Event Highlights (Afternoon Session)

• Aaron Weiche opens the event with some Mitch Hedberg
• Mike Blumenthal inherits the name “Professor Maps” on Twitter.  Seconds later the professor blows some minds with his demo of Google 411 .  Ed Reese promptly followed with the best tweet of the event:

• An attendee asks Google’s Jeral Poskey about the process for having businesses like domestic abuse shelters removed from Google Maps.  Within a couple hours a tweet from @mapsguide advises the #LocalU crowd via Twitter that the shelter in question had been removed from Google Maps.
• Ed Reese reminds us that “ask wife” is truly a legitimate part of many sales funnels (and had some killer artwork)
• Matt McGee had a good presentation on how to establish trust online
• Mary Bowling discussed how good organic SEO is vital to good local SEO

What You’ll Need:

• Handheld device operating on the Android platform
• Flickr Account
• A site or blog using Wordpress
• XML Google Maps Plugin For Wordpress

Initial Setup Time – Approximately 15 minutes

Have you ever wanted to snap a photo, have it automatically geotagged and added to an embedded map on your site with one click?  If you’re anything like me, the thought of something this awesome is probably causing you to salivate.

A few days ago I was pondering how this could be done and within about 30 minutes of playing with my wife’s Droid Eris (yep, I’m still rocking an EnV 2) and cruising the plugins section over at Wordpress.org – I had found my answer. (a live example of this can be found on my custom photo maps page)

Step 1.

Open your camera application on your Droid.  Click “menu” and choose “settings”. Make sure the “Geo-tag photos” option is set to “on”.  Once you have enabled geotagging, snap a quick picture and save it.

Step 2.

Create a Flickr account (here).  If you already have an account with Flickr, log in.  Once you are logged into your active flickr account, open the drop down menu under “You” and choose “Your account”.

On the policy & permissions page, scroll down towards the bottom of the page and ensure that the “import EXIF location data” setting is set to “Yes” and make sure the “Who will be able to see your stuff on a map” is set to “Anyone”.

Step 3.

Once these settings are in place, it’s time head back to your camera, choose the image you just took, then choose the option to share.  Under these options, choose Flickr.  The first time you access Flickr from your Droid you will be required to authenticate your login (which is easy, it just takes a minute or 2) but every time in the future you want to upload there will be no login required.

Once you have uploaded your image, if you go back to Flickr you will see the image in your photostream.  The last thing we need to do with Flickr is to scroll down to the bottom of your photostream page, right mouse click over the link titled “KML” and choose “copy link location” (in Firefox – if you are using Internet Explorer, choose the “copy shortcut” option).  Once this is copied, paste it into a plank .txt document or somewhere that you can keep track of until it is needed.

Step 4.

Now that we have set everything up on the Flickr side, all that is left is installing the XML Google Maps plugin.  To install this plugin, go here to grab the plugin (or log into the WP Admin section of your site and upload it there if you want to save some time).  For questions regarding plugin installation, please checkout the Wordpress documentation regarding the topic here.

Once the plugin has been installed, head to plugin settings page and configure the display options as you prefer.  (Note, you will need a Google Maps API key for this plugin to work, you can get one here – Google Maps API Key.

Once you have configured your plugin settings the way you want them, head to the post or page you want your map in, enter this line of code :

Save your post / page and you’re all set!

Now, next time you snap a photo with your droid (as long as you don’t disable the geotagging option in your Droid) – simply choose the share by flickr option, click upload and you’re set!  Your existing custom map will be updated with your new image, in the exact location on the map that it was taken!

I’ve been playing with QR codes for the last couple weeks after my first introduction to a Droid Eris by a colleague of mine.  Any smart phone with a barcode scanning app or a qr code reader can simply open the app, point their device at the code and the app will automatically do whatever the “bar code like image” tells it to.

I was thinking about ways to play with these, and while cooking up creative ways to try to help sell my house, it occurred to me that qr codes may have the possibility to play a major role in real estate marketing – if executed properly.

Consider the many places you could easily place the qr code:

• On printed brochures
• Print newspaper ads
• Upload the image of the code to the main data feed as an “image of the home”
• Billboards
• TV spots
• Website banners
• Craigslist

The possibilities are almost literally endless – and with the increased availability of smart phone devices, there is some great potential.

For those of you with a smart phone device, scan the code below and share this post to help me sell this damn house

If you don’t have a smart phone with a barcode scanner or qr reader installed – click the text link below to see where the code would take if you bought a nicer phone.

Sioux Falls House For Sale

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Sioux Falls Home For Sale | QR Code

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Yesterday I decided to take a well deserved day off. As some of you may or may not know I have made a decision to move to the Twin Cities area to work as a consultant for the Web Advantage team at FindLaw.com. I checked my daily “to do” list yesterday and had a couple small tasks that were finished before 9:00 am.

I then had the whole house to myself until noon, so I figured it was a good opportunity to play some Tecmo Super Bowl.  Rather than hooking up the old NES I decided I would just download the game to the virtual console on my Wii.  Unfortunately, Tecmo Super Bowl was not available for download, however the original NES version of Tecmo Bowl was available for download for only 500 points ($5), and since I had been given a 500 point credit recently from the Wii people, it all seemed like to much of a coincidence to pass up.

Bo Knows Tecmo

I got the game, started a season with the L.A. Raiders (nobody stops Bo Jackson) and began wooping up on the computer.  After somehow getting backed up to my own 1 yard line, I stumbled upon a glitch in the game that allows one to pass to their own guy in the opposing team’s endzone and get a touchdown for it.

I tried it several times in a row and it worked everytime (of course it doesn’t hurt that Bo catches every screen pass).  I decided to shoot a quick video of it so I could share it.

Note:  I was too lazy to hook up the NES and see if it works on it, or if there was a glitch in the Wii version of it.  I am guessing it is probably new to the Wiiware version of the game, because I don’t know how I wouldn’t have stumbled upon that with the hundreds of hours I spent playing this game as a kid.