Scan it!!!!111

This may not be news to some of you, and to some it may be a revelation. I had to make a QR code at work this morning, and I was playing around with some code generators. These things are pretty cool. Developed in 1994, these guys took off recently, because of the scanning ability by smart phones. You can even scan them straight from a computer screen, which is awesome. Try scanning the above code. It should take you stinogle.com. Using these things in marketing is a pretty ingenious idea, as you can go directly to a URL, or get an email or text based on the code you scan.

If you have a smart phone, try it out!

So this morning I was jumping a flight to Florida, and as per usual I had to shutdown my phone during takeoff. This, of course, was probably the first time I’d turned off my Blackberry Curve since the previous time I’ve flown. When I powered it back up, I was in for an unexpected surprise.

In my applications, their now lived an icon for Microsoft’s Bing search engine. I was sure I hadn’t added this app, and was a bit worried as to how it got there. A quick search (using google, of course) lead me to multiple forums discussing the exact same issue.

In their unending effort to force their products on users, it looks like Microsoft and Verizon are pushing this app to many of their devices. In usual MS fashion, the engine also doesn’t show up in my applications list, and cannot be removed. So much for the freedom to choose

If anyone knows any ways to remove this nuissance, other than removing the service book entry, please drop me a comment.