clients | Mapsys.info (2) Mapsys.info

Google Places Dashboard: QR Code MIA, Good riddance!

The printable QR Code that directed folks to your Places Page that Google offered up in the Places Dashboard went missing last week. A number of posters have turned up in the forums asking where it went, wondering how to print out the QR Code for their Places Page and lamenting its absence. Google has not yet made a public announcement whether the feature has been pulled or is just missing as a result of another bug.

My response to the posters: GOOD RIDDANCE!

While the availability of the QR Code in the Places Page raised the visibility of the idea of the QR Code for millions of SMBs that otherwise would not have thought about them, Google’s self serving implementation was never one that was in the best interest of the business owner.

It is incredibly easy to create and print your own QR Code that can be used in a range of environments that better meet the needs of business. For example this site CreateQRcode.appspot.com uses Google’s QR code API to allow a user to embed any URL in the code and print at a range of different sizes. It’s as simple as deciding which web page should be referenced in which campaign and pasting the URL in. The QR Code graphic is then generated in a choice of different sizes.

QR Codes could be added to newspaper ads, yellow page ads, billboards, business cards, TV commercials and signage. They are a useful way to encourage online engagement from the offline world. One suggestion that I have been making of late to clients with heavy foot traffic is to use the code to drive mobile shoppers directly to the Google mobile rating/review entry screen so as to facilitate the process….. here is the “recipe:

Take Google’s incredibly onerous URL for your Places Page:

http://maps.google.com/maps/placeclient=safari&oe=UTF8&ie=UTF8&

q=blumenthals.com+olean+ny&fb=1&gl=us&hq=blumenthals.com+olean+ny

&hnear=blumenthals.com+olean+ny&cid=8612728639224254627&z=14

Shorten it to its minimum content:

http://google.com/maps/place?cid=8612728639224254627

Add the following snippet to the end of the URL to send the user directly to the review window:

&dtab=2&action=openratings&ct=write-review

This creates the following URL:

http://google.com/maps/place?cid=8612728639224254627&dtab=2&action=openratings&ct=write-review

Enter the above URL in the QR Code Generator, print and post near your exit with a request for a review. When scanned with any of the QR Code readers available on Android or the iPhone it will direct the users to Google’s Hotpot style, simplified mobile review environment:

While the above review solution still takes a user to your Google Places Page, it does so in a way that is useful to you and makes the customer’s life easier. Not only does it greatly facilitate the process of leaving a review in an engaging way, it does so while the experience is fresh for the consumer.

I would love to hear how your clients have used QR Codes and how well they worked.

Fusion Tables for Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI)

Over the years, we’ve seen a handful of people and companies create massive images to be seen in Google Earth. One of the most famous was the Maxim magazine cover in 2006, but we’ve also seen advertising companies that focus on Google Earth as a way to show off their clients ads.

Today we’ll show you Molly Dilworth, who creates giant murals on top of buildings with the intent of being seen in Google Earth. Molly uses only discarded paint, and simply uses the physical surface of the roof to determine the shape of the painting. The end result is a pretty cool work of art, as seen here:

The problem that Molly faces, as does anyone that creates artwork intended for Google Earth, is that you never know when your images might appear online. In Molly’s case, it seems only one of her pieces of artwork is in Google Earth so far, and sadly it didn’t get captured especially well by the satellite.

If you’d like to view that mural in Google Earth, just use this KML file.

Fortunately, as Google Earth continues to improve the quality and speed of their updates, and Molly continues to create more of these murals, we’ll likely start seeing some appear very nicely in Google Earth in the near future.

SketchUp Pro Case Study: Daniel Company

This user story comes from Mark Lessmueller at Daniel Company. It came in via the Tell us your story link on the Sketchup Go Green! site.

Daniel Company has switched to Sketchup Pro for the drafting, design, analysis and construction of its air pollution control systems. Sketchup Pro has helped us visualize potential problems in 3D, allowing us to find conflicts on the computer, rather than in the field. This prevents us from wasting material and resources and reduces our carbon footprint. In addition, we can share our drawings and models with anyone across the globe. They can make suggestions directly on the drawings without having to resort to awkward phone conversations about “what change needs to be implemented where”.

This simplicity allows our clients to ensure that there are no intersections with existing equipment onsite during modifications. Additionally, due to the low cost of Sketchup Pro (especially in comparison to similar products), we were able to install Sketchup Pro on virtually all of our engineering computers, rather than just the drafters’ machines. The ability for our engineers to do some of our drafting when the drawings are “bottlenecking” production has proven invaluable.

We are about to begin start-up of the first system we created with SketchUp: a biological system where microorganisms digest the odorous pollutants. The system relies entirely on wastewater treatment plant products to feed the bacteria, rather than the typical method of spraying highly reactive neutralizing chemicals into the polluted airstream. The resultant waste of the bacteria can then be conveyed back into the wastewater treatment plant and treated via the microbes in that system.

While the air pollution control system was originally conceived by the treatment plant’s design consultant engineer, the actual odor control system manufacture was drafted, designed, analyzed, and constructed using Sketchup and LayOut. This includes an air conveyance system, hydraulic profiles, plumbing layouts, water control panels, two 12′ Ø x 40′ tall fiberglass reactors, and two 12′ Ø x 20′ tall fiberglass adsorbers. (Each of the 12′ Ø vessels was made in our shop in accordance to the LayOut files.) As the system is starting up, we are also planning to visualize this model in Google Earth.

Each of the pieces of the ducting (which supplies fresh air to the building and captures the foul air) was modeled in SketchUp and then turned into a cut sheet. Our fiberglass duct, tank, and scrubber shop easily fabricated the individual pieces. Thanks to Sketchup, it is a lot easier to make sure that each piece will fit on a truck (sent from California to Virginia), rather than relying on 2D drafting.

Since this was our first major project in SketchUp, most of it was created using the standard SketchUp tools. The plugins we did use were mostly custom modifications of plugins that were available for alteration. The CenterPoint and Conetop plugins were used to help make pipe transitions and to align pipes. We modified the Mesh Additions and the Parametric scripts to create an “elbow tool”. The PVC piping in the water panels was created with a combination of native SketchUp tools, this “elbow tool” plugin and the CenterPoint plugin.

Since this project, we have created multiple other air pollution control projects using SketchUp and LayOut. We’ve also used quite a few other freeware plugins. (We’re big fans of Fredo6 and Chris Fullmer’s plugins). FredoScale and Joint Push Pull have saved us on a number of more delicate projects, especially where we make a small apparatus and then need to show thickness in the ducting, or building our damper library. And Chris Fullmer’s Shape Bender has helped out quite a bit for other jobs where nothing else seems to work.

We’re now working to model some of our older existing projects in SketchUp and visualize them in Google Earth.