well as email yourself your history. You can also save vCards if you have snapped them using Qrafter.
After trying it out and doing all the tests, I had no issues at all, and everything just worked. Very impressive. I have also been chatting to the developer of the App quite a bit, and there are lots of surprises in store. He also has a web based QR Code generator, which is awesome.
If you looking for a QR Code generator for the iPhone, I highly recommend Qrafter.
Yesterday I picked up my copy of the Sunday Times newspaper, to be greeted with what looked like a cool campaign for their 125th year birthday celebration. On the front page there was a prompt to turn to page 3, which I did, and lo and behold, there was a QR code to snap. I was stoked. Finally, brands are climbing on the QR code bandwagon, and using them to enhance their advertising campaigns.
This one was pretty plain & simple. There were a couple of instructions to SMS a premium rated number to get a download link to get the app. I didn’t bother downloading the app, and instead used my new favorite QR Code app, Qrafter (more on that tommorrow).
If you sent an SMS to the premium rated number, it came back prompting you to go to http://www.coke125.co.za, which did have some info about coke and allowed you to download the Scanlife QR Code app
I snapped the code, which lead me to a webpage. Imagine my utter dissapointment, when the code resolved to nothing, but a simple webpage – http://www.coke125.co.za/ar/, with a movie clip on it. Nothing else. Just a plain white page with a movie clip ??? Nothing to tell us about how addicted we have become to your product over the last 125 years ? Nothing about how many cans of coke you have sold in the last 125 years ? Really ? Not even a nice mobi site styled nicely for mobile screen.
So I ventured forth & clicked on the movie clip. And all I got was a 31 second movie clip with a bottle of coke wasting some of the good black stuff, by spewing it out the bottle telling us they have shared a 125 years of happiness with us. Um, Thanks & Happy Birthday. Really.
Seriously. I am totally dissapointed with this. Here is a global brand, who I’m sure understands what QR Codes & mobile is all about, and how to execute it properly. Coke spent around R210,000 (according to the Sunday Times ad rate card), and achieved nothing from it. Nothing (except this whining blog post).
Honestly though, this has to be one of the most poorly executed QR Code campaigns I have ever seen. Next time gimme a shout, and I’ll give you some tips on how to properly execute a QR Code campaign.
Sidenote: (If you sent an SMS to the premium rated number, it came back prompting you to go to http://www.coke125.co.za, which did have some info about coke and allowed you to download the Scanlife QR Code app, and some “cool stuff” My argument here though is, that if you didn’t send the premium rated SMS, then you would never land on their site. The QR code seems like it was just dumped in the paper to try and make it look good, and to get people to pay the premium rated SMS to “download” the QR App)
So you may have been following my Project2011 project, where my goal is to become leaner & fitter. So far it has been going really well, and although I haven’t been riding as much as I should have, I have been training Kettlebells quite hard, as well as following a proper eating plan. I also did another mudman triathlon event a few weeks ago, which turned out to be disastrous, thanks to all the mud. Horrible ! I do however plan to get back on the bike as soon as it starts getting a bit cooler in the mornings.
Admittedly over the last couple of weeks, I have lost a bit of personal focus on the eating side of things. The training has been good, but with easter and the holidays, seems to have messed things up a bit. Overall, I am probably down around 15-20 kg’s in body weight since I started in Jan, but have turned a quite a bit of fat into muscle thanks to the Kettlebells.
So I chatted to Sean from FluxMotion who has been mentoring me over the last few months with the whole fitness & eating plan, and he suggested we start with a new fresh project, and I’ll be the Guinea pig to test it out. So obvisouly I jumped on board strtaight away ;)
So, in came Travis Gale from AppleTree who’s Motto is “Live Life Now”. Travis is the catalyst in the project, and takes the role of “Mental coach” to ensure I stay on the right path. This is exactly what I need and over the next 12 weeks, I will be working together with Sean & Travis in achiveing my goals, while keeping fit, trim and mentally stable :) You can read Travis’ take on the project on his blog – http://travisgale.wordpress.com/project-forrest/
One of the key elements to the project is that I’ll be keeping a daily journal of my activities. This includes before photos (be warned), eating plans and training journals. It’s really just an online diary of whats happening, as well as a motivator for me to go back and read on. You can follow it at http://thinmarc.posterous.com
I am really look forward to the next 12 weeks, as well as working with these 2 great guys, and can’t wait to see the results. Stay tuned, as I will be posting updates as I go along.