Uber is Uber Cool
Uber is Uber Cool
Uber is an app (iPhone and Android) that allows you to request a black Towncar or SUV rather than a typical cab in the U.S. and Canada. When you use the app, it finds your location and allows you to order an “Uber”. You can see all of the black cars in your area on a map. You can simply pick the closest driver and the system will send you an alert on your cellphone to let you know the car is on its way. The service alert includes your driver’s name and his cell phone. You can even watch the vehicle coming toward your location on the map.
I spoke to a frequent user of Uber who told me that it normally takes about 5-10 minutes for the vehicle to arrive. The driver opens the car door for you. They usually have bottles of water, candy, gum, and other handy items. The price is a little more than a standard cab. However, she felt that the few dollar difference was well worth it.
When you reach your final destination, you do not have to worry about having cash, tipping, or even dealing with negotiations. Since your information is stored in the app, the receipt is simply sent to your email. They ask you to rate the drivers so that they can be sure they have excellent service. I was told that drivers need to maintain a 4.7 out of 5 star rating in order to continue driving for the company.
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Texting Offers Latest Marketing Opportunity
As mobile phones have taken over the way people communicate, it is a natural progression for texting to become a marketing opportunity. In the Wall Street Journal article Teen Stores Try Texts as Gr8 Nu Way to Reach Out, author Christina Binkley explained, “Like many parents who have turned to texting to reach their teens, some youth-oriented fashion brands like Charlotte Russe, Claire’s Boutique and Vans are finding that young people are most accessible by text.”
Texting now can include more rich content, pictures and video. Marketers can send shopping passes, discounts, and offers. Rather than merely being a vehicle for chat, texting now offers a way to get customers to opt in and avoid illegal lists or spam. Customers can selectively pick who they would like to receive offers from, which leads to a higher chance of the sales message being received. The article stated, “People are five times more likely to open a text than an email. Five billion people text on mobile phones, while about two billion people use the Internet.”
This new form of communication has increased the speed of receiving offers and acting upon them. There is immediacy due to the ability to send messages that state things like “get 10% off if purchased within the next 3 hours.”
One of the hardest parts is to get people to opt in to receive the texts. Retails often post signs to ask customers to opt in by texting short codes. For more information, check out Top Links Explaining SMS and Short Codes.
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Using Giant QR Codes on Cars to Promote Business
QR codes may offer sales people a new way to advertise. Real estate agents are known to put company and contact information on cars as a form of advertisement. Agents have even begun using QR codes on the “for sale” signs. Interested buyers can scan information about the home instantaneously into his or her cell phone.
Now that QR codes are on just about everything, why not make them into a magnetic attachment for an automobile? Chevy has already used QR codes on automobiles to promote car sales. “The vehicles are currently undergoing Southern California road testing, so the displayed QR codes will allow consumers to get a closer look at this vehicle even before it is available for sale.”
How big can a QR code be? Check out the 10,000 square foot QR code made that can be viewed from 2 miles up in the sky.
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Multi-Tasking and Time Management: Are We Really Attention-Switching?
Short of sleeping while ironing, I am constantly doing more than one thing at a time. After giving a speech to a local career group, a man from the audience came up to me and said that “there is no such thing as multi-tasking.” This is an interesting thing to debate. This topic became popular a few years ago when scientists were doing a lot of studies on multi-tasking.
Paul M. Jones claims that the many things we call multi-tasking are actually attention-switching. According to Jones, “You cannot perform two or more non-trivial tasks at the same time; at best, you pay attention to one and mostly ignore the other, then you switch your attention to the other and dismiss the first one temporarily, and then you switch your attention back to the first again. This is far less effective than completing the first task, then moving on to the second task, because of the time and mental effort it takes to switch between tasks.”
Some of what people are referring to when they say science has proven that multi-tasking is a myth is due to the results of several studies. One of those studies was completed by Neuroscientist, Daniel Weissman, who studied subjects’ brains as they performed different tasks. For more information on these brain studies, check out NPR’S report by clicking here.
I’ve read some of the literature. Perhaps the wording multi-tasking is the problem. I’m happy to use the term attention-switching. However, for me, if I waited until I completed one thing to start something else, I would be missing a lot of opportunities to fill in some gaps. I often have several programs open on my computer. As I am working in one program, waiting for the page to refresh or for something to calculate on screen, I can switch to another program and be working on something else. If I simply sat and waited for my computer to finish thinking, I’d be doing a lot of staring at my computer’s hourglass. Saying that multi-tasking is a myth and calling this act attention-switching is fine. However, I do not agree, at least for me, that tasks must be completed in entirety before moving onto something else.
In a job where I “dialed for dollars”, I would type my sales call notes as I spoke to my customers over the phone. This helped me to not forget the most important parts of the conversation. It also allowed me to have at least an hour more phone productivity time as compared to other employees that waited until they got off the phone to write their notes.
Whether you want to refer to doing more than one thing at a time as multi-tasking or attention-switching, there is a lot of wasted time out there that I believe more people should be looking for in order to become more efficient. If you have time management issues, I would suggest looking for things that you can do simultaneously as in my example of the call notes. Some things can be combined to make your day more productive.
QR Code: Why You Should Be Using It to Promote You, Your Business and Products
QR Code or Quick Response Code is a two-dimension matrix code developed in the mid 90’s in Japan. Businesses are drawn to it because it offers an improvement over barcodes. Wisegeek explains, “QR Code contains data in both vertical and horizontal directions, whereas a bar code has only one direction of data, usually the vertical one. QR Code can also correspondingly hold more information. QR Code is easily digested by scanning equipment, and because it has potentially twice the amount of data as bar code, it can increase the effectiveness of such scanning. QR Code can handle alphanumeric character, symbol, binary, and other kinds of code. QR Code can hold up to 7,089 characters in a single symbol. ”
QR Code has become increasingly popular with the use of cell phones. I recommend checking out an article by Searchengineland.com to see some video demonstrations. A code can easily be generated on sites like Kaywa.com. If you are wondering if search engines like Google will be able to recognize them, “If you add them to your website, the search engines will see that your pages have changed, and that you are updating pages. The search engine will see a new image and index it accordingly. At some point soon, the search engines will likely recognize QR codes and possibly index the content in them.”
There are several recommended uses for the QR Code but one that I found to be interesting was that you could add one to your business card. People would then be able to scan your information directly into their cell phone contact database.
Some other recommended uses may be to add them to media ads. This simple little code could communicate product, contact, offer, and event information as well as coupons and social media links.
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