David Perez told his employer, advertising agency Leo Burnett, that he would do anything to go to the Cannes Advertising Festival and they took him up on it. Starting on June 20, David will don a pair of webcam glasses and head to Cannes, France and while he’s there, he’ll do anything you tell him to do through his Twitter account. One would logically assume that there are some things he won’t do, but who knows, maybe he likes eating oysters while standing on his head naked in a fountain.

If you want to get in on the fun you can follow David’s Twitter account here and watch him make a complete ass of himself at DavidonDemand.com.

The UK based design firm, Nation, has developed a cool Facebook “Like” button rubber stamp for “Liking” things offline. Did you really like that new pasta dish at Olive Garden? BAM! “Like” it. Think the memo going around the office to make every Friday a holiday has merit? BAM! “Like” it. See a hot babe at Starbucks? BAM! “Like” her.

Personally I don’t like Facebook games any more than Mark Zuckerberg does and I agree with the industries perception that he considers FarmVille a spam machine, but then again, considering how much money they bring in for Facebook I can understand Mark’s decision to name a new CTO who actually likes the games.

QR codes — those cute little graphics made up of a bunch of random squares — are starting to pop up all over the place, but I must admit I’m surprised I’m not seeing them a lot more often. The idea for this post came to me yesterday while I was sitting at Starbucks looking at my cup with the distinctive logo but what? no QR code? Considering how Starbucks has embraced social marketing — using Twitter and Facebook — I’m surprised they haven’t jumped all over this idea.

If you’re unfamiliar with QR codes or the limitless uses they can be put to, you might want to check out this post that I wrote a couple of months ago. Maybe you’ve noticed the QR code up their next to the name of my blog. Scan that and it loads the mobile version of my blog on your mobile phone’s browser (assuming you have Internet access) where you’ll hopefully bookmark it.

Back to Starbucks. Just how could they use QR codes? Well, here are a couple ideas.

Link to their Twitter page to add more followers. Imagine you’re sitting there drinking your cup of coffee and out of curiosity you scan the code on the cup with the QR code scanner on your mobile phone and it takes you to Starbuck’s Twitter page. If you’re not already a follower, do you think you’d click the follow button? Or maybe it sends you to the landing page on their Facebook page where you can become a fan.

Link to a page that changes periodically, offering specials to anyone who has scanned the code. A perfect place for this code would be on the cardboard cup holders. Printing a new batch of cups every time you wanted to change the link the QR code pointed to wouldn’t be practical but swapping out cup holders would be a cinch.

If Starbucks ran periodic specials only available to people who found out about them by scanning the QR code on their cup holder, it wouldn’t be long until it would be common to see people pointing their mobile phone at their Starbucks cup.

Obviously I’m using Starbucks as an example here, but there are many ways companies can use QR codes as part of their marketing program. Here are just a few more examples.

Disclaimer: This is intended as parody and humor only. I mention this for the benefit of any of you who may be too dense to recognize parody when you see it.

We all know that Ashton Kutcher and his wife, Demi Moore, have a real thing for Twitter, but I think this is taking things a bit too far.

And no, I do not want my friends to know every time I friend someone, become a fan, or join a group. It’s no more their business than it is mine to know what they’re doing.

Am I the only one who’s getting sick and tired of a Facebook news feed that looks like the screen shot below?

You know what this is exactly like? It’s like going to a huge party and having someone grab you after every conversation, telling you that, “Sue and Mike just became friends with John”, and “Jason and Jennifer just started playing Monopoly” and “Bob, Sue, Chris and Justin are attending church” and “Pat, Tom, Jeff and Erin just joined Green Peace” and “Jason and Christy are big Beyonce fans” and…

We used to have the option of turning off notifications that would show up on our friend’s feeds but Facebook deleted that option in December when they changed their privacy policy and exposed all of us to the world without our permission. I want that option back and you should too and you should be demanding it back along with me.

Edit: I’ve started using a very nice little Firefox add-on called Better Facebook that eliminates the who friended who notifications from my news feed which alleviates one problem, but until Facebook gives us back control of who we allow to see what we’re doing I think I’m going to stop updating my personal Facebook page and stick to my fan page.

You can get the Firefox add-on, Better Facebook, here. I recommend the GreaseMonkey version.

I just installed the shiny new WordPress app for Android so I thought I’d give it a try. This post was done from my Droid.

See that funny little black and white graphic up there next to my logo? That’s called a QR code. These mobile barcodes are big in Japan and slowly catching on in the west. If you’re not familiar with them yet, they’re the equivalent of the more common line barcodes, but they can be used for a lot more than just identifying products on packaging. For example, if you shoot that QR code next to my logo with your mobile phone’s bar code reader it will give you the link to this blog. A handy way to add my blog url on your mobile phone without having to type it in.

You can get a barcode/QR reader for just about any phone with a camera and there are several apps available for iPhones and Android devices.

Many websites are using QR codes to give direct access to software or apps to download. They can be used to deliver short text messages too, so you could add one to your business card or even store the image on your phone and someone at a convention would simply scan the image on your mobile phone and instantly have all the information you’d normally provide on your business card, including a clickable link to your website. How about having one printed on a t-shirt that provides a link to your Twitter account with the words, “Follow me on Twitter”. Just think how much attention you ladies will draw at a tweetup when everyone is taking pictures of your chest.

Check out my Twitter page and you’ll see that I’ve added one to my background that when scanned displays the message, “Please visit my blog at http://hughbriss.com” and the link is clickable.

If you’d like to create a custom QR code for yourself there are several websites that offer the service. Two that I like are Qurify and Kawa.

The few ideas I’ve mentioned in this post are just the tip of the iceberg and I can’t wait to see just what creative uses QR codes will be put to. Please show us examples of uses you’ve come across in the comments.

This is a short post to test out the new Android app I just installed letting me post directly from my Android phone. Mobile blogging adds a nice dimension to blogging.