The current license plates show 3 things:

• Year that your car is registered through
• Month in which you registered your car
• Numbers and Letters assigned to you

QR Codes for license plates:

Using QR Codes for license plates will provide more information that is easier accessible.

Reasons to use a QR code for a license plate:

• Linked to an online website/database – Link the QR Code to a central website/database which other information can be stored. With cars now becoming connected to the internet for things such as onStar and Ford Sync more information can be synced to and from a car.
• Replace the VIN and License plate with a single item – Less information needs to be stored on a car since it can be linked to a website.
• QR Code license plates can be tied to the car for life - a single QR code can be used in multiple locations on a car which saves both time and money and it would allow for more precise tracking of your cars history online
• Cheap to create readers to obtain car information - All Android phones can read QR codes out of the box and both Windows phone 7 and the iPhone can read them as well using an App, which means anyone with a smart phone can read the code.
• Less real estate on a car - Since QR Codes are square, it would be easier to be placed in different locations on a car, making them fit with the design of the car
• Car information can be stored/linked to a QR Code – With the current license plate only a limited amount of information is linked to it, but using a QR code and a online database more information can be linked to it, such as: Original specs, average speed, warning messages, Driver(s) and more.
• Saves Paper from Speeding or parking tickets - Speeding or parking tickets can be emailed to you using a QR code to save paper (if an email address was added to the car account via the driver)
• Pay for gas or electric just by pulling up - You can pay for gas or electric by having a station with a reader built in. Once you drive up and hook up your car, it will read the QR code and charge your car (any number of debit/credit cards and accounts can be linked to the QR code)
• Quick Emergency Information - If you were in a car accident emergency response can quickly scan your QR code and they can get all of the information pertaining the to car accident (if the information was tracked in the car and sent to a cloud solution which is linked to your QR license place).
• A single Standard for ALL vehicles – QR Code license plates can become a standard for all vehicles in every country (Cars, Semi Trucks, Bicycle, Motorcycle, scooters, trailers, race cars etc.) This will save international companies like Ford, Honda and Toyota from having to make various designs of cars based on their locations.
• Notifications – If you have an email address tied to a QR code license plate, you can get notified when you need to register your car again, making more drivers aware of their car. You can get notified for things related to your car such as:
  • Oil change dates
  • Car registration renewal reminder
  • Coupons and ads related to your exact car model
  • Re-call Information pertaining to your car or car’s equipment
  • Speeding or parking tickets
  • If your car needs to defrost before you can drive it (if information is sent to the cloud related to the temperature of your car)
  • If you are running low on gas, you could see this information in the cloud
  • Receipts for gas or electric purchases

The Downside of QR Code License Plates

There will always be downsides to linking information to a single device such as a QR code license plate, but there are more advantages to using a QR code license plate vs our current system as listed above.

Other people have thought about QR code license plates before but they are sticking with the current mentality by including the current license plate information or including a lot more information and not thinking about using them globally. Hopefully my idea of using a QR code for a license plate or a similar method will become a reality.

Similar articles:

• License plate with a QR Code
• QR code on Croatian license plates

1. I don’t use or want it
2. I need more space on my phone
3. It’s defective
4. It’s malicious
5. I’d rather not say

But wouldn’t it be better for both the marketplace and the developer to find out WHY the user uninstalled it with a bit more detail?

Let’s look at option 3:

So, we look at option 3 and we tell the developer that the app is defective. Now when the developer gets the notice that someone uninstalled their app, how will they know what to fix? All they get is another tally saying that someone uninstalled their app because “It’s defective”. This is not the way to make apps better, just a simple way to say “Your app sucks”.

How I would change this:

Users should be given a comment section which is optional. This comment box if used, would make it so that the developer knows exactly why something was defective or why a user didn’t like his or her app.

This would be a simple change for Google, but it would help ensure that the apps on the Android Marketplace become more polished and that users help users.

What are your thoughts? Would you fill in the comment section, or would you leave it blank?

Phones right now have a way to ping a server to get updates, iPhone does it through the apple servers, and Androids do it from Google, so why Can’t browsers act the same way. What I mean is that a lot of times it takes users to refresh a website in order to get an updated feed or comments but what if the browser allowed you to do this automatically like our phones?

I know that some websites can update automatically, such as Buzz, and Gmail, but what if every website was able to do this?

What I want is a way to eliminate server calls.

Dedicated Feeds Built into Our Browsers:

What if we had all social media going to social.browser.com (just an example), all RSS feeds going to feeds.browser.com etc. This would make it possible for all social media feeds to be updated within a single call to a continuous running server, rather than 3 calls if you use 3 social media services, or 7 calls if you use 7. This small change could eliminate milliseconds to minutes of time that it takes you complete a single task.

Why Do This?

Our phones do this to save battery power, but if we used it for the desktops we could save time which will in turn save time, energy and frustration. This could make people a lot more productive with a simple change to where you call the information from.

Google Buzz is on the right track with this by allowing users to bring in Twitter, RSS and Buzz feeds, but I think we could take this a step further to process all websites.

We wouldn’t need one company to be able to house this single call, we just need a way for a browser to call these feeds.

A way that this could work is by signing into your browser and connecting all of your feeds to your browser, similar to what we do with our smart phones. By doing this, all a website would need to do is call to feeds.browser.com and the browser would know to change feeds.browser.com to feeds.googlechrome.com or feeds.internetexplorer.com (replacing the word browser with the browsers dedicated server address.

I know this sounds really complex right now, but it would make the browser more like a central device or hub than just a portal to a destination.

Imagine if you could do this for movie theaters. Movies like Star Wars and Avatar were very popular and caused people to wait in line for hours. If there were streaming video for theater lines we could keep an eye on the lines and leave when needed instead of wasting time sitting or standing in line.

If you had the option to check out a movie theaters line before the movie, would you use it?

I love the simplicity of Google Forms. It allows me to quickly create an online form with the features I want, for Free.

This free price however comes at a price, the form is branded by Google and there are a few features that I would like the ability to remove.

Features that I want:

• Paid Features – I would like the ability to pay for a non branded form so that it fits better with my website.
• Disable the Title – To be able to disable the title of the form. I normally have a page on my website with the same title so the form title can be redundant.
• Stat’s Widget – A easy to copy and paste a nice stats widget
• Custom Themes – Allow me to change the theme by using HTML/CSS
• Labs – Add a labs section for Google Doc’s which adds new beta features
• More Fonts – Add in more web fonts to choose from, from the Google typography – http://code.google.com/webfonts

What features do you want when creating a form?

Features That I Want:

• Google Buzz replacing comments in Google Reader
• Google Buzz replacing comments in Picasa Web
• Google Buzz API replacing entire current system of Google Groups
• Images, video and audio being able to be posted in comments
• Google Docs able to be shared into Google Buzz
• Upload a video to Google Buzz like we can with images
• Having a functional load more button that continues to load for how ever long I press the button (maybe it can load a new page for each day?)
• A better search system (Advance search features)
• Google Buzz running on a standalone site
• All of the features of Google Buzz available on Google Profiles and Google Buzz static URL’s (Reshare, edit, auto complete @replying)
• Mark post as read, sometimes I want to temporarily mute a post out of my stream so that I can focus on the newer posts and there is no way at the moment
• When I follow someone, their information is actually saved into my contacts into a group labeled “Buzz”
• Buzz will release a dedicated HELP section outside of Gmail so that users can actually find information
• Google Buzz adds lists
• Google Buzz adds saved searches with live feeds
• Google Buzz fixes the issue where I can’t reply to email posts on my Android using Gmail and multiple email address
• Google Adds analytics to Buzz posts and comments
• Google adds translation so that we can actually communicate with other languages
• Google builds a full Android app for Google Buzz

There are a few other features that I would like to see, but I am going to see if I can build my own Google Buzz client with those features.

What features do you want to see?

Over the past year I have really started to use Picasa Web more often and I would like to use it even more, so I have come up with a list of features that I would like to see on Picasa Web, which would greatly improve its use for me and for others.

Features That I Want:

1. Sorting albums by name – Sorting my date is alright, but I name my albums appropriately and so I have to use CTRL+F just to find the album I want
2. Sub albums - would be awesome because I could store all of my Christmas photos in a single album and then sort them by year in the sub albums
3. Tag Manager - We need an easy way to manage and view tags in our accounts (a tags tab would be nice)
4. Search My Albums First - The search in Picasa web should search our albums first and public as a second option or just make two search buttons like in Buzz
5. Album Cover Art - Being able to create album cover art, maybe by typing a name or something (this could be done with PicNik, but seamless integration would key here)
6. Drag and Drop Images – The ability to upload by dragging an image into the browser and dropping it into the album that you want
7. Larger Upload Limit - The ability to upload more than 5 photos at a time
8. Album Art Selection - The ability to choose which portion of an image should be use as the album art cover
9. Upload from URL – The ability to upload images to a album from a URL, exactly like what PicNik has
10. Settings - More control panel settings for things like; default sharing method for “Link to this photo” (a jpg, full size or thumbnail), thumbnail size for albums
11. Slideshow - A way to get to slideshow when viewing a single photo instead of accessing the slideshow from the album view
12. Suggested Tags - Suggested tags based on what you type (basically auto fill)
13. Advanced People Editor – A way to change the thumbnail used for “People” (some how the one for my fiancee is showing a broken image and I can’t change it)
14. Upload via Zip file - Bulk upload photos using a .zip file
15. Hide the Right Column – I way to minimize the right column on the albums view like I can once I am inside an album
16. PicNik integration – A way to edit a photo in PicNik and save it to Picasa and actually be able to view the final photo in Picasa (starting from PicNik, so this may be a PicNik request)
17. A Working Desktop Client - A desktop client that has a seamless integration with Picasa Web, right now they are two different services that work together, but are not seamless. I don’t want to download an album just to add tags or people from the desktop client
18. Cross Pollination with Google Buzz - If a photo is uploaded to Google Buzz, I would love a link from the photo on Picasa to the Buzz post with the image
19. Picasa on Profiles – Better integration with Google Profiles. I would love a Picasa or Photos tab and slideshow. This would be useful for photographers to want to show off their work on Google Profile
20. Friends Live Stream - A live  stream of all of the friends that I follow and the date that the photos were posted and shared
21. Global Live Stream - A live stream of ALL photos shared on Google Picasa
22. Larger Single File Image Upload Limit – With camera’s having larger maga-pixel sizes we need larger single file size support, more than 20MB’s
23. Creative Commons - Easier way to add creative commons to a group of photos or album
24. Panaramio fully integrated - Integrate Panaramio into Picasa Web more, make it widely known that Google owns both services (turn it into one service)
25. Number of Photos - An easy way to view how many photos I have uploaded to my account
26. Groups - Add groups so that people can join and share photos related to a specific topic.
27. Drop down Menu - Setup photo reuse drop down instead of check boxes
28. Google Buzz for Comments – Replace comments in Picasa Web with Google Buzz posts, that way comments can move up and down stream from Picasa to Buzz
29. Photo Stats - Stats on which photo was viewed at what time and from where (picsaa web, buzz, embed etc.)
30. Photo Store - A way to put a photo up for sale and use Google checkout as the payment option (this is a stretch, but it would be nice)
31. Pro Features - Picasa already has pro features compared to Flickr, now it’s time to show them off, add in Pro features for paying users
32. Re-ordering of Right Column - Allow drag and drop capabilities to the right column on single photo view. I would prefer my tags to be first while editing tags and people
33. Saved Views – Allow for different views for editing photos and for viewing photos
34. Picasa Labs – Add in a labs feature section like on Gmail to test new features that users might find useful (Great way for Googlers to create Picasa features on their 20%)
35. Picasa Moderator – Add a moderator forum for feature suggestions
36. Following Made Simple – Make following people easier and a larger part of the site
37. Opened Tabs – When viewing someones profile and it adds a tab to the window, keep the tab open until you click on a ‘x’ to close the tab, great way to compare similar photos for things like daily shoot
38. Comment While Full Screen – When viewing someones photo at full screen, it would be nice to leave a comment on the photo while still in full screem instead of having to jump back to find the photo in the album (some people have hundreds of photos in an album)
39. Title – Add title attributes to the images

Would you want any of these features? If you have any ideas please leave a comment so that others can see them too.

One feature that I would love to have with combination with the options above, would be to choose a check box labeled “From the Beginning” which allows me to view stats from the beginning in time, from my websites tracking history. Right now you can do this manually, but a simple button or option would help others track stats easier.

If you use Google Analytics, how often do you compare stats to the beginning of your tracking history? If you do, why you do look back?