Did you know that you could create iCandy cards to promote your iPhone application?  It's pretty easy actually.   

Creating your promotional iPhone App iCandy Card:

1. Launch iCandy as usual and select Create Card.
2. With iTunes open, find your iPhone app.
3. Drag and drop your iPhone app icon into the iCandy Print window. iCandy will create a QR code of the URL that connects back to the iTunes store.
4. Click 'Edit Item' to enter a relevant title and artwork.  What I  do on my Mac is launch the Grab application to get the iPhone app icon or screenshot.  I grab it, save it as a file and then drag the file onto the iCandy  Edit window.
5. Select your print layout.  My favorite is 'QOOP CoffeeTable Book'
6. Print to local printer/disk or Flickr.
7. Voila! You're done.

Scanning your promotional iPhone App iCandy Card on your iPhone:

Take your iPhone and your preferred QR Code reader (Optiscan, Neoreader, BeeTag, Xzing, 2D Sense, Barcode, Snappr, etc.)  and scan your newly created iCandy card.

The following should happen:

1. Safari should quickly launch, hit the iCandy server (gotta log those analytics) and then redirect you to the App Store on your iPhone.  You'll get prompted for your iTunes password and the info screen for the app will be brought up ready for you to download.

1. iCandy will open a new browser window which will ask if it can launch iTunes. 
2. Switch to iTunes (it should already be open since iCandy needs iTunes open to work.)
3. iTunes will take you to the application page!

Scan these sample cards:

We've just launched a new feature on the iCandy website - My iCandy ->My iCandy Dashboard.

What does the dashboard do?  Well, it displays your iCandy card activity.  Each iCandy card has a User ID embedded in it (hence the dog and pony show when you sign up - registration/confirmation code yada yada).  The iCandy service can then keep track of your card activity - how many cards have been printed, scanned by you or others. 

What can you do with these analytics?  You can track the effectiveness of your iCandy-powered business cards, flyers and posters to promote your latest YouTube video, Myspace page, garage band or website of course.

Here are some sample screenshots:

Consider this Version 1.0.  We'll be adding the ability to drill down on specific iCandy cards in the days and weeks ahead.  Ideas on how to make this better?  Post your brilliant insights on our Community Forum.

The Ice Cream Man put his top man, Dr. Knife, on the iCandy beta testers team earlier this fall. We appreciate his call to action to all those ice cream fans out there.

Dr. Knife is the Patron Saint of the Ice Cream Man with a PhD in Awesomology.  Learn more about Dr. Knife here.