Kangaderoo Custom QR Code.

NeoNeonMiner, Yescrypt and P2Pool.

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Sun, 18 Dec 2016 10:37:00 +0000

Quote from the movie Riddick:

"Keep an eye on the nodes"

With the APP NeoNeonMiner you can become a miner in the crypto-currency community. But mining on a mobile device is a magnitude smaller in comparison to mining on a high end PC, GPU or ASICS. To get the most out of NeoNeonMiner mining, best select an algorithm that is labeled CPU only. The Yescrypt algorithm is one of these algorithms.

There are some mining pools that support this algorithm (like zpool.ca). The biggest problem with these multi protocol mining pools is that they favor the high end miners, and are therefore not the best choise for the NeoNeonMiner app.
With NeoNeonMiner you will run into difficulty thresholds and minimum payment restrictions that require you to mine for a long time before you get rewarded. Most of the multi algorithm mining pools have increased the minimum payout threshold in the last year.

An alternative is to mine in a P2Pool network. The difference between a mining site and P2Pool behavior is that distribution of the found coins is done directly when a block is found, this distribution is actually part of the found block, eliminating transaction fees. The restriction of a P2Pool network is that your pay-out will be in the mined currency, where a multi algorithm mining pool might be able to pay in any of their mined currencies, including Bitcoin.

With the selected algorithm being yescrypt, Myriad coin is one of the currency that can be mined.
Myriadcoin has a good exchange rate to Bitcoin and is traded on most of the crypto exchanges.

For the NeoNeonMiner setup a Myriadcoin address is needed. A quick PlayStore search shows a Myriadcoin wallet for android.
The shown address can be directly copied and pasted on the settings page of the NeoNeonMiner app.
The wallet does need to synchronize with the Myriad block chain, this will take some time.

Obtain your other setting; the Myraid P2Pool node information.
(update: the p2pool on this address is currently inactive)
So now the NeoNeonMiner settings are:
Mining Server: nz.nutty.one
Internet Port: 5534
Internet Protocol: stratum+tcp
Mining Protocol: yescrypt
UserName: Your MyriadCoin Address (copied from the wallet).
Password: anything (is not used)

On the same server the status of the active miners can also be found.
The MyriadCoin P2Pool network is not one of the largest, consider to become a Myriad P2Pool node.

Hint: specially with slow miners, the interval between found blocks could be very small.
You can 'set' your own share difficulty by adding this to your username (coin address). the syntax to use is: "MiriadCoinAddress/0".

The "/0" lets you mine using the lowest accepted share difficulty of the P2Pool.

Mobile Crypto Coin Mining

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Wed, 16 Sep 2015 15:48:00 +0000

Quote from the movie Titanic:

"Remember, they love money, so just pretend like you own a gold mine"

The time that mining for crypto-currencies like bitcoin could turn into gold is far behind us.

Mining, or rather calculating new solutions for incorporating transactions into the ledger is done by high end computers or dedicated ASIC's. Mining with your own computer system, with or without making use of the computing power of the graphical interface does not always way up to the investment and/or cost of power.

For the few who are interested in the crypro-currencies there is a way to participate. Joining a mining pool, where the combined computing power is large enough to earn some coins is a possibility. There the found wealth is divided proportional to your contribution to the total calculating power.

And even if you want to participate, but do not have the programming skill or equipment to start with the mining process, there is the opportunity to mine on your mobile phone.

A high end mobile phone like the Octal-core Samsung Galaxy S6, hold just about equal calculating power than a PC with a Quad-core Intel-I3 processor.

The android app NeoNeonMiner can be used to perform the required calculations for multiple hashing algorithms. The software is optimized to be used with the ARM-Neon processor. A processor variant that can be found in most android devices.

Is it fast? Well... no if you compare it to ASICs or high end computers, but steady and it beats visiting the various faucets to increase your crypto-currency wealth.

Getting started with NeoNeonMiner:
The NeoNeonMiner app is a stand-alone CPU based miner. In order to get rewarded for your contributions to the crypto-currency network the settings of the miner need to be changed to reflect your personal settings. Unchanged or invalid inputs in these fields will result in loss of your mining efforts. The settings you need depend on the mining pool you align yourself with. The default settings of the miner are the developers own credentials. If these are not updated your mining effort will be linked to the owner of these settings! Running with the default settings is appreciated, but will not be rewarded.

The settings of NeoNeonMiner:

Stored settings:
NeoNeonMiner can store up to 7 PreSets.
Each preset is a completed settings page. This feature allows quick switching between various mining pools and/or protocols, Each update on a PreSet needs to be saved using the STORE button on the bottom of this page.

Mining Server:
The URL of the mining server this PreSet will use to obtain it's work. Selection of the mining pool, usually based on profitability is an end-users choice.

Internet Port:
The communication port used.
The port needed can be found on the getting started sections of the various mining pools.
Some Internet service providers (ISP) block communication through some ports,

Internet Protocol:
This setting is provided by the mining pool. stratum+tcp is the most common settings used.

Mining Protocol:
Selection of this protocol is usually done based on profitability. The neoscrypt protocol holds the most speed optimized code. The App does support various other protocols. Selecting another protocol mostly requires another Internet Port as well.

Username:
This field is identifying you to the work you submit. Based on mining pool requirements the field value here could be. Roughly there are two variation here. There are anonymous pools that require you to use your Bitcoin (Altcoin) address. When a payment threshold is reached payment will made to the address listed here. These pools use the password field for other settings.
There are also pool that require you to register, These pool usually operate with a 'real' username/password setup. On your personal page of these mining pools the payment details can found and/or updated.

Password:
Used as password on mining pools that require registration. Can be used for settings on some anonymous mining pools. The d=8 in the screenshot stands for minimum a difficulty setting.

Number of Threads:
The max number of threads is equal to the total amount of CPU's in your device. Since the app is making the phone work hard it requires a lot more power (battery) than in idle mode. Also the phone's temperature will go up. Selecting less then the max number (not possible when only one CPU is present) can reduce the power drainage and temperature, but it will also reduce the hashing speed.

Please also check my getting started video on YouTube.

Note:
This app provides a possibility to register.

The app registration procedure can be found in the app after seven days post first activation, registration request in the comment section of this post will be ignored.

Registration will only do the following:

Cancel the advertisement.
Auto load the last used settings (unregistered will need to manually load @ each start),

Registration does not do:

Make the app perform different, the code execution is equal to registered and not-registered.
Make you/your phone part of a NeoNeonMiner network of miners.
Automatically update your settings or register your setting for payments.

QR Codes the green solution

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Tue, 06 Jan 2015 12:13:00 +0000

Quote from the movie Independence Day: "we have bins labeled recycle."

In comparison to NFC the QR Code will always win from a green point of view,

There were NFC will need electronics per 'print', the QR Code can be just part of the printed material.

True that the modern NFC tags use energy harvesting, thus not needing a own internal power supply, the process of making these tags will probably be less environmental friendly compared to adding a QR Code to printed material.

And when making use of URL shorteners that can be used to reroute the destination of your QR Code, the code itself can be recycled without reprogramming.

Handicapped QR Codes

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 17:09:00 +0000

Quote from the movie National Treasure: "Over time the clues were lost or forgotten!"

Everybody knows how imported it is to keep track of pin-code, login details and other credentials, if they are lost or damaged it leads to serious problems. Recently I've received two separate plea's for help with regards to QR-Code content.

In both cases the link in the QR Code itself was no longer pointing to the correct content. The more serious of the two was a link to YouTube content that was deleted by mistake.

The ID that YouTube uses to identify the content could not be revived! Brochures containing a QR Code pointing to this YouTube content, now a dead link, were already printed in huge quantities.

A QR Code severely handicapped.

This is one of many reasons to make use of an URL shortening service. Services like bit.ly and linkfire (lnk.to) not only supply the service of shortening the URL, they also provide global tracking, tracing and monitoring. And as a paid service the used link can also be re-targeted, a very helpful feature for a situation as described above, but it can also be used to re-use a once made enhanced code for later marketing campaigns.

It is this kind of back-end service that make QR Code dynamic, the content inside the code itself is always static!

A shorter URL requires less information in the QR Code itself, the resulting lower version of the QR Code provides the possibility to increase the resolution of the image if the reserved space for the code is limited. Higher resolution codes scan faster and open the possibility for graphical integration, where both the content and the image are protected by the error correction.

Vanity in BitCoins

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Thu, 19 Jun 2014 09:27:00 +0000

Quote from the movie The Devil's Advocate: "Vanity ...is definitely my favorite sin."

The address generation of a BitCoin wallet uses similar cryptography routines as is used for mining the coins themselves. Logic if you consider the address is part of the bit-coin transaction itself.

By running a "brute force" address generator, the generated walled ID can be compared with a wanted result. Millions upon millions private keys have been hash'd to get the ID as in the QR Code.
A wallet ID with the Prefix "1BTC4Me....."

Generating this ID gives an indication of the computing power and/or luck needed to hack an actual bit-coin wallet. On my system getting this prefix took about 2.5 hours. The software itself indicated that getting to 50% probability that a key generated this specific prefix was 5.5 hours.

For each additional character added to the prefix this time is multiplied by a factor of roughly 58. This number of 58 can be computed from the valid characters; these are alphanumeric with some exceptions for look-alike like the lower case L, and zero, or just the fact its is a base58 representation :-)
Finding the prefix "1BTC4You.." indicates a 12 day running time to hit the 50% probability mark.
Finding the prefix "1Kangaderoo.." indicates a 6700 year running time to hit the 50% probability mark.

Using a crypto coin mining setup can increase your computing power, thus reducing the running time; the chance to find/hack the private-key for this particular address is still slim.

Having someone else to generate the address for you seems like a security issue, if a third party generates the key it is no longer a private key. The solution is to generate a private and public key first, use this public key in the generation process to generate a new partial private key,

These two private keys can be combined, to generate a third and final private key yielding your wanted BTC wallet ID prefix. Don't have the computing power? There is a pool where you could submit your request.

Error free QR Code enhancement.

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Sat, 15 Mar 2014 16:08:00 +0000

Quote from the movie Ocean's Twelve: "It is all about error correction."

The origin of the QR Code was to be used in heavy industry, car parts and manufacturing to be precise. Since in this environment the risk that the tag itself could be damaged is high, the error correction algorithm was added to the content of the code.
Since now the QR Code is more commonly used, even in environments where the chance of damaging is smaller, the error correction is currently more and more used to compensate for graphical enhancement.
To stay more in line with the original purpose of the error correction algorithm, Kangaderoo offers graphical enhanced QR Code where not only the the scan-able content of the code, but also the graphical enhancement is actual QR Code content.
Thus creating QR Codes free of content errors.
With this technique the QR Code itself is more likely to be scanned without problems on most of currently available QR reader applications. There are quality differences between the various reader apps, so if you'd like your QR Code to be scan-able by just about every QR Code reader, start at the basis and keep your enhanced QR Code as compliant as possible with the QR Code specifications.
You cannot control the reader app your targeted audience is using, the only aspect that you can control is the QR Code itself.
Unless you are willing to rely on luck, I even have an error free QR Code for that :-).

Making your QR Code Friendlier.

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 12:07:00 +0000

Quote from the movie Batman & Robin: "Now what, call a taxi?!"

QR Codes should make scanning a code a easier experience that the alternative; i.e. for hyperlinks typing the complete address, or for telephone numbers, remembering the number on a taxi, and just loose the two last digits because it just turned a corner.

Sure the QR Code reader app needs to start, but on modern telephones its just a matter of placing the reader app with your favorites for easy access.

Enhancing a QR Code should give it a more friendly appearance, just look at the two codes in this blog,

Both codes are identical with regard to the content, size, rotation and QR Code mask.

The difference is the rounded corners, the integrated image containing a friendly face, and the new calculated error correction to keep this QR Code fast scanning and error free.

Then again, would I require a taxi, I'd probably raise my hand and yell "TAXI".

Get you own copy of this code, with the content of your choice (hyperlink, telephone number) from my store @ http://www.relinqr.com

Be QReative...

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 18:02:00 +0000

Quote from the movie Ocean's Eleven: "If that's not your brand of vodka..."

Creating brand awareness is one of the mayor goals for marketeers.
A couple of golden idea's to increase brand awareness have been made in the past.
Two of the best known examples:

Guinness, known as a beer brewery has their name linked to the Guinness World Records.

Michelin, known for car tires has their name linked to Michelin Guide containing ratings for restaurants.

The lesson I learn from these examples is that I always have to keep an open mind, opportunities might pop-up in unexpected places.

Be open minded and creative, and your idea's might turn into gold!

Even more new coins

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Sun, 16 Feb 2014 19:07:00 +0000

Quote from the movie Jumper: "They couldn't make heads or tails of it."

A big difference between digital crypto currency and real coins is that real coins can be flipped.

Call it.. heads or tails. A method to make a choice.

The head side of the valid currency in the Netherlands is the reigning monarch.

Last year April, our queen was replaced by a king. This also called for a new version of the dutch Euro where the portrait of Willem-Alexander needed to be placed.

The displayed QR Code is based on the artwork that was used to make the new coinage.

Interested in the new set of euro coins? More information can be found here.
Interested in the QR Codes? Find more on my website, or order your own in my webshop.

Dangers of social media promotions.

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Sun, 09 Feb 2014 09:48:00 +0000

Quote from the movie Lethal Weapon 2: "You haven't heard about me? l got a bad reputation."

The internet, and especially social media like Facebook, Twitter and blogging is a nice way to promote products like Custom QR Codes.
My QR Codes, like the one displayed on the left are graphically enhanced.
In order to promote these codes I occasionally make a code with a image that is related to current events, this one has an Olympic theme.

But there is a downside to promoting these QR Codes on social media. The link I place in these promotional codes uses the adf.ly shortening service, Using that service an advertisement will be shown before linking to the actual content i.e. a link to my site for promotional qr-codes.

I was unpleasantly surprised when after placing this code on Twitter the following happened.
I had to look-up what mobogenie actually means :-) It looks like the advertisement that the adf.ly service showed when the code was scanned was not appreciated. The "bad reputation" then automatically roll's back to the QR Code itself. The result is very unfortunate, someone who liked the graphical appeal of the image enough to re-tweet the original message deletes this tweet. An action that kind of kill's the promotional intent. My efforts to repair the damage resulted in no-replies.

Out with the new, in with the even newer...

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 20:33:00 +0000

Quote from the movie Spider-Man: "The end of one thing, the start of something new."

Last week a new product was available (at pre-order) for the Scrypt based crypto coin miners. An ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) based solution. This new mining hardware is specified at 5MH/s, requiring just 70 Watt's of power. This hashing to power ratio definitely outperforms the GPU based mining rigs.

It looks that the Scrypt based currencies like Litecoin will be probably be mined by the bigger players, just as happened before with BitCoin mining; totally locking out the normal guy.
This is not the type of decentralization that was intended when the currencies were made, but making an ASIC is a logical technological move whenever there is (easy?) money to be made.

It is no surprise that at this moment in time a new coin enters the market; a new coin with a small protocol adaptation to render the new ASIC's unusable for this currency.

This new coin is called VertCoin; it is based on the Scrypt protocol, but is made adaptive in the memory requirement. Currently the amount of memory needed for mining is double compared to standard Scrypt based coins, the adaptability of the protocol will make it easy to double this memory requirement again and again and again. This feature will making an ASIC for this coin a risk, now just waiting for this crypto-currency to gain some popularity and value.

Relink your QR Code

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Tue, 28 Jan 2014 20:06:00 +0000

Quote from the movie Watchmen: "You're my only remaining link to the world."

I've written about dynamic codes before. The link in your qr code is first to a forwarding service.
This service than gives the added service of changing the destination of the QR Code itself.

It is a nice way to reuse a graphically enhanced QR Code again and again and again.

But is you require a branded code to stay active while starting a new campaign? or need a branded QR Code with the same look and feel for multiple products?

Offering a service where a once branded QR Code can be copied with new content is currently expanded with the possibility to order codes that have been part of this blog in the past.
Check "The Relinker" @ www.relinqr.com.
Interested in a Kangaderoo Custom QR Code that is not in the shop yet, just use the contact form, and I will try to make it available as soon as possible. Suggestions for new codes are also appreciated.

Spending Cryptocoins!

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 20:33:00 +0000

Quote from the movie Heat: "But l don´t have to sell this, you know it. This kind of shit here sells itself."

Sex and gambling. For most self-respecting companies usually not the topics you want to be associated with.
So why mention them in the first place?

Because even when you are not directly involved with adult and or gambling industry, monitoring these two topics can deliver important indicators to determine your own strategy.

Both industries have been around since humans started to settle and sometimes even been the driving force for success or failure of new inventions.

The best example I can deliver for this hypothesis is the video-tape history, that is; if you are old enough to remember what a video-tape is. :-) I remember that there were three mayor technologies for the video-tape at the time. BetaMax, V2000 and VHS. After just a short time only VHS remained as mayor system. This was not because it was the technological best system, but because the it was the system that delivered the adult movies. And later history repeated itself with Blu-ray vs hd-dvd.

Therefore I think that both sex and gambling will be a mayor contributor to the success or failure of crypto currencies. Due to the nature of crypto currencies they are the ideal way for payments on the internet, with anonymity as one of the key features. I've already seen some gambling sites accepting or even working only with Bitcoin. And if you are older than 18, you should be able to find the adult sites accepting Bitcoin on your own. :-)

But both industries will require any crypto currency to be a steady, globally accepted coin. Just like any other business, participation and involvement needs to be worth while.

Got QR-Code?

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Sat, 18 Jan 2014 13:01:00 +0000

Quote from the movie Garfield: "Got milk?"

Advertisement is all about getting your message across. The easiest way to make a message more appealing is to use graphics.

QR Codes can accomplished a multiple task in your advertisements.

Its main usage is to provide a fast and easy way to link your advertisement to the internet by using the qr code as a printed hyperlink, the call to action in your advertisement.

Since the QR code itself is also a graphic, with some alteration its graphical appeal can be made to match the remainder of the advertisement, even containing a visual message of its own.

The third task of the code is to measure the advertisement effectiveness by measuring the amount of scans, locations, time, type of mobile device used, etc,

Lovely QR Codes.

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Sun, 12 Jan 2014 11:34:00 +0000

Quote from the movie The Addams Family: "You are going to love this."

A pictures can say more than a thousand words! In case of a QR Code these thousand words and the picture can be combined.

Using graphical enhancement a QR Code can already increase its appeal. From a black and white squired picture to a smooth graphic is just the first step. Combine this enhanced graphic with an incentive to be scanned.

If the content of the QR Code is a link to a website, this website must be designed for mobile use, since the chance that this code is scanned with a desktop computer is slim to none.

Although I think it would not be a good idea to use thousand words on this website, a mobile device is just not the right device to read a lot of text :-). Besides, how may words would you need for a valentine message?

PonziCoins?

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Sun, 05 Jan 2014 13:20:00 +0000

Quote from the movie: "Mice that roll barrels. Mice that stack coins."

After the relative success of BitCoin a lot of new alternative crypto currencies have been introduced. It is very hard to differentiate between the actual valid coins and coins that are better described as a Ponzi scheme.

In a Ponzi scheme the money of new investors is used to pay the old investors. This pyramid system works as long as new investors can be attracted.

Crypto currencies need to attract active users in order to keep the network alive, when a lot of nodes of the network is no longer working, the transactions will stop, rendering this currency worthless.

In order to attract these new users, a reward system needs to be in place. This reward can be obtained by mining, when calculating new blocks in the system is rewarded by new coins and/or to reward with transaction fees. There is an issue with both reward systems with regards to attract new users.
In the first system witch is usually proof of work, each user needs to add a lot of processing power in order to obtain new coins. The second system, usually based on proof of stake, the biggest reward is for the users with the highest bankroll.

But in the end we are talking about money. And the main purpose of money is to trade goods and services. So the acceptance of the crypto currency as a means to make payments is the most important and it seems the most overlooked property.

The main purpose of any new crypto coin should be to become the most accepted payment system, Not a get rich fast for the start-up crew, early adopters or users with the highest processing power. In that case parallels with a Ponzi scheme are easily made.

The more things change......

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 21:30:00 +0000

Quote from the movie Inception: "This is great but I'm telling you, if you keep changing things like this..."

In my previous blog entry I introduced the NXT coin as the new crypto currency. It seemed that this coin was so new that even the logo was not fixed yet when I created the QR Code Walled ID.

Back to the drawing board :-)

Here is the new wallet, I hope this one is fixed... for the moment.

Crypto Currencies, what's n(e)xt?

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Tue, 31 Dec 2013 22:43:00 +0000

Quote from the movie How to Train Your Dragon: "Out with the old and in with the new"

After the success of Bitcoin during the last four years, especially during 2013 a lot of alternative crypto coin, or altcoins have been introduced. Most of these coins have a system that gradually generates new currency during it's lifetime. A process that can cause inflation during this generation phase. For the most common currencies this generation protocol is build upon a proof of work principle. This means that a lot of computing power is needed to generate a new block, and if in the system the amount of computing power increases, the difficulty is raised to keep an predetermined block update rate.
A couple of months ago when the Bitcoin crossed the $1000 value, a mined block could generate a value of $50.000. This generation of money out of thin air seems to good to be true, and when something seems to good to be true is usually is. The cost of estimated power consumption of the worldwide computer network calculating these new Bitcoin blocks was valued higher then $50.000.

This waist of energy does not fit the 'green' concept. So based on a different principle called proof of stake the latest Crypto currency created is the NXT Coin.

Proof of stake has a nice short description on Wikipedia, that is better served with a link then a quote.

In this system the Computers connected to this currency network do not have to compete to find the next valid block, so the total global computing power doesn't have to run full speed. This limits the energy required to keep the network up and running.

So what can be improved for NXT coin?
Currently the source code is not open source, this requires a high level of trust in the developers.
With all coins of this system already in circulation, generated at start-up this raises the question who had these early coins? And the proof of stake looks at the number and age of the coins to grant an online NXT-wallet owner to generate a new block and claim the transaction fees.
The most filled and oldest wallets-owners will profit the most of this proof of stake principle.
It is still a system with an increasing block-chain, that will grow in size over time, in my opinion not suited for mobile phones.
I do think that the proof of stake is a better system with regards to energy consumption and yes, for this currency I also have generated my own wallet..... just in case....

QR Code Trailers.

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Mon, 30 Dec 2013 11:20:00 +0000

Quote from the movie A Beautiful Mind: "But on the night, here you are, making a Hollywood movie..."

There are just a few movie poster, or other movie related promotional material that hold QR Codes.
The Iron Man II movie poster contained a QR Code in the Uni-Beam of the Iron Man suit.
This QR Code was linked to a online promotion.
I haven't found a Iron Man III movie poster containing a QR Code, it seems that the usage of QR Codes in relation with movies is not consistent.

In my opinion each modern movie poster should contain a QR Code linking to the trailer. QR Codes target the mobile phone users, and most modern mobile phone have no problem running these trailers.

With just a bit of enhancement effort the QR Code can be graphically linked to the movie.

Here is my Captain America The Winter Soldier QR Code. Maybe Marvel Studio's is interested :-)

Mining for gold.

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 12:56:00 +0000

Quote from the movie Rat Race: "It was the second largest gold rush in American history."

The 19th of December there was a column making a reference that Bitcoin was following a classic bubble progression. I also like the reference to a 'gold rush' behavior.
A reference to gold rushes in Wikipedia states:
"Gold rushes were typically marked by a general buoyant feeling of a "free for all" in income mobility, in which any single individual might become abundantly wealthy almost instantly."

This leads to the question who actually made money during those gold rushes. Sure there were lucky individuals who actually struck a lot of gold, but a job with less risk and more income certainty is to be a supplier for the gold-diggers. The stores that sold the pickaxe's, shovels, food and other necessities for the miners probably made the most profit.
The same can be said for the crypto coin mining. Since everybody can do actual mining, the free for all and instant wealth is very appealing. In order to do some serious crypto coin mining, you require a lot of calculating power, and currently the most mining power can be made when using the AMD Raedon graphical card as the heart of your mining rig.
I would not be surprised if AMD would report a better year than expected, solely due to the increased demand of their graphical adapters for (Scrypt based) mining rigs. Maybe the safest way to also make money on the bitcoin hype is to buy AMD shares :-).

Reality and history will probably tell that the biggest profits have been made by the early adopters, and the market already has been taken over by bigger players.
Being a supplier for the Crypto Coin market is still interesting, that's why I'm selling these Customized QR Code Wallets.

Pagerank Update.

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Sun, 08 Dec 2013 11:41:00 +0000

Quote from the movie Double Jeopardy: "Here's your Christmas present..."

In order to check the effectiveness of you QR Codes as part of a marketing campaign the usage of the code must be measured.

This same check also applies to websites in general. The most common way to measure the quality of a website is the Google Page-rank.

There are several SEO (search engine optimizing) techniques to create a higher pagerank score. But in order to be sure Google actually needs to update the pagerank.

The update rate used to be about 4 times a year, but in 2013 the first pagerank update was in February. From about May a second update was expected, but it was postponed.

Up to a week ago it was expected that a second pagerank update would not happen in 2013 anymore, until suddenly an update was rolled-out on the 6th of December.

With my QR Code website going from PR1 to PR3 and my blog from unrated to PR1, I cannot complain with the results from this update.
I consider this new rating as an early Christmas present.

Electronic wallet, the QR Code, part IV.

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 13:14:00 +0000

Quote from the movie Kill Bill: Vol. 2: "Daddy, I told Tommy that you were in Perth mining for silver.."

In my last post about crypto-currencies I mentioned mining. In order to experience the mining process I actually started mining for LiteCoin myself. Well not completely by myself, I joined a mining pool.

The process of mining crypto-currencies in a nutshell:

Each transaction made with the digital money needs to be done with a money transfer order. A multiple of these money transfers are being calculated into a block. Mining is the calculation process to determine the validity of this calculation. Since multiple calculations can be valid, a procedure will select a new block based on a difficulty level. For a candidate block, also known as a share, the difficulty level needs to exceed the global set difficulty level of the currency.
When the new block is accepted the finder of this block is rewarded with new coins.
The global difficulty level is the controlling mechanism to prevent too many blocks to be generated. Most of the crypto-currencies have a predetermined and preferred update rate to control the amount of coins that are generated. The height of the rewarded number coins for the finder is also controlled, and will decrease to 0 in a fixed rate, making mining at the introduction of a new currency interesting, that is if this new currency will become an accepted currency in the future. When in the future new blocks are no longer reward with new coins, fee's on transactions will have to keep the currency alive.

The reason I selected to work in a pool is a higher chance on being rewarded. Finding the share with a high enough difficulty level can more or less be compared with a lottery. The calculation speed of the currency itself is defined in GH/s. Where each Hash is the calculation that could be the new block.
For LiteCoin (considered to be the number two to Bitcoin, and still mine-able by 'individuals') the global Hash-rate is about 42 GH/s.
This total number 42 * 1000 * 1000 * 1000, can be considered the number of lottery tickets to win the reward of finding one block. In my trial, using CPU based mining, I got to about 10000 H/s. Giving me 10000 lottery tickets for this draw. The chance I have the 'winning ticket' is about 0.000023%.
By joining a mining pool, in my case the LiteCoin pool of mining4all.eu, this way I increase my chances, but I have to share the winnings. A bigger pool size equals more calculating power, the higher the chance on finding a block.

Electronic wallet, the QR Code, part III.

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Sun, 17 Nov 2013 13:41:00 +0000

Quote from the movie Heat: "There´s a flip side to that coin."

In my last blog entry I mentioned BitCoin as a new future currency. A crypto-currency and e-wallet for all kinds of international payments.

In order to check if BitCoin would be a workable for myself and my business, I did some investigation.

BitCoin itself is a encryption based currency, newly made transactions need to be encrypted, and will generate a new encryption block. The computing power required to make this new encryption block can theoretically be made by any individual with a computer connected to the internet.

The maker of this new block is 'rewarded' with a certain amount of BitCoin, a process called mining. This reward will be decimated over time until a maximum amount of BitCoin has been generated. With the current computer power already solving and creating these new blocks, trying to 'mine' BitCoin by yourself is not worth while. Shared computer power, by adding you computing power towards a calculation pool would be your next best choice.

In this setup there are also a couple of drawbacks that would make is less suitable to integrate it into a global mobile payment system. In order to make your own self sustained wallet, the blockchain, i.e. the generated blocks from the start of BitCoin itself need to be imported into you wallet.
This synchronization is currently running for 2 day's straight on a not too young computer system. Besides downloading the existing blocks with a large accumulated size >10Gb, it also seems to perform a lot of calculations in order to synchronize. A process that I would not really want to perform on a mobile phone.
The second big drawback is the time to have a payments confirmed. The transaction as mentioned need to be part of a new generated block. Blocks are generated with an average of 10 minutes interval, so it could take up-to 10 minutes before your payment is confirmed. Not a time I would like to wait.

I've checked for BitCoin Apps availability for iPhone and Android, there are some Apps that will show the current conversion rate, check progress of a mining pool, etc, but these is no real e-wallet app in existence, probably due too issues as mentioned above.

I would suspect that any kind of future e-currency just has to be able to run on a mobile phone, with transactions to be performed instantly and still have the same kind of basic features as Bitcoin offers; like the security, and the self-governing principle.

There are some web-based services that offer a e-wallet, with some effort the access to the wallet might be made with an App, this option just gives me the idea I'm dealing with a bank again.

There are some alternatives to BitCoin. But a quick observation doesn't show a preferred crypto based currency that can made in a real mobile e-wallet app.

Electronic wallet, the QR Code, part II.

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 15:06:00 +0000

Quote from the movie Jerry Maguire: "Show me the money."

In one of my last blogs entries I reported about PayPal unveiling a new payment system, where they are planning to extend the service to be available in real live as well as an internet payment system.
In the article I was rooting for a e-wallet type of service to make payments between individuals also a possible service. As an alternative for PayPal as e-wallet, a choice can also be made for BitCoin; there service is purely based on a e-wallet structure.

There are some specifics with relation to BitCoin. The most remarkable feature of BitCoin is that the currency is not backed by any bank or country. This raises the question if this currency is now more or less secure that actual money.

The actual value of the BitCoin is linked to supply and demand. BitCoin exist as long as it is used and popular. Would another online system be launched, with benefits that would make it more popular than BitCoin, there is a risk that this currency would be rendered worthless.

On the other side; there is no bank, with a urge to make a profit to pay bonuses to employees, taking risks with your money, or going bankrupt. And the fees taken from transactions is very small compared to the currently established online and offline banks. Where the fee is used to maintain the online system operational.

The actual BitCoin as well as the transactions are based on encryption, making counterfeit money next to impossible. Just be sure you remember the password of your e-wallet. A once forgotten password equals to losing you wallet.

So how does it work? Well quite simple actually. You just open an online e-wallet. This e-wallet get's an ID for example: "15cfk6irBhySNGYKFDd5y47kgMS9Jjpmva". If I want to receive a payment, I just give you my e-wallet id, and you can make a transaction to this wallet. In order to make a payment I would need your e-wallet ID, and an App to where I can specify the amount and a password to initiate the payment.

More information on BitCoin can be found on their website: http://bitcoin.org

Using a QR Code to identify your e-wallet ID is easier than remembering a sequence of 35 characters.
And yes, the displayed QR code does represent my e-wallet :-)
Would you like your own Custom QR Code for your BitCoin e-wallet just go to my custom QR Code relink tool, and login with bcoin/bcoin as credentials. Just enter your 35 character e-wallet ID, and your own BitCoin Custom QR Code is generated.

Call to QR Code action.

noreply@blogger.com (Kangaderoo) — Sun, 10 Nov 2013 12:43:00 +0000

Quote from the movie Garfield: "Maybe I'll get a CAT scan."

Advertisement is process that holds a multitude of purposes. The obvious one is to promote or create awareness for a product or a service.
The advertisement must create enough awareness for a possible client to start a process that would result in a purchase.

So what would be some basic ingredients for an advertisement?

Appeal, radio, TV and printed commercials need to have enough appeal to capture and hold the interest. Only when the targeted audience is 'listening' a message can be relayed. Depending on your product and marketing approach the content can be informative, funny, surprising, etc.

Recognition: The message have an unique factor that will linked it to back to you. In a campaign with multiple commercials a linking factor could be the phrase, actor(s), an image, etc.

Call to action: When your target audience views an commercial advertisement the sale of the product is not magically made. If it is a product that is easily obtainable, for instance in a supermarket, just creating awareness might be enough. Usually you will need to provide means for the customer to obtain your product or service. Advertisements years ago had a cut-out section that was a order form, or a means to get more information. Nowadays with the internet, this section has been replaced with a link to a website, email address, etc.

Technologies like QR Codes, AR and NFC can be used to have an easier access to you 'call to action', and provide a means to keep track of your advertisements success.