Video games are challenges in themselves; it’s just that cheat codes make them more interesting. From 8 bit games of old to today’s massively multiplayer online games and even Facebook games like Farmville, cheat codes are a part of the gaming culture.

Use them or abhor them, here are ten gaming websites to go to for game cheat codes.

CheatCodes

The CAPTCHA guarded entry is irksome, but beyond that CheatCodes.com is one of the more popular game cheat code sites around. The site has been there cataloging them all since 1996, so the breadth and depth is pretty impressive. The site is neatly sub-divided by the gaming platforms – from PC games to even Nintendo 3DS. Many of the cheat codes have been submitted by users themselves. You can look into the game details and also print out the cheat codes.

Games Radar

Games Radar is primarily a game review and news site with assorted resources like playing guides, buying tips, walkthroughs, and of course a section for game cheats. You can browse them by platform or go alphabetically. Games Radar covers all the major platforms and a few less popular ones like the Sega Saturn games. Games Radar also lists unlockable games if the main games have one (or few). You can also submit your own tip here.

Cheat Happens

Cheathappens.com is a dedicated website on cheat codes and PC trainers. It also includes game reviews, wallpapers, guides, and has a message board. The site has been online since 2002 and has a mix of free and premium offerings. Premium members get first dibs at some of the games cheats and trainers that are developed in-house, which are later released to the public. Cheathappens.com also features a cheats glossary and trainer tutorials among its resources.

GameWinners

The site’s Cheats And Codes Archive covers 56 platforms from the classic gaming days to today’s current crop. The cheats, codes, and hints library also includes FAQs, strategy guides, as well as CodeBreaker, GameShark, and Action Replay codes. The site is very simple and utilitarian but the information at first glance does seem to be very extensive. The listing is in the style of a directory.

GameSpot

GameSpot is a part of a larger group of media properties and is super-focused on game reviews. The site has channels for every major gaming platform though social games like those on Facebook are absent and the number of cheats if also selective. Each game has its own page with a listing of unlockables, cheats, secrets, and Easter Eggs.

Super Cheats

The 1999 launched site features walkthroughs, an advanced questions and answers features to help gamers with the exact game help that they need, and a bunch of exclusive guides for top games. The site is arranged around the platforms (from PS3 to SNES) and that makes it easy to find the content. You can also go by the ‘Most Popular’ and the ‘Latest’ lists. The listing is vast as at last count, the PC channel alone had 5201 cheats and 2002 walkthroughs. In total the site has 10,432 games, 2,002 walkthroughs across all platforms.

MegaGames

Cheats, trainers, demos, patches, mods, emulators, fixes etc. makes up the content for this site. 9000 different games are featured on the site. The hardcore gaming resource’s main focus is on PC and console games.

IGN

The gaming and entertainment website has cheat codes for Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PC, 3DS, PSP & iPhone games along with video game reviews, news, interviews and previews. The site itself is on the top tier of its genre and is very neatly organized which each title getting a wiki of its own. The cheats are described in greater detail and it’s almost blog-styled in its description. Most of the cheats are submitted by users.

Game Cheats

The site covers 13000 games and displays a comprehensive list of the most popular cheats. Classic games as well as the Nokia N-Gage are covered. You can go into the forums to discover more cheats as well as ask around.

Chapter Cheats

Chapter Cheats resembles the look and feel of a few sites above. The database is arranged around Top Games, Upcoming Games, and Latest Cheats and Walkthroughs. There is a comprehensive Q&A section to field all your gaming queries. Each game has its own page and you can read about unlockables, and other game related options.

Between these ten cheat code websites and the three we had earlier covered in 3 Great Sources For Computer Game Walkthroughs and Cheats you have enough of a handicap to crash through the levels. Some of the other resources we have covered include:

• Mafia Wars On Facebook – Tips & Cheats
• Top 5 Sites With Free Strategy Guides For Gamers
• How To Cheat In Every Computer Game With Poke
• Top 8 Websites With Cheats for Old PS1 Games

There are plenty more where these came from. Tell us about your favorite destination for game cheats. How often do you fall back on them?

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Inspiration and motivation comes to each of us in many forms. For some it could like in words of wisdom, for others it could lie in uplifting images, and for a few it could be in a germ of an idea.

The Android universe has an app for most of our inspirational needs, so let’s check out the Android Market and see which motivational Android apps can give us the daily dose of motivation that we need when we flag off.

Inspirational Quotes

Inspiring quotes are probably the easiest way to motivate ourselves by a little each day. There are quite a lot of quote collections that can be found by the way of apps, but this one is the most popular. Unlike the one-quote-a-day variety, you can refer to the wisdom sayings any time you want. The app is also well designed with very few controls. You can easily share a liked quote with your social network and there could be many in the 670 quotes that this app carries. It works with Android 1.6 and above.

GoalTracker

Motivation falls by the wayside if you don’t have goals to aspire to. GoalTracker helps you keep sight of your goals. GoalTracker is simple to set up – you list your goals one at a time and assign it to two types. Yes/No for things like – Did I exercise today? Numeric for things which you need to quantify like the number of pages you read. Each individual goal can be assigned an interval (daily, weekly, monthly), start and end days, and a target value which is like the score for achieving this particular goal. You can put different goals in different categories and also embellish the goals thumbnail with pictures. You can track goals every day and also set reminder alerts. It works with Android 1.6 and above.

The Bucket List

Remember when we talked about the Bucket List? Looking at the response that came in made me realize that most of us have one tucked somewhere. This free Android app helps you create one on your phone. It’s the to-do list for your entire life. You can share your list with others and get inspired and also inspire others along the way. The Bucket List allows you to easily enter your life to-dos and set their priority levels. You can cross each one as you set out to achieve them. It works with Android 1.5 and above.

Rainbow Idea

Ideas can motivate us. More so if you decorate them with colors. And Rainbow Idea is a dead simple Android app that takes ideas and arranges ideas around colors. Ideas can be given any color out of the seven colors of the rainbow for one particular theme. Ideas can be displayed as color circles, blocks, or list. The developer likens the app to a simple mind map. It works with Android 1.6 and above.

Meditation Helper

All the wisdom in the world won’t be able to help you if you cannot quiet your mind. Zen and the art of meditation would be a bit farfetched to attain in a short time, but you can start with short bursts of meditation. The Meditation Helper is a timer which helps you along by allowing you to set a target and logging how many consecutive days you are hitting it.  If practice makes perfect, then this app attempts to aid you in that with its simple start and end chime. It works with Android 2.1 and above.

The other meditation timer you can take a look at is Meditation Support Timer.

Also check out: The 100 Best Android Apps

Here’s hoping these five motivational Android apps give you a better range to work with when you hit the dips. Do you have an Android app installed that injects some inspiration or motivation each day? Let us know about it in the comments.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Online dictionaries aren’t only about words and their meanings. They also bring in other cool features which make for a fun learning experience for both children and adults alike.

Dictionary.com and its resources make it almost a portal that takes you on a journey of word discoveries. Word has it that it is probably the most frequented of online dictionary and reference sources on the web. Why not – after all you can do much more than merely look up a word here. Try these 8 for starters.

The Hot Word

Words are never one-dimensional. There’s always an interesting story behind them or you can create an interesting one around a word. The Hot Word shows just how interesting the English language is. The blog not only dives into the origins of words, but also discusses their present context. Even a casual read through the blog gives you interesting tidbits like the language that’s only spoken in one tiny part of Portugal.

Words!

This is a weekly compilation that picks up interesting definitions from areas of medicine, gardening, cooking, and more. Browsing through them takes you to entire word lists and in turn to their meanings. The compilation perks up interest because you might thing that you know all about a specific area, but the word list tells you that you still have some learning to do. Dictionary.com comes with comprehensive listings on medical terms, abbreviations, cultural words, idioms etc.

Solve a Daily Crossword

I can’t get to the Times crossword or solve it, but I do try my word associations and recall with the Daily Crossword here. You can time yourself, pause and save your progress, and even print the puzzles though it’s much better to solve them online. The game also gives you letter and word hints if you are stuck at a square.

By the way, if you are attempting to solve the Times crossword, you can take the help of the Crossword Solver here at Dictionary.com. Just a helpful tool to bookmark if you are into crosswords.

Fun ‘n Free Games!

The fun doesn’t end at crosswords but continues with the cool word based puzzles and games in the Games section. Making words starting with a provided letter sounds lame, but some interesting rules make the game a bit more challenging. There are more ‘complicated’ games like Word Kingdom which is like playing Age of Empires with words. Word Games has a lineup of nice games that should set up someone who is trying to get better with English.

Become a Word Millionaire with Word Dynamo

Word Dynamo is a beta feature but it already looks useful as an educational tool. Word Dynamo is about learning words in an engaging way. Word challenges are arranged according to grade levels and topics. You have to progress up by unlocking the levels as in any game. Quizzes, word lists, and word games make up Word Dynamo. You can also learn a bit about French, Spanish and Latin.

Which Word Is The World Searching For Today?

A small section that is tucked away near the foot of the homepage shows what the world is searching for on Dictionary.com. Capturing trending words from the whole web would be too much to ask for, so let’s do with what the nearly 50 million visitors landing here are making popular each day. You can look at Popular Searches, Words in the News, and Where Is It.

Rave on Quotes

There are many places you can go in your search for quotable quotes. Dictionary.com happens to be one more. There’s the Quote of The Day right on the homepage and more quotes beyond that. You can cite the quotes or choose to embed them in your blog.

Simply Translate

Last but not the least; Dictionary.com includes a very handy translation engine that can handle 50 languages. The translation is limited to 100 characters, but that should suffice for short bursts. One limitation is that the translator does not detect the language when you insert it into the field.

Dictionary.com goes beyond being a simple online dictionary. What sets it apart are these add-on learning features which make this a complete ‘word portal’. Which is your favorite online dictionary? If it’s this one, tell us what appeals to you here when you come looking for some meaning.

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I personally think having a knack for knots is one of the essential skills to have or acquire in your toolset of manliness. After all, one never knows when you might be called upon to rope a steer…or knot a tie.

So, if you weren’t a Boy Scout, here are a few resources that give you a notch to add to the manliness scale.

Animated Knots

This well regarded and frequented site on knots puts it best – Better to know a knot and not need it, than need a knot and not know it. Nearly 170+ knots are listed on this site. Start with The Basics- Find a Knot by Name or head to any of the sections that take you through the know-how required for fishing knots to decorative ones. Animated Knots as the name indicates is a how-to website that uses cool, simple to understand animated slideshows to teach you how to tie different types of knots. Learn which are the essential knots, or download the Android and iPhone app that unfortunately aren’t free.

I Will Knot!

From animated tutorials to those in video, knot instructional couldn’t get any simpler. If you are looking to start of quickly, then this uncomplicated site is just the thing as it doesn’t overwhelm you with the variety of knots that are hanging out there. There are just about 12 of them (knots, hitches, loops, and bends) but with easy-to-follow video walkthroughs.

Netknots

Netknots relies on animated illustrations too that show you how to tie knots. You can play and pause the inline player to note the steps more closely. The focus is on knots needed for the outdoors. So you have – fishing knots, paddling knots, boating knots, and other outdoor knots. Knots are arranged by usage and also by name.

The Pirate King

Quite frankly, I found the remainder of this website that seems to be all about pirates and all things on the high seas to be more interesting than the page devoted to nautical knots. But don’t get sidetracked by all the babble on rum and buried treasure…head over to the page that teaches you about different types of sailing knots. The site is nicely and simply designed, so understanding how to form a bowline won’t be a problem at all.

Tie-a-Tie

This site is very useful to have bookmarked because many of our male brethren suffer from the acute disability of learning how to knot together a necktie. Hendrik’s site shows you how to stylishly bring the ends together with the help of simple instructions and video tutorials. You won’t be sartorially challenged again.

Another similar site to keep close would be 2 Tie a Tie.

Knots Guide

Ok, this isn’t a website but an Android app. It’s all the more useful because you can carry it around as a pocket reference. 92 how-to on knots arranged in 10 categories make this a worthwhile download. (Directory mention)

Knots on the Web

You won’t be impressed by the façade as it resembles a directory listing from the days of yore. In fact that’s what this is, and it hasn’t been updated for quite some time. So, don’t be surprised if you hit a domain parking page now and them. But you might also land on informative resource like Knots and Knitting that makes the scrounging through the large list worthwhile.

Knots are really out there. Well, did you know that there is an International Guild of Knot Tyers that’s dedicated to furthering interest in practical, recreational and theoretical aspects of knotting? Knots are one of those things in life that are needed when you least expect them to be. So, get yourself a rope and start practicing. And do tell us if you are a virtuoso with knots or a knot novice.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Searching for the best hotel deals in town is one topic we have discussed at length on MUO. We still like to put out the information now and again because hotel search engines are essential traveller tools to be used before you pack your suitcase.

Here are ten of the best hotel search engines that fetch you the best deals when you travel.

Google Hotel Finder

We start with the usual suspects and Google with its experimental Google Hotel Finder is one for the top billing. Head over to our directory mention for a brief introduction. Google Hotel Finder could go from an experiment to a full-scale assault on the other hotel and travel websites out there because it brings in a few conveniences. For instance, you can compare hotel prices (the price slider is a big help) and put them in a shortlist and track them over time. Tracking is a big help when you want to grab the best deal in town. You can use filters and the Google map to search out hotels in a selected area; select them by travel time; and pick the ones which are near the urban hot spots.

Bing Travel – Rate Indicator

Bing Travel goes head to head (or is it the other way around) with Google Hotel Finder. The Rate Indicator here is a great help when you are trying to find whether the hotel tariff is a good deal or not. You can also do a historic search for specific dates. It is only available for 30 U.S. cities at present. The Rate Indicator shows yellow, green, and red legends on a Bing Map to indicate the ‘hotness’ of a deal.  The usual Bing Travel search engine though gives you a comparative search with Hotwire, Hotels.com, Travelocity, Expedia, and Priceline. These are few of the top notch travel and hotel websites.

Hotels.com

Hotels.com is one of the most comprehensive hotel booking websites around which covers 140,000 hotels worldwide. It is a one-window solution to all your search and booking needs. It gives you localized information plus great deals and rewards programs. Hotels.com claims that it gives you the cheapest rates and if you find anything cheaper they will match it. Hotels.com also does not charge cancellation fees. Download their free iPad, iPhone, Android app.

Laterooms

This is a Europe and U.K centric site which covers properties worldwide too. Laterooms lists a total of 33,000 properties. Sign-up to receive best deals by email or periodically visit the Special Offers section on the site. The hotel search engine uncovers deals like – Extra special discounts; Added value extras; Free hotel nights; and package deals when you stay for more than one night.

Tripadvisor

Tripadvisor is one of the most well-known search engines for travel and hotel deals. We mentioned it when we saw 5 Review Sites To Help You Find The Perfect Hotel and it certainly deserves another mention here. The site suggests reviews and advice on hotels, resorts, flights, vacation rentals, vacation packages, travel guides, and lots more. One of the features you might use most often is the filter that lets you sort the hotels by the amenities on offer.

Booking.com

Hotel search and booking websites are usually choc-a-bloc with information. I like the relatively uncluttered layout of this hotel search engine which is also aided by the large and clear fonts that are used. You can use the search engine to locate and hotel reservations.  Their tag line says – 187,784 hotels in 163 countries worldwide. So, that’s quite a sweep. Subscribe to the email newsletter for flash deals.

Hotels Combined

Hotels Combined and its hotel search engine too covers the world. The site says that its Verified Reviews (a trademarked service) accepts and quantifies reviews from verified, paying customers only. The hotel search engine compares prices across a bunch of hotel pricing sites. You can view the list when you search for the best hotel by destination.

Hotwire

The discount travel site negotiates the best hotel deals (along with other travel related ones) and presents them to you as Hotwire Hot Rates. You can also use the site’s Tripwatcher tool to watch out for price drops. The results are compared with other sites like Expedia, Kayak, Tripadvisor, and Orbitz. Check out the site’s Planning Tools section for a few more travel aids which help you plan your trip.

Venere

104.000 hotels and listing of other accommodation types in more than 130 countries makes this best hotel search engine holds its own against the best of its ilk. Also includes Bed and Breakfasts and vacation rentals. The site gives you a colorful map-based search tool for finding out the best hotel deal in town.

Roomkey

Six of the largest hotel companies in the world (Choice Hotels International, Hilton Worldwide, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, InterContinental Hotels Group, Marriott International and Wyndham Hotel Group) collaborated to start up Roomkey.  The hotel search engine is specifically tailored for their clientele and aims to – offer travelers direct access to a broad network of hotels around the globe, provide accurate and comprehensive information, make it easy for travelers to discover what’s right for them. And in one word, the interface is superb.

These ten hotel search engines are at the forefront of the pack, and there are more of them. Most of the websites in the hotel search category are quite similar…offering a mix of hotel reservations, reviews, and great deals. Here are a few more you can throw into the mix:

• 6 Useful Last-Minute Booking Sites For Your Next Trip
• How To Find & Reserve Right Hotels From Your Android Phone
• 10 Sites For Budget Travel & Backpacking Trips Across The World
• The Best Travel Deals Sites To Save Cash On Your Next Vacation
• The 10 Best Free International Travel Guide Websites

Having a few of these hotel search engines bookmarked helps you to cross-check the best deals and plan your trip with low overheads. Where are you planning to travel to next? Do you use any of these hotel search engines, or do you depend on your travel agent?

Image Credit: Shutterstock

The opening up probably boosted the to and fro movement of snap-click photos, after all the old cliché holds good – a picture does say a thousand words. Especially when you find Twitter’s own 140 to be limiting.

A photo does say more; but does it say them effectively? Sharing photos comes with a few unsaid rules. It’s true for Twitter…it’s true for sharing any photo across the web. Let’s talk about them.

Choose your photos wisely

Everyone loves photos. Just like tweets, photos that you share on Twitter should also be interesting. Don’t share blindly…be picky. You wouldn’t want to post snaps of your office party en masse when it wouldn’t be of any interest to your followers. The best you can do is to share photos around a theme and support it with the text message. Like any other social platform, Twitter too comes with its own etiquette.

Get the photos right

Common sense. What would anyone do with photo that resembles a blob? If your followers can’t make out what your photo is all about, then either expect some “WTF” comments or being unfollowed by friends who have better things to do.

Twitter accepts photos that are 3 MB or smaller. But for faster uploads, you can crop and resize the image to a more optimum size. Online photo editors can do that in a jiffy. Twitter allows .gif, .jpeg, and .png files but not bmp, .tiff, and animated .gif images.

Twitter also gives you a user gallery which stores your 100 most recent shared images. The user gallery is a part of the Twitter profile, so it pays to keep it neat and compact.

Too much or too little

Great photos are one of the easiest ways to not only grab eyeballs but also gather Twitter followers. But go overboard with it, and you will be on a one-way ride to the spammers’ gallery of fame. Get the balance right between too much and too little. The right photo shared at the right time with Twitter has a better chance of scoring an impact.

Nix the watermark

This is a personal opinion, but I think that watermarking an image just about ruins it. Yes, it protects your photographic masterpiece but if you mean to protect your photo then upload it elsewhere. Twitter is the wrong medium for copyright-clad photos. But when it comes to promoting brands or a product, watermarking could be considered a must. In the meantime, Twitter really hasn’t found a way for users to protect their photo shares.

It helps to know where a Twitter photo is coming from

Tweets are usually time sensitive and location sensitive. Apps like Foursquare and Gowalla are built around geo-location and a lot of check-ins also piggybacks on Twitter. So tagging your Tweets + photos with geo-location data helps put it in a place. Think of Twitter powered breaking news, and the effectiveness of location tags becomes clear. It also makes the Twitter photos searchable by location. Adding location data leads to a better Twitter experience for everyone…not just the tweeter.

Hashtags to the fore

Adding hashtags to your uploads helps in their search and discovery. A Twitter based service like Hashalbum makes it easy to search for images in real time by letting you discover new photos based on their #hashtag. Hashalbum is a photo discovery tool that scans Twitter for images and sorts them into shareable albums by their #hashtags. This helps you to find photos in a specific topic of interest.

Eye-catching image effects

Thanks to the universe of image effects web apps (and mobile apps), even a photo taken with a standard cell phone camera can be enhanced and made interesting. Give your dull photos a makeover using apps like Instagram, Hispstamatic, BeFunky etc,

Ultimately, Twitter is about the community. So, don’t be shy and share socially with the network of your followers and friends. Photos are tweets with a more graphic face, so you have to respond to them just like regular tweets to keep the network fires burning.  Share with us your best Twitter photo tip. What more can you do to spread your photographic masterpieces?

Image Credit: Flickr

Installing Chrome extensions is easy as a click and you don’t even have to hold your breath. But we shouldn’t forget that extensions are little programs that feed off our computer’s resources. And some can be real resource hogs. Also, too many extensions create a clutter that’s not so aesthetic when you want some clean real estate on your browser. Not surprisingly, the answer lies in another extension that manages its brethren with a remarkable discipline, and thus makes for a better browsing experience.

Say hello to Context, a Chrome extension that I consider to be a must-have in your army of Chrome extensions.

Create Chrome Extension Groups and Manage Them Better

Context organizes your extensions into ‘contextual’ groups. That is to say, if you are listening to music or watching movies, Context allows you to load only the extensions that relate to that. The remaining ones can be kept hidden. Here’s how you go about creating a few extension groupings using Context.

1. After installing Context, a brief tutorial shows how you can set up Context.

2. Go into the Options for the extension to set up your first group. Context neatly lists all the extensions that you have installed. You can also check the advanced options (as in the screenshot) to also include apps. Click on New Context.

3. Name the group and choose from the available icons.

4. Creating a Context group is as easy as dragging the extension tile into the grouping. Drag the extensions from the list above to the Context group below to populate the relevant group. You can drag the same extension to all groups if you want to include it in more than one group. You can click on the cross icon if you go wrong. You can change the order of the extensions within a group. You can also drag the groups to change the order of preference as it would appear in the Context dropdown. Click on the Save button.

5. The Context icon itself appears as a white jigsaw piece on the Chrome toolbar. Click on the icon to reveal the dropdown. You can click on one group to load extensions belonging to that while hiding all the rest. Clicking on All extensions brings back the entire lineup of course.

6. When a new extension is installed Context brings up a small notification pop-up that lets you you assign it to appropriate groups via the notification window. You do not need to open the configuration page.

Switch between Extensions and Boost up Your Browsing

Context is not only for de-cluttering your browser toolbar by hiding extensions you do not need immediately. By loading only those extensions that you need right now, Context also frees up memory which otherwise would have been utilized by all the extensions you have installed.

Consider these two screenshots for a comparison:

Context and its one-click switching is a productivity booster. Do you think it can be a claimant to a tiny corner of the Best Chrome Extensions to have in your browser? What do you think?

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Well, if you have just taken off your green space suit and wondering what the hullaballoo is all about, check out our very previous What Are QR Codes? Digitize your World & Back Again. It was an emerging technology then which runs rampant now as observed through the sampling of 7 Great Uses For QR Codes & How To Generate Your Own For Free. QR codes are definitely mainstream now, given a boost up the use of smartphones and intelligent scanning apps that reside in them.

So, here are five more web apps which show us how QR codes have gone conventional.

Send a Wikipedia link as a QR Code

If you have a smartphone, QR codes give you the quickest way of opening a link. Take for instance, if you are a knowledge buff and need to send someone a Wikipedia reference. Use QRpedia to generate a quick mobile-friendly QR code. What’s great about that you might say as any online QR code generator can do that! QRPedia is a language detecting QR code generator. It displays the Wikipedia page in the language of the mobile that is used to scan and read the Wikipedia article. Of course, a Wikipedia article in that particular language should exist in the first place. According to its own entry, it is currently in use at institutions including museums in the United Kingdom, United States and Spain.

Read classic books on a bar code

We know that QR codes digitize any information. Books2Barcodes is a QR code exploiting web service which miniaturizes entire pieces of classical literature into a 2D QR code and makes the book device readable. The current catalog is limited but Books2Barcodes is an ongoing effort to digitize classics of literature this way and make them available across any device that can scan a QR code.

QR codes are being in fact used by book publishers to connect readers to interactive content like videos, graphics, and music.

Text to speech with QR codes

Think up some creative uses of this text to speech service called QR Voice which takes the generated audio file and digitizes the speech information in a QR code. The audio file is stored online and anyone who scans the QR code is taken to the speech’s URL where they can listen to the converted speech. QR Voice uses Google’s translation service and supports a range of spoken languages.

Create notes (with photos) and turn them into QR codes

This is the QR code web app which you could end up using the most. QRnot.es helps you transmit a page (with images if need be) via the compact medium of QR codes. You can create a piece of text under 500 words, give it a headline, and attach an image in JPG, BMP, or PNG format. The QR code generated points to this text file. You can print this code, or download it as GIF so that anyone can scan it and reach the byte of information. QRnot.es seems like a simple application to spread some little pieces of information around.

Link LinkedIn with QR codes

A QR code on a business card looks real cool. Of course, it should point to something useful. How about your LinkedIn profile page – PingTags helps you do just that. PingTags is a beta QR code service which makes your LinkedIn profile available via a click on a QR code reader. The reader is directed to the LinkedIn profile page, and he can also easily contact you thanks to the contact info provided. He need not key in any information. You can also check out how many people scanned your barcode, what links they clicked, and a map showing exactly where they scanned the code.

Unfortunately, from the time I checked out this app to the time of writing this article, something went wrong as the site is in the bout of a temporary glitch.

Alternatively, you can use this simple LinkedIn QR code generator if the glitch remains unresolved. Or use any QR code generator which takes a URL (in this case, your LinkedIn profile URL) and outputs a QR code.

QR codes are neat little ways to transmit information and catch them using a QR friendly mobile phone. What other web apps do you know of that help you use QR codes in our day to day lives? Send in some in our comments section.