Sand Hill Road is known for being home to some of the greatest venture capital companies that have seeded some of the most successful start ups and crushed the dreams of countless others. So it was interesting that it is home to  Ricoh Innovation Labs Inc. (RII) in the heart of Palo Alto on Sand Hill Road. RII has been chartered with guiding the future of Ricoh and one of the current endeavors is a very innovative project called  iCandy. We were lucky enough to speak with Margarita Quihuis, Director and Jamey Graham, Distinguished Engineer about iCandy.

The rest  of the story here

Of course we still have the new Twitter feature that lets you tweet what you're listening to but we've also added a new media type: iPhone Apps. That's right, you can now create iPhone App cards for the apps you create or the ones you think are great! Hand them out so your friends can scan and download your iPhone App.  Scan the QR Code and it takes you straight to the App Store and to the specific app where you can download immediately.  Works SUPER on the iPhone.  It automatically launches the App store.

TinyURLs
But wait there's more.  We've also added TinyURLs to the card.  Why TinyURLs?  Well, because not everybody has a barcode app on their mobile phone.  The tinyURL gives people an alternative to decode the info AND you can still track the effectiveness of your printed media.

New Print Layout
Also, there's a new print layout in this version: 4x6 half. This means you can now print TWO iCandy cards on one sheet of 4x6 paper (landscape). We use this layout all the time in the lab and the size is very convenient.

Get Individual Card Analytics
Almost forgot about this one... You can get analytics for an individual card when you hold up to your webcam.  Launch your iCandy client and hit Command-Y on your Mac.  Scan a card.  The iCandy analytics page for that specific QR code will appear in your browser.  

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: