Square is a great iPad/iPhone system to accept payments. It emails or texts receipts to the customer as well. You could use square for everything from tag sales, coffee shops, taco trucks, and yoga classes!

If you are already using square, you can also set up to accept “Pay with Square.” The best way to explain “Pay with Square” is for you to watch this great video at the link below. If you need help setting up Square for your business, call us at Brainspiral. We can help you out.

http://allthingsd.com/20120430/paying-with-squares-new-mobile-payments-app

-justin adkins

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Regarding: Remotely installing a virtual environment for Windows XP on a Macbook Pro.

The new site is Search Engine Optimized and connects to both Facebook and Twitter so every new blog post gets posted seamlessly to the top two social media outlets.

Check the site out at: http://torturedorchard.com

Building a custom theme for Elizabeth was tons of fun!  Her site needed to reflect the fun of her kids books and the seriousness of some of her adult focused work.  What came out is a site that we are all proud of.

Check out Elizabeth’s site here: http://elizabethwinthrop.com and look for her books at your local library.

We also customized the rest of Albert’s web presence including custom graphics on Facebook, Myspace, and Artistdata.  A new mobile phone app is coming out soon as well, brought to you by the Brainspiral team!

Check out Albert Cummings on a stage near you, and online at: http://albertcummings.com

The site is as fun and simple as their business concept.  Fun, high quality, low cost beads, necklaces and more!

Check out fundora and grab your mom a bracelet while you are there! http://fundorajewelry.com/

Brainspiral offers full e-commerce and SEO solutions.  All of our work is built on the WordPress framework.  However, we do extreme customization.  We build 98% of our designs from the ground up.  Don’t get charged more for a free theme, go to a team that knows the design and tech end of building websites!  Do it local, do it custom!

QR codes are not for every business.  Just like facebook is not always good for business.  Please, do not just use them cause they are trendy and you saw them at a bus stop in Brooklyn, think before you use QR codes.  That is why my first recommendation is… Decide why you are using a QR code, what is the point?

No need to ask me when you want to generate one… you can generate your own.

First, what are QR codes?
QR codes are basically a link in print.  You can print an image and when someone with a mobile device that has a QR scanner, such as an iPhone, scans the image then the link you place shows up.  QR Codes can be used for many things such as, a link to a song in itunes, a link to your contact information, or a link to a webpage.

I use the Bakodo scanner on my iPhone because it can scan more than just QR codes! (in fact, I just learned that it could be used for more than finding out the price of spaghetti sauce (my past use of it)

Want to generate and track QR Codes like a web geek?

Decide why you are using a QR code, what is the point?

For something other than a link to a webpage on your site:

1. go to: http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/ (there are many generators out there.  this is the one justin likes)
2. choose from the dropdown what kind of content it is
3. fill out the fields
4. choose your size (the size of the image)
5. click generate
6. then… you can either download the image or use the url to link to it (if for instance you are putting it in your email signature)
7. test your image by scanning with your mobile device

For a link to a webpage of your site there are more steps because we want to track the code to see how many people use it:

1. go to: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578
2. put in the url that you want to link to example: http://brainspiral.com to link to the Brainspiral Homepage
3. for the campaign source put “the name of the magazine, etc” cause that is what we are gonna track here.  For example for this I would put “websiteqrexample”,  if this was in the Transcript on May 22nd, “transcript522″
4. for campaign medium, Id put “qr” cause that is what the medium is
5. for campaign name… give it a name
6. click generate URL (I got: http://brainspiral.com/?utm_source=QR&utm_medium=qr%2Bcode&utm_campaign=qr%2Bweb%2Btest)
7. now that is one LONG URL…let’s shorten it! so, copy that long URL
8. go to: http://goo.gl/
9. paste the long URL you just generated into the box and click shorten
10. For mine I got: http://goo.gl/5UcsV (nice and short!)
11. NOW go to: http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/ (there are many generators out there.  this is the one justin likes)
12. choose from the dropdown URL
13. paste in your nice short URL
14. choose your size (the size of the image)
15. click generate
16. then… you can either download the image to use in print or use the url to link to it (if for instance you are putting it in your email signature)
17. My image looks like this:
18. test your image by scanning with your mobile device

Ok, that is it!

-justin adkins
Get a website today with Brainspiral!!!

TV is working out great….HUGE improvement!

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Regarding: Mac Laptop Updates and Installation of a new 40″ LED TV with matching Blu-Ray player for streaming Netflix.

I just received an email introducing a new high definition media player running the GoogleTV software.

And it occurred to me almost immediately: Google is turning into Microsoft.

Does that mean in 20 years Google will be making bad software that costs way too much money and yet everyone will buy it anyway while Apple works very hard to give away their superior alternatives?  Looks like it.

Google doesn’t make any of their own hardware. They are relying exclusively on other hardware and software developers to build the appliances that run their software. All of them, in fact – their phones, tv software, web browser.

In comparison, Apple develops all of their own hardware.  The end result is that the overall product – the thing that the consumer actually uses – is much more functional because the hardware and software work seamlessly together.  That’s the sticking point with technology.  Software isn’t a sole solution.  You need hardware, too.

I have to believe this is why the Droid phones have atrocious battery life, Chrome crashes all the time and (I suspect) Revue won’t be able to dual output digital and analog audio.

So Google – Are you going to start improving your company model by developing better products?  Because as it stands now, your software is only so-so.  You just have the luxury that Microsoft has – you’ve duped people into thinking that it’s the best solution.