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Really interesting new technology Touch Code, let's you print invisible ink that smartphones can detect! Graphic Designers should love this.

Just a few weeks after Touchcode has been recognized with the prestigious Technology Innovation Award hosted by Wall Street Journal, Printechnologics received once again an amazing honor for its work. The Touchcode technology has recently been awarded from the “home of technology innovators” with the Silicon Valley Award as “Best Technology Innovation in Mobile” during the Silicon Valley Conference, taken place from October, 31 - November, 1, in Santa Clara| California. Bringing together innovators, entrepreneurs and visionary leaders from the Silicon Valley and the world, the conference and award were initiated to celebrate the technology revolution the epicenter of innovation has created in the past 30 years.

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Networking & Launch Party in Columbus

Hosted by Flare Code, Internal Women's Day, GroundWork Group, TechGROWTH Ohio at the Fish Market in Columbus!

RSVP at http://flarecodelaunchparty.eevent.com/

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Flare Code Launch Party: Columbus hosted by . Join us Wednesday, November 20th at the Columbus Fish Market in Polaris at the Crosswoods to help celebrate Flare Code, a mobile fundraising strategy tool, announce it's official launch in Columbus, OH. The event goes from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm with free appetizers being served and surprise gifts raffled off throughtout the night. A free mobile website will be built for the first 20 guests. 

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Twitter's purpose is still widely misunderstood, and many people think they have no need for it. But it has great potential to enlighten us. Here's how: We..

 A ton of nice thoughts on Twitter in this Tech Crunch article by Josh Constine ". . . at its best, Twitter is a tool for distilling understanding of the world into the most digestible format possible." 

I think the answer in finding Twitter's business strategy going forward is in context of discovering and recording. 

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Great new entrepreneur inspiration video from the Square let's Talk series. Keep up with these if your interested in starting your own business. https://squareup.com/lets-talk

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We've been on a spiritual hiatus of sorts for the past year, observing, researching and discovering how mobile phones can help us become better storytellers and ignite more engaging conversations with the world around us. Flare Code has realized it's true benefit as the best platform for developing campaigns that communicate your message in the most exciting and effective, surprising and simple ways. We're hosting an event in Columbus in mid-November to share our findings. Look out for more updates leading up to our big relaunch!

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Report: 62% of businesses see sales boost from mobile site.

Econsultancy posted a report on Tuesday that gave further support to the importance of tailoring your web presence for mobile and tablet users.

Some highlights:

"62% of companies that designed a website specifically for mobile and 64% that designed a site for tablets had increased sales."

35% of companies now optimize their site for mobile — up from 25% last year.

Tablet optimization nearly doubled from 13% to 25%

What does this mean?

It means that businesses that are not prepared to serve mobile and tablet customers losing out on more than a trend — they are missing out on actual sales.

Thinking about building a mobile presence? Give us a call at 614-407-5363 and we'll guide you in developing an effective, affordable mobile presence.

Photo credit: Denis Dervisevic

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Find out what information matters to your online audience, then deliver it.

A few days ago I found myself in a situation that seems to happen every week. Once again I was hungry and looking for somewhere to eat out. I’ve only been living in Columbus for a few months and I like to try new restaurants whenever possible so I pulled out my laptop and began browsing Yelp. In a few minutes I found a highly rated Chinese restaurant with a special deal running. My stomach growling, I searched for their site to check the menu and... the menu was nowhere to be found. I ended up eating somewhere else.

I suspect that at some point in the lives of most consumers, not being able to find the right information online has pushed them away from a purchase. If it wasn’t a menu, it may have been a phone number, hours of operation or a listing of stores where they could buy a given product. You may not run a restaurant, but no matter what you do you’re probably aware that getting people onto your site involves a lot of hard work and probably a pinch of luck. When that happens, your only duty to this person as a potential customer at this point is to give them what they’re looking as quickly as possible. Otherwise, you will lose customers.

Luckily for everyone, you don’t need to include a mind-reading feature on your site to accomplish this because most of the people are going to come to your site looking for the same things. There are a few ways to figure out just what that is, but the least labor-intensive method is to simply put yourself in the shoes of your consumers and think of what they want. Since you offer something to other people, you may have difficulty putting yourself in that situation. However, you make buying decisions almost every day. You hold loyalties to some brands over others. Make a conscious effort after today to stay aware of how you buy and why. Don’t make the same mistakes in your business that bother you as a consumer.

If you want to get serious about this, why not ask your customers if they were able to find everything they wanted from your site? You won’t be able to speak with the ones whose business you lost with this method (obviously) but you can at least use this to get an idea of what was hard to find. As a bonus, this will help you for a better relationship with those you serve. In addition, pay attention to questions people call to ask you because often this can point to information that’s missing from your site.

With mobile users, who are famously impatient and ready to act on their research immediately, form is important to consider as well. Even if everything that truly matters is just one click away from your front page, finding those links on mobile can still be tricky if the site isn’t formatted to adapt to the small screen. If you’re one of our users, we recommend using contact info or a concise rich text section with the most important information as your first piece of content.

Finding out what matters most to consumers looking at your site is always a worthy investment. With just a small amount of time and some simple modifications to your site, you can see real improvements that directly impact your sales very quickly.

Photo credit: vernieman

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The two most important factors in your mobile strategy should be SEO and speed.

It should be no secret to anyone that reaching mobile users is becoming increasingly more important for businesses to succeed. What you may not know is that when it comes to connecting with customers, what works on the traditional web often fails miserably when applied to the small screen.   Simply put, advertising and social media are usually sucker bets on mobile. Mary Meeker reported this year that mobile returns only 21% of the ECPM of traditional web which points to a much lower click-through rate. The plight of mobile advertising is fairly well known, but with all of the mobile-focused social media out there (Twitter, FourSquare, etc.) you’d think that’d be a great place to spend resources. Turns out that’s not the case. Mobile users are active consumers looking for answers now. A recent Pew study revealed that practically no one turns to social media when seeking out information on local businesses. When it comes to mobile sales online, less than 1% are driven by social media. Instead, search is king. That same Pew study reported that of those who use the internet to find information on local business, 77% cited search as their go-to method. That’s a huge amount of potential traffic. On top of that, Microsoft reports that 50% of all local searches come from mobile phones. Simply put, if people aren’t coming to you through Yelp they’re coming through Google, so make sure that you show up in the right searches. However, getting someone to your site is only half the battle.

The other thing to note about mobile users is that they are highly impatient. According to a study by Gomez, 71% of mobile browsers expect web pages to load almost as quickly or faster as web pages on their desktop computers even though download speeds are often drastically slower! If your site takes more than five seconds to load, they found that 26% of consumers leave a mobile site and nearly half of them will never think of coming back. It always makes sense to offer the path of least resistance to customers, but with mobile it’s more important than ever.

Photo credit: Håkan Dahlström

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this is pretty cool

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Why Your Band Should Be Using QR Codes on Everything You Print

When it comes to determining whether a band will be successful there is only one metric that matters: fans. Everything that a band strives for, sweats and starves for, is simply a reflection of the quantity and dedication of their fans. But fans aren't simply a result of producing high quality music — they come from exposure.

To help gain that precious exposure, you're likely working just as hard posting status updates, tweets, videos and events all over the web as your are hanging up fliers around town. Bands create a ton of physical and digital content with the express intention of earning the interest of potential fans, but these efforts are separated by their very nature.

Someone who sees your flier on the street is going to have to make a large effort to find you online. Even if they care enough to search for you online, there's no telling whether they'll end up at your latest music video, your twitter page or somewhere else entirely. A well made QR Code can will allow you to quickly deliver potential fans to the right content quickly. Even better, if you make a mobile website with Flare Code you can deliver them to all of your content in the order that you want. This small act will have a multiplier effect on your entire promotional strategy by delivering digital content to anyone who sees your flier on the street. The result is more effective digital promotion, more compelling physical promotion and more fans at every show.

Sign up for Flare Code to build your free mobile site in five minutes. 

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1. What do you propose to do? [20 words]

We aggregate online content into mobile sites and embed them into print with a community-moderated discussion using QR Codes.

2. Is anyone doing something like this now and how is your project different? [30 words]

There are others automating mobile site...

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Flare Code beach balls were all over the Chiddy Bang show. Chiddy, Xaphu and Chip tha Ripper all threw them into the crowd!

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1. What do you propose to do? [20 words]

We aggregate online content into mobile sites and embed them into print with a community-moderated discussion using QR Codes.

2. Is anyone doing something like this now and how is your project different? [30 words]

There are others automating mobile site...

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This is a pretty well written article describing a partnership between The WOUB Center For Public Media and The Ohio University Post -- hopefully, the first of many such partnerships.

Please help us spread the word: creating unique, self-updating, mobile sites with Flare Code is now LIVE -- to gain access to our Beta testing group, leave a comment on the Beta Test page and we will activate your account: http://www.flarecode.com/flare/244008

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[Pic] Flare Codes debuting in the OhioU Post; take notice News Industry.