How to Generate a QR Code

How to generate a QR Code

QR Codes (Quick Response) allow a smartphone to scan a code and take them directly to a website, without having to type the URL address.  The code can store other types of text data, including coupons, contact information, phone numbers, etc. These act as a convenience for your users.

http://www.keyliner.blogspot.com

QR Codes only store textual information and most commonly take you to a webaddress, youtube video, or an email.  These are "static" addresses and cannot run programs or scripts - in other words, it is not executable.  But be aware that the site you arrive at may do its own tracking or run scripts -- but this is no different than arriving at any webpage with your browser.

To the right is a QR code generated free by kaywa.com and it takes you to this blog, keyliner.blogspot.com.  To read the code, download any bar-code reader for your smartphone or tablet and you can scan this code now, directly from the screen.  On Android, I like to use "Barcode Scanner" by Zxing Team (available in the App store).  Kaywa also has a code-reading App, which I have not tested.


Steps to Generate a Code:

I have used kaywa.com and VistaPrint (Business Card printing) to generate QR codes.   This document shows kaywa.com.  At the bottom of this article are other references.  Also, Wikipedia has a good article on these types of codes.

1.  Open a browser session to

qrcode.kaywa.com

2.  Choose "URL"  (Static, not dynamic)

3.  Click "Generate"

4.  "Other-mouse-click" the code, choose "Save As"
      Save the image as a .PNG

5.  Test

Use Windows Explorer and find the image.

Double-click to preview.
Scan the app with your smartphone or tablet to confirm the address.

6.  Reprint all of your business cards and marketing literature to include this code.


Note:  The first time I generated the code, it took me to a site "Congratulations: You have won a free prize".  I returned to Kaywa.com and re-generated the code and three others and did not see this problem.  I am unsure why this happened and at first thought Kaywa might be nefarious, but I see no further indications of problems and the site and their product comes recommended by others.


Mobile vs Desktop Sites:

If you are using a QR code to arrive at a URL, choose a URL designed for a mobile app, because only mobile devices will be scanning the code.

For example, arriving at http://www.keyliner.blogspot.com  (this blogging tool), it will automatically route a smart-phone to a site designed for a smaller screen.  But the same address, scanned from a larger tablet, arrives at the desktop site.  Your website may work differently.  For example, the main landing page for a desktop browser might be http://mysite.com, while a mobile device might need to arrive at http://mysite.com/mobile; use the mobile site if not automatic.


Commercial Use:

For a monthly fee, Kaywa.com can generate something they call a "Dynamic" code. With this, the vendor can track your code, how often clicked, etc., and can re-direct the visitor to a different address of your choosing -- all without reprinting the code or marketing literature.  In other words, you could, in August, direct everyone to your August Sales campaign and then in September, change to a different address, with its own tracking.  For commercial ventures, this idea is recommended.

With their other commercial products, you can have the same QR route iphone users to a different site than an Android user - for example, you could route them directly to the App Store, depending on their device.

QR Code Differences:

I returned to VistaPrint to build new business cards and noticed they added a QR Code feature (keyliner reviewed).  I found it interesting that their generated code is different than kaywa's and I do not know why; it may be different versions of the QR standard or different error corrections.  All indications are the two codes go directly to my selected destination and do not pass-through either of these companies.  Here are the two codes:

Related links:
qrcode.kaywa.com (as described this article)
delivr.com/qr-code-generator Untested by keyliner
qurify.com/en Untested by keyliner
VistaPrint Business Cards

Wikipedia article on QR Codes
Structure
Layout

Western Digital My Cloud - Streaming Music

Western Digital My Cloud - Streaming Music.

I bought the Western Digital "My Cloud" drive for backups and found it is a capable and useful device (see this article:  "Western Digital My Cloud Review").  to my surprise, it also acts as an interesting music, video and photo-streaming device.  I can get to my music and photos from all of my internet devices, including my phone and tablet.  This has been entertaining and convinient. 

Streaming Music from the Cloud Drive

has been unexpectedly fun

In the past, I stored all music on a laptop, making the laptop a particularly large MP3 player.  Now I store all of my music on the Western Digital drive and use my phone, tablet or PC to play the content.  This works at my office, in coffee shops, and at home. 

Benefits:

• Listen to your entire music library without a PC
• Listen from your Smart Phone, tablet, laptop, PC, or Internet-aware TV
• Up to 3TB 
• No need to synchronize or download music to each device
• DLNA compliant

Drawbacks:

• You must be on either your local network or on the Internet
• I do not recommend running over a cellular network (expensive data-plan)
   
• The WD "Cloud" app is a primitive music player, only allowing you to pick a folder (think album) and play the music within.  You cannot pick genres or multiple albums simultaneously.  It also does not show album thumbnails, allow you to mark favorites, etc.  However, in practice, this is ok; it is easy enough to pick a folder, but it is weak.  Update: 2014.08 - the latest version supports building a play list.

Unresolved issues:

• Windows Media Player (Windows 8 and probably older versions) are having troubles mounting the remote library.  Although I added the \\SAN\public\Music folders to the list of scanned libraries, it has yet to index all of the albums, for reasons unknown and each time I load the program, it grabs more of them.
• The WD Cloud App for the PC does not play music correctly; it only plays a single-track.  The same program on other devices works well, as described below.  Instead, use Windows Media Player.  Update: 2014.08 - the latest version can now play multiple tracks from a play list, within the app and you no longer have to use Windows Media Player.  However, this is still a relatively simple feature - but workable.
   
• You still have to use a PC to digitize Album/CD's and migrate them to the Streaming Folders.  Details, below.

 Regardless of the drawbacks and issues, it works fairly-well, especially on my Android devices.  Apple devices should work equally well.


Streaming Setup:

Instructions assume a Windows Desktop and Android or apple tablets/phones.  (For general instructions, from the WD System Tray icon, choose Learning Center, How To, "Stream HD Content" or go directly to this WD site:  Stream HD Content)


1.  Get the drive operational (where the Dashboard works and you have installed the software recommended in this Keyliner article: Western Digital Cloud Drive Review.

2.  Launch the Dashboard and enable Media Streaming

From the System Tray's icon, open the "Dashboard" or alternately, open a browser session to http://wdMyCloud  (or as you named your drive.  Mine is http://wolfhouseSan.

a.  From the Dashboard, choose Settings, then from the left-nav, "Media"

Click for Larger View

b.  Turn Media Sharing On

c.  Optional:  Examine the drive's Twonky Services -- especially if you have multiple streaming devices. 

WD is using a service called Twonky for streaming.  Although not listed with the vendor's documentation, open this session in a browser to look at your drive's settings:

http://yourSANname:9000    (http://myWDCloud:9000)

For example:
http://wolfhousesan:9000   or
http://192.168.200.200:9000  (where your IP address will be different)

Confirm this responds.  The default settings should be adequate.


4.  Copy your music Library to the Cloud Drive:

a.  Using Windows Explorer, locate your Music library, typically "This PC/Music"  (or in my case, C:\Data\Music).  Highlight all sub-folders (the albums/artist), select Copy.

b.  In Network (Network Neighborhood), tunnel to your SAN drive:

\\myWDCloud\Public\Shared Music\Uploaded

c.  Paste into the Uploaded folder (ignore the "Mirrored" folder).  See Windows Media Player notes below for other information.

The initial copy will take time.  The DLNA Streaming Service (Twonky) will automatically detect the files and catalog. 


Playing Music

To Play Music from a Tablet or Phone:

a.  From your tablet, install the WD Cloud Application.
b.  Open the App, authenticate (login) to your drive.
c.  Tunnel to the Public\Shared Music\Uploaded folder
d.  Tunnel to an (album) folder
e.  Double-click any (MP3) song in the library; it will start playing


To Play Music from a PC using My Cloud App:

The WD Cloud App behaves similarly to a tablet, as described above, except, as-of this writing, the WD Cloud Application "My Cloud" will play only one track at-a-time from an album folder.  It will not move automatically to the next track, making the feature useless.  -- Update: 2014.08:  This has been fixed and it now plays the entire album or multiple albums against a 'play list'.  Version 1.0.541 or newer.
 

To Play Music from a PC Windows Media Player:

This documentation assumes Windows 8, Windows Media Player 12.  Older versions are similar.  I no longer recommend this step and would rather use the WD My Cloud software.  Regardless, here are the steps.

a.  Launch Windows Media Player

b.  From the top-menu, >Organize, Layout, [x] Show menu bar

c.  Select File, Manage Libraries, Music.  Click "Add".  Tunnel to Network, your SAN, then tunnel to this location:  Public\Shared Music\Uploaded, Selecting the "Uploaded" folder.  For example, mine shows as "\\wolfhouseSAN\Public\Shared Music\Uploaded"

d.  The program will detect the albums and add to its database.  I have had troubles in this area, where Media Player does not see all the albums.  Reloading the program several times, seemed to have fixed the problem.


e.  Once loaded, albums will play from Media Player normally.


To RIP music directly to the SAN (Windows Media Player):

Note:  At my house, my main music machine is a laptop, which is used to RIP music CD's and it copies them to a local drive, local Windows Media Player library.  This is the library I copied to the SAN. You can change the write-location with these steps:

* Launch Media Player and expose the top-menu:  >Organize, Layout, [x] Show Menu Bar
* Select Tools, Options, [RIP Music]
* Change the Rip Music Location, choosing the (Browse, Network) SAN Upload folder

At my house, this is "\\wolfhouseSAN\Public\Shared Music\Uploaded

* Recommended:  Change RIP Settings to
- Format MP3,
- Choose High or Best Quality

However, at my house, I am comfortable in keeping my laptop as the main music Library, but this means manually syncing (uploading) new albums to the SAN drive (literally, copying the folder).  I may re-visit this idea in the future, but right now the laptop travels to places without a network connection and the library would be nice to have.  Besides, this acts as a backup. 

Using Itunes:

I have no current experience with Apple's music player.  The WD Learning Center, or better yet, the downloaded WD Cloud Drive Owner's manual, has more details on this topic.


Conclusions

Even with the shortcomings, I now use my tablet and phone to stream music.  I no longer have to download albums to these devices (unless I am off the grid).  It works well, especially on the local network.  On slower networks, the devices may hesitate while building the cache, as expected, but overall I have been happy.

The Western Digital My Cloud app is a poor program, but it will at least play the music.  I have enjoyed this feature.

Related Articles:
Keyliner: WD Cloud Review

Western Digital My Cloud Review

Western Digital My Cloud - Personal Cloud Storage -Installation comments and feature reviews.  This is a recommended device.

I had a problem:  Of the 6 or 7 computers at my house, my 650GB External USB drive could no longer hold all the image backups I keep, plus, moving the portable USB drive from machine to machine was a nuisance and it did not work well for daily backups.  It was time to change and a Network Attached hard drive made sense (NAS - Network Attached Storage).

Related articles:
Disk Imaging Cleanup Steps


Western Digital (and other vendors) now sell relatively inexpensive "Cloud Drives" - basically a NAS drive, on the wire, visible from any device on the Internet.  They act like DropBox, GDrive and OneDrive -- except the drive is in your house and there are no monthly fees.

I bought a single-bay, 3TB model for $170. They also sell a 4TB dual-bay RAID-0 (with two 4TB drives, mirrored) for $350 - and if you can afford it, this is the better model because it copies one hard-drive to the other, in the event of a failure.   

With a NAS/Cloud Drive, you get these benefits:

• Stand-alone unit; no server or dedicated PC needed
• Large capacities, relatively cheap (3TB for $170)
• Visible to all devices in your network; disk appears as a Network Share 
• Visible to all your devices on the Internet, including your phone, tablet, laptops, etc.
• No need to pack a USB drive from machine-to-machine
   
• Acts like a Drop-box, Gdrive, OneDrive, but lives at your house
• Build public and private shares; invite other people to use the device
• Supports continuous or scheduled backups
• Supports Streaming Music and Video folders
• No monthly fees
   

And you get these drawbacks:

• Vastly slower than an internal SATA connected drive
• Much slower than a USB 2 or USB 3 connection
• Cannot connect drive directly to a PC USB Port 
• Image restores may be complicated; details below

Setup

Setup was easy and you should have no troubles.  Basically plug a Cat-5 network cable and launch a configuration program (see software, below).  The drive will be online and ready in a few minutes. But the automatic setup has two flaws.

By default, the drive picks up a DHCP IP Address from your router.  Although easy, I think this is a mistake - the address should be fixed, assigned manually from outside the DHCP range.  Admittedly, most home users won't know what I am talking about, but if your main router reboots and re-assigns the addresses, it would likely cause a world of odd problems.  I hard-coded my IP address, setting it to 192.168.xxx.200 -- outside of my DHCP pool.

The second issue was almost cosmetic.  The drive named itself "WD Cloud" (or something like that).  But everything about this product is called WD-Cloud-this- and WD-Cloud-that.  I got confused and later decided to rename the main drive to "WolfHouseSAN1".  The name change was less-than graceful and I had to reboot every connected device and re-install some of the Western Digital software.  On your drive, assign a name as early in the process as you can, then install the software.

The drive does not have a power switch.  To turn off, you must use the Dashboard software in the system tray.  And for something as important as this, you should put the drive's power, as well as the router that feeds it, on a UPS for power-protection.  

Bewildering Software

Western Digital has a bewildering hodgepodge of downloaded software.  There are a half-dozen different utilities, all doing different things and the download page I arrived at did not adequately describe what the software does or why you might need it.

Here are my recommendations:

Click for a larger view

The downloads are a mixture of ZIP and MSI files and the process of downloading and figuring out how to run the installations is probably complex enough to keep non-technical people from succeeding.

Even the names are confusing.

"WD My Cloud Mirror" is the main installation program -- use this even if you did not buy the Mirrored drive.  It should have been called "WD MyCloud Setup".  This program was enough to get the drive online but you will also need to install Quick View to get to the advanced settings.  These should have been part of the setup program.
 
"WD Smartware Update" is the program for backups (why wasn't it called "Smartware Backup"?) and even though it is called "update," it is not a patch or update -- it is the real program.  This is the reason you bought the drive and you need to install this separately.


Image Backup

I bought the device to hold my Acronis (a third-party backup utility) image backups.  Acronis saw the drive* and ran the over-the-wire backup but the first 80G backup took 30 hours. 

The cause of the slowness is a downstream 10/100mb switch, which I pass through on my way to this device. Further research confirmed this to be the culprit.  This drive, and all devices that intend to talk to it, must be on a gigabit network.  I will have to retire my 10/100 switch.

After moving the drive to the main router, speeds are still nothing to brag about.  The backup mentioned above still took 15 hours.  Granted, image backups are particularly large.  Launch them at night and let them run unattended.  But if you needed to snap an image before a big software change, you will have to resort to a regular external USB drive, just for the speed.


* Using Acronis on the Western Digital Cloud drive required minor adjustments in the backup job.  Specify the local workstation's login credentials (e.g. the account used to login into the workstation.  For example, with Windows 8, JSmith@gmail.com).  For the destination, use a UNC path to one of the Shares defined on the SAN; for example "\\wolfhouseSAN1\Bak".  Within that share, create a sub-directory to hold the backup.  After this, the image backup will run, albeit slowly.  Too bad Western Digital did not include an Image Backup utility with this drive.

Restoring an image with Acronis is more problematic.  The bootable Acronis recovery disk will not be able to see the cloud drive -- even though the Acronis Windows client was able to backup the original drive.  The difference being Acronis backup ran in Windows, with Windows drivers, the restore runs in Linux.  To restore to a bare-metal replacement drive, install Windows and Acronis to the new machine -- this is admittedly horrible.  Instead, what I do is copy the image (.tib files) from the Western Digitial drive, to a USB drive, then boot the Acronis Linux disk.  From here, run a standard restore.  Of course, if you are trying to restore just a file or a directory or two, you will not have these problems; launch the program and restore the file.


Related: When making any disk-image backup (using a third-party program, such as Acronis), be sure to follow the steps documented here:  Disk Imaging Cleanup Steps


Data Backup

For normal day-to-day file backups, use the "Smartware" backup utility that comes with the Western Digital.  This is a slick program but there are several decisions you have to make and it has limitations.

It can run two types of backups:  A Category Backup, where it looks at the entire drive for particular file extensions or it can backup file-by-file, folder-by-folder.  Both types have limitations and benefits, as described below.  In the end, I chose the Folder backup.  With either type, you can run a continuous backups, where a saved file is instantly backed-up, or you can set a schedule.  

The different types of backups are: 

• "Category" backup looks for certain types of data files (by category, DOC, XLS, Music, video, etc.).  Approximately 300 extensions are supported, with a complete list of extensions on the support site.  However, I do not trust  this type of backup because if you have unexpected types, such as my Macro Files, or other unusual file types or databases, it will not back them up. 
   
• Backup of Selected Folders - Mark all the folders you want to backup, and exclude those that you don't (excluding Temp and Cache folders, for example).  I recommend this method, but it has one giant caution. 
  
  The biggest problem with a File Backup is you have to include and exclude folders.  When you mark a folder to backup, all files and folders within are backed up.  On the surface this is okay, but if new folders are added at a root of a folder, it will *not* be backed up by default.  (A better design would have been to select the top-most folder, then mark selected subfolders to exclude.   This way, any newly-added files and folders would automatically be selected.  Sadly, the software does not work this way at the top-most folders.  Because of this, you will have to periodically check to make sure all directories are included in the backup.
   
• For either the Category or the Selected Folder backup, you can choose "Continuous backups" (where as soon as a file is saved, it is backed up) or a "Scheduled Backup" where it is periodically backed up, on a timed schedule.
  
  The Continuous backup is a neat idea, but chatty.  If you save your Excel sheet multiple times during the day, it will backup multiple times.  I have the software set to keep 5 generations (5 copies or revisions of each file).  With a continuous backup, you may consume the generational backups sooner than expected.  All is handled automatically, but it is nice to have a backup of a file from 3 days ago.  You may (or may not) lose some of this ability with a continuous backup.
  
  The other option is a Scheduled backup -- which I like.  At first I had the backup set to run "Once per day" at 8:00am (when I was likely not using the computer), but I found the machine was usually asleep and it would skip the backup.  When the machine woke, usually in the evening, it does not pickup and run the missed schedule; instead, it waits until the next (8:00am) job.  When I realized this, I had missed 5 days of backups. 
  
  To work around this, switch to the "Every Hour" backup. This way, if a schedule is missed, it will catch-up the next time the computer is in use and you are not beating the drive with a continuous backup.  This also gives better control over the generational backups.
  
  Illustrated on the above-right is the utility's status.  As you can see, I have 18GB of data backed up (Selected folders) with a thin sliver of them pending.  I excluded 61GB of programs, operating system and temp files, knowing I had an Image backup with Acronis.

Scheduled backup of my data folders has been glorious.  Automatic and mostly unattended.  As a bonus, you can reach into the backups folders from your tablet or phone and show all your friends the pictures you took the day before, without having to download them to your phone; just reach into your cloud drive and look at last-night's backup.  This is not as the software was intended, but it works really well.

Other Backup Concerns 

Because the drive lives in my house, it is susceptible to fires, floods and other disasters; this type of drive does not replace an offsite backup.  I still use GDrive (OneDrive, DropBox, etc.) for important off-site data backups of my most important files.

I wish the Smartware backup could run multiple tasks against my drive.  With this, I could launch a second backup and move selected files to my GDrive or OneDrive folders and allow those utilities to make their offsite backup.

Then there is this concern:  How does one backup the backup drive?  The Smartware utility provides a "Safepoint", which can mirror the entire drive, but then you would need a second drive large enough to hold this drive.  If you can afford to, buy the dual-bay mirrored drive, which helps solve part of this problem.  I will have to explore this idea sometime in the future. 


As a File Share

The drive can also act as a standard network file share.  Files saved on a share are available to all of your devices, all in a central location. However, this has been vaguely disappointing.

On the home network, seeing the share, saving and retrieving files, has been noticeably slow -- even after moving the drive to a gigabit switch (the drive was unusable on a 10/100 switch).  The slowness is found in two main areas.

If the drive is busy running a backup, it will be slow for other clients - taking 15 to 30 seconds to load even a minor document.  And, if the cloud-drive is asleep due to inactivity, it will take 40 to 50 seconds to wake and retrieve the file.

If everything is awake and a big image backup is not running in the background, the performance is good.  To retrieve a file, select "Network" on the file-open dialog.

The drive supports separate user accounts and you can build multiple shares (folders), exposing them to the Internet or keeping them private to your network.  Essentially, the drive appears as an SMB NT Server, with shares on the disk pack.  This works as expected and the details are too boring to explain here.  Share and other settings are exposed in the System Tray's Dashboard.

USB Connections

The drive has a USB 3 port and you will need a male-to-male USB 3 cable, not supplied.  But to my surprise, the drive would not register when plugged in.  It turns out this USB port is only compatible with the USB 3 port on routers (WDC.com Answer 1544) and only more expensive routers have this feature.  The port can also be used to plug in an External USB 3 hard drive and it can act as an additional Share, managed by the cloud software, or more interestingly, can be the backup drive for a "Safepoint" backup of the backup drive (more below). 

In any case, the limitation about not being able to mount the drive directly to a PC was not mentioned on the box and this means I cannot run Image backups or restored directly on the drive (This is why you cannot use Acronis to directly restore when booting from the Recovery disk).

Some may complain the drive will not run over wireless.  If it could, it would take a month to run a backup.


As a Streaming Device

The drive also supports streaming.  For instance, I copied all of my digitized music to the Public Music folder, turned on the streaming feature, and now I have access to my music, from any device, both on the internal network and from the Internet. This has been a very entertaining feature and I was completely surprised about how useful this was.  See this article for details:  Keyliner Streaming Music with a Western Digital Drive.


Conclusions

The drive is working well as a backup drive, both when using the Smartware utility and with third-party backup programs.  Image backups are leisurely when compared to a direct-connected USB drive.  This is a network-attached device and it will never be as fast as a direct-connected drive.  If you have any non-gigabit routers, upgrade or the drive will be unusable. 

Using the drive as a standard file share has been vaguely disappointing because of speed issues. Sometimes, depending on activity, it is acceptably fast and other times it is noticeably slow. I am mixed about whether I will move normal documents to this drive or if I will keep it as a backup-only disk.

Western Digital needs to simplify the number of software decisions that have to be made during the installation.  I could imagine a monolithic download, with a menu-driven tutorial to help people decide what to do.  Update:  I later discovered that I arrived at their standard Support download page, which was less-than descriptive.  Separately, they have a more menu-driven page at this link:  http://setup.wd2go.com/?mod=download&device=mc  -- this page has slightly better descriptions if you click the "learn more" buttons, but it still does not make recommendations on what to install or in which order.

Just to gripe a bit more about the Support Downloads page.  The software listed here had the barest of descriptions -- such as "This download contains the latest version of the WD Quick View for Windows" (no kidding) and a tiny description, such as "This is a utility that will discover WD network attached storage drives on the network and provide drive status information." Is this important?  Should I install it?  My recommendations in the chart above should help you get started. 

With the complaints aside, this drive accomplished my goals in a way that is hard to do with other methods.  I recommend this product. 



Additional Costs

Finally, when considering your backup solutions, there are other costs, above and beyond the price of the drive.  Ideally, you would do all of these suggestions, at great expense:

• Upgrade all routers to gigabit speeds.  
• Buy a second Cloud drive to backup the first (or buy the dual-bay drive).  You have to worry about drive failures.
• Pay for the professional version of Smartware and then subscribe to DropBox, Onedrive, etc. so you can have more than 2G of free space.  Use this for offsite backups of your most important data.  The Professional Version of Smartware backup makes this easier to manage (although I have not tried this myself).
• Image backups are highly recommended.  Buy a third-party product, such as Acronis.  
• Sadly, in order to restore an image from the WD Cloud Drive (a disaster), you will need an external USB-3 drive and a laptop.  You will be forced to copy the backup to the USB before you can restore the image.  You wouldn't need this if the WD drive could connect via USB.  
• Put this drive on a UPS battery power -- after all, this is a spinning hard disk and it will not like power failures.  The router should be on UPS too.  As you can see, this can get complicated.

Related articles:
Disk Imaging Cleanup Steps
WDC.com Downloads - Technical
WDC Downloads - User facing