Month: April 2010

Have you ever wondered what these strange black and white squared graphics mean? You’ve probably seen them around a lot lately, but do you really know what they’re used for, or how can you read them? No worries: OnSoftware comes to the rescue! In this post I’ll try to explain everything you need to know about QR codes.

Yes, these strange symbols are called QR codes (Quick Response codes). They’re an evolution of the classic barcode, a standard sign that enables you to represent more than 4,000 alphanumeric characters in a bi-dimensional graphic (don’t worry about that!).

QR codes were initially used in the automotive industry to keep track of stocks, but nowadays their usage has spread everywhere as a handy way to share information: IT companies, software developers, advertising agencies and media, they’ve all used QR codes at some point.

In order to read QR codes, you need a camera-equipped device and a compatible reader. These requisites were a real handicap a few years ago, but now that most of us have a smartphone with camera in our pocket, we’re now ready to scan QR codes anywhere. This is precisely why their popularity has grown so much in the last few months.

Creating QR codes is really simple. All you need is a QR code generator, which you can get as a desktop utility (such as iCandy, for Windows and Mac). But the easiest thing to do is probably using an online app, like Kaywa . Just select the type of data you’re going to encode, enter it into the form and press Generate.

Now that you’ve learned how to create QR codes, it’s time to learn how to read them. There are literally dozens of QR code readers available today, depending on your device’s operating system. Let’s take a look at the most popular ones for Android, iPhone, Symbian, Blackberry and Windows Mobile.

• Barcode Scanner (Android) – Works not only with QR codes, but also with other barcode formats . It also searches the web with the data found in the scanned code.
• i-nigma (iPhone) – This handy app and your iPhone’s camera will enable you to unveil all the secrets behind any QR code. It also supports other code formats like DataMatrix.
• Barcode Reader (Symbian) – Reads QR, BIDI and DataMatrix codes. The app’s options let you save read codes, and send them via SMS , e-mail or Bluetooth.
• Beetagg (Blackberry) – Have a Blackberry? This is the perfect code reader for you! It’s not only compatible with QR codes, but also with DataMatrix and BeeTagg.
• i-nigma (Windows Mobile) – Besides iPhone, i-nigma works also on the Windows Mobile platform . It’s very easy to use and lets you share codes with other users.

So, now that you’ve learnt what a QR code is, how to create them and how to read them, it’s time for some action. Check out these three sample codes and discover all the possibilities behind this new technology to share information.

(Via OnSoftware ES)

I’ve always thought of Football Manager more like a crippling social disease than a computer game. The long-running soccer management series of games has proved so infectious that its players have lost countless hours of life that they’ll never get back. The bad news today for wives, girlfriends, and bosses is that Football Manager has been released for iPhone, meaning that victims of the game will now never be able to escape it’s clutches.

Sega and Sports Interactive have done such a good job on Football Manager 2010 Handheld that anyone who downloads it will be doomed to spending every waking minute looking for cheap young center forwards, mastering the sweeper system, and figuring out a way to stop Lionel Messi scoring a hat-trick every game.

The iPhone version of Football Manager is incredibly in-depth for a mobile soccer management sim. You can choose to run a team from one of 34 leagues across 11 countries. There’s a database of more than 20,000 real life players, each with their own attributes, statistics and a potted history of their career. Football Manager 2010 Handheld features a transfer market with powerful filtering options and the ability to assign scouts to deliver reports on players.

The gaming experience is every bit as delightful as the desktop version of Football Manager 2010. You can glide through all the dizzying array of game screens very easily thanks to the swipeable user interface, and make changes to your team simply by dragging and dropping the player names. Football Manager 2010 Handheld is also very fast, making it in many ways more playable than the PC or Mac versions, which can hang a lot while results are being processed.

Check out my full review of the game here. But please, before you head for the App Store to buy this incredible game, remember the turmoil that Football Manager will cause in your life.

I’m yet to be convinced by Facebook gaming – it mostly reminds me of football manager games from the 80s: Lots of numbers, awful graphics and no action! Still, millions of players disagree with me…

Rockstar’s Read Dead Redemption isn’t released until May 21st, but if you need some mean dueling to keep you going until then, try the Red Dead Redemption: Gunslingers Facebook game.

It works like most Facebook games in that it’s not skill based, but rather based on statistics and chance. You challenge users to duels and gain experience, which makes you a better gunslinger and more likely to win the next fight. Each duel is illustrated with a video, showing you how the stand-off played out. Its pretty bloody, and not for kids!

Choose to be a powerful Outlaw, speedy Fast Hands or accurate Sharpshooter, name yourself and write your own bio. It’s not as in-depth as something like Mafia Wars, but it’s much more professional, with video and sound… and much less annoying!

You can share Red Dead Redemption: Gunslingers with your friends, but it’s not necessary in order to progress. Mafia Wars, however, requires you to bug your friend community if you want to succeed. Obviously, the Rockstar creation is promotional material, unlike Zynga‘s, but it’s still a great example of how to make a Facebook game that doesn’t annoy people!

I think Red Dead Redemption: Gunslingers is a cool distraction, but it’s still nothing that will drag me away from ‘real’ games. The majority of Facebook gaming is based around just clicking and waiting – where’s the fun in that? There are still no games on Facebook that should give any of my consoles cause for concern!

Play Red Dead Redemption: Gunslingers here – obviously you need a Facebook account to get started!

As someone who is nerdily proud of her ability to remember dozens of passwords, I was interested to read a Microsoft study which says that changing your password frequently – something that people in offices and other organizations often find themselves obliged to do – might not actually be necessary.

So, how did the researchers come to this daring conclusion? Well, they maintain that computer users in general have a bad reputation for security. They use crappy passwords, forget to change them and ignore security certificate warnings. So, can we conclude that most people are stupid? Not so say the Microsoft researchers – people don’t care because the relative advantage is so small. In other words, it’s just not worth the effort:

We argue that users’ rejection of the security advice they receive is entirely rational from an economic perspective. The advice offers to shield them from the direct costs of attacks, but burdens them with far greater indirect costs in the form of effort. Looking at various examples of security advice we find that the advice is complex and growing, but the benefit is largely speculative or moot. For example, much of the advice concerning passwords is outdated and does little to address actual threats, and fully 100% of certificate error warnings appear to be false positives. Further, if users spent even a minute a day reading URLs to avoid phishing, the cost (in terms of user time) would be two orders of magnitude greater than all phishing losses.

It would be hard to claim that good security practice wasn’t a pain in the neck at times, especially in situations where you use multiple passwords or have to change them frequently. Checking all those security certificates and examining unknown emails for signs of phishing can be boring – not to mention making you feel a little paranoid. So, does that mean that we should abandon them?

Absolutely not! As I read in one blog post comment, most people don’t get into car wrecks, but the vast majority of us wear seatbelts. Ok, so the precise dangers of riding in a car are well documented – and the dangers faced by computer users unfortunately aren’t – but basic, low-level computer security isn’t a chore at all. A password manager here, a glance over website security information there and you’re done.

Sure, Windows’ incessant “would you like to change your password?” messages are irritating, but that’s your employee’s prerogative, not yours. Sorry for being a party pooper, but if your company gets hacked or a disgruntled employee accesses sensitive information, you can be fairly sure the money it takes to repair the damage isn’t coming out of your payslip. Until it is, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to change your password when Vista tells you to!