Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Fox’s Glee is slumping in its third season–but does that mean people are losing interest in TV musicals? NBC’s new Broadway-focused drama, Smash, which premieres February 6, is about to find out. Three industry pros share tips on how Smash can avoid Glee‘s missteps and become, well, a smash.

Photo: Flickr user gudlyf (Glee)

A version of this article appears in the February 2012 issue of Fast Company.

 

Google has been testing more secure ways for users to access their Gmail accounts from public computers, and one experiment included QR codes.

The test is no longer available, but Google says there’s more to come. A PCWorld writer was able to successfully access his Gmail account via both Android and iPhone (Google said it would also work with Windows Phone). Check out the video above to find out how the login worked.

Would you use this method for checking your email at a public terminal?

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Check out some of our favorite QR codes in the slideshow below.

Designed by Paperlinks, a charming elephant drawing adds a dash of Asia to this LA restaurant’s QR code.

HBO’s True Blood season 3 was the first TV series to get a designer QR code in an ad, thanks to a collaboration between Warbasse Design, .phd agency and SET Japan.

This clever code from Patrick Donnelly is made up of bottle tops and links to the beer company’s mobile optimized Facebook page.

Chances are you’ve already seen SET’s “Help Japan” design. As well as extending the code to make an instantly recognizable red cross, the faux parts of the code contain related symbols for an arresting overall effect.

Another SET creation, QR codes get playful with a dose of Takeshi Murakami-influenced design for Louis Vuitton’s mobile website

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Wine app Corkbin gets the Paperlinks treatment with a design that co-ordinates with, and even features, its distinctive logo.

Cliffano Subagio spotted these awesome Disney codes in Japan where QR is a well established marketing tool.

This Paperlinks code is both cool and calm with made-you-look palm trees that add a special design touch.

An experimental design from Patrick Donnelly, we love the witty, retro appeal.

The dots from Greenfield Lodge’s floral logo are replicated throughout the design to great effect.

Anther concept design from Patrick Donnelly, we like the idea of arranging real-life objects into a scannable code.

Paperlinks added musical instruments into this concert venue’s design, a neat way to tease consumers into reading the code.

Artists Tom Burtonwood and Holly Holmes have fun by extruding the classic code design with a code-within-a-code concept.

As well as integrating elements from the group’s logo, we like how Paperlinks made the design appear painted with wine.

These striking TIME covers from SET show just how creative you can get with QR codes.

Patrick Donnelly is such a QR code enthusiast, he spent months on Farmville “growing” a design!

Following two rough years of drought in the Horn of Africa, the United Nations has declared famine in two regions of southern Somalia.

According to the UN, a famine means more than 30% of children in an area are malnourished, at least 20% of households face extreme food shortages and more than two people per 10,000 die each day.

Neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia are badly hurting as well. More than 12 million people are at risk of starvation as the region faces its worst drought in 60 years.

The situation in Somalia is particularly dire, as Al-Shabaab warlords (an Al-Qaeda affiliate organization) have until recently blocked foreign aid workers from the region. Somalis seeking food come to Kenya’s Dadaab Refugee Camp, the largest U.N. refugee settlement in the world, by the thousands each day.

The U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP) began airlifting food to Mogadishu, Somalia, Dolo, Ethiopia and Wajir, Kenya on Tuesday. The U.N. has raised $1 billion for the region since November 2010 but says it will need another $1 billion before the year’s end to prevent widespread starvation in the region.

While overcoming this humanitarian disaster — which the WFP calls the highest global humanitarian priority — will not be easy, thankfully creative attempts to help are sprouting up across the web.

Here are four ways the web is responding:

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Bono Brings Blogger Moms to Kenya

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U2 frontman Bono and ONE brought 10 American mommy bloggers to Africa to connect with Kenyan mothers from July 23 to 30. The American moms shadowed community healthcare workers, met female farmers and visited one of Africa’s largest slums in Nairobi. The moms are sharing their experiences on their respective blogs, as well as on the organization’s blog, It Only Takes ONE Mom.

The bloggers and their readers are also discussing the trip on Twitter using the hashtag #ONEMoms.

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Africans Mobilize on Twitter

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Like most major international crises today, Twitter is the go-to forum for Africans to discuss the situation on the ground. Users are asking for the international community to send aid to the starving region of the world’s poorest continent. The International Business Times reported twenty tweets per minute relate to the famine in East Africa, using the hashtags #HornOfAfrica, #Famine, #Drought, #Somalia, #Kenya and #Ethiopia.

Groups such as Kenyans4Kenya, a campaign of Kenyans helping other Kenyans, have started to respond to calls.

The WFP also has a social media initiative, WeFeedback, for sharing food with the world’s neediest.

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Online Fundraising

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Legendary reggae group The Wailers and artists Duane Stephenson and Bishop Lamont recorded “A Step for Mankind” to benefit the WFP’s work to combat drought in the Horn of Africa. While the YouTube video was recorded in September 2010, the escalation of the disaster from drought to famine has led to a resurgence of the single’s sales online.

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George Harrison’s The Concert for Bangladesh

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In honor of the 40th anniversary of George Harrison’s The Concert for Bangladesh, a digital edition of the album will be released exclusively on iTunes on August 1. The two-part concert, organized by Harrison and Ravi Shankar in Madison Square Garden on August 1, 1971, was the first benefit of its magnitude in history.

All proceeds from the reissue sales will go to the George Harrison fund for UNICEF, benefiting the children affected by drought and famine in the Horn of Africa.

To wit, UNICEF declared August a “Month for Giving,” with artists such as Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Leon Russell, Brian Wilson, Selena Gomez, Enrique Iglesias, Arcade Fire and Nas committing to spread word of the campaign to their followers on Facebook and Twitter.

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How You Can Help

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If you would like to donate to the famine victims, here are some of the many sites collecting money:

• CARE
• International Rescue Committee
• Mercy Corps
• Oxfam
• Samaritan’s Purse
• Save the Children
• UNICEF
• World Food Programme
• World Vision

Did we miss any Internet mobilizations for the Horn of Africa? Can technology stop a famine? Let us know in the comments.

Whatever people may say about Lady Gaga, she has been a positive influence in the philanthropic world. And now she has partnered with the Robin Hood Foundation to launch two Facebook contests to support the New York-based charity, which benefits the poor and homeless.

One contest is designed to increase Robin Hood‘s Likes on Facebook while the other asks Facebook fans to help decide how Gaga should divide a $1 million donation to the charity.

Both contests stem from Robin Hood’s annual May 9 fundraising gala where Gaga will be performing. The Robin Hood sweepstakes is giving away two tickets every weekday to attend the concert. Fans are entered into the lottery by liking the page and inviting friends to join.

It’s a huge chance for Robin Hood to boost its social media presence thanks to Gaga’s millions of fans, says Mark Bezos, Robin Hood’s senior VP of development and communications.

“The exposure that comes from someone who has 32 million Facebook fans is a great opportunity for us, but at the end of the day this promotion, this contest, is about helping people who need it and doing it in a way that is not superficial,” he says

The second contest, hosted on Gaga’s Facebook page, will feature five different charities tackling local issues around poverty and homelessness. Fans can vote for which charity most deserves Gaga’s money. The results will be tiered, with the winner receiving $500,000, the person at second place receiving $250,000 and so on. Gaga will donate $1 million in total to the five charities. Basically, it’s a crowdsourced way for Gaga’s fans to tell her where she should donate.

Crowdsourced giving campaigns are definitely new ground for Robin Hood. Even though the foundation hands out approximately $130 million in grants annually, it has kept a relatively low profile. Bezos hopes the pairing with Gaga will bring greater awareness to the foundation’s mission. “At Robin Hood, we don’t give grants by popular vote, it’s by results,” Bezos said. “We don’t want to go down this path just because it seems like it would a really fun way to engage a lot of people. What we promise our donors is that every dollar is going to work as hard as it can to improve the lives of poor people in New York.”

To that end, each of the five charities in the contest have been vetted and approved by the foundation. The tiered system ensures that none of the non-profits will walk away empty-handed.

Lady Gaga has proven herself to be quite the activist. She donated proceeds of a New York concert to rebuilding efforts in Haiti, she has been selling bracelets to support Japan and she is also an active supporter of LGBT rights. Bezos says the idea to collaborate with Robin Hood actually came from Gaga’s camp. “We don’t trade in celebrity a whole lot, it’s not something that we seek out so when the opportunity comes to us, we just make sure, first and foremost from our point of view, that it’s going to do the most good to the people who need it,” he says.

Robin Hood has found a way to include Gaga without sacrificing its core message or best practices. It’s not an easy feat, but it puts the cause first. Other partners in the campaign include Network For Good, Partnerships 4 Purpose, Causes and Buddy Media.

What do you think of celebrities supporting non-profits? Is the collaboration a good match? What could they have done better? Sound off in the comments.

If you’re not getting paid what you’re worth, there are only two possible reasons:
1. People don’t know what you’re worth, or
2. You’re not (currently) worth as much as you believe

The first situation can’t happen unless you permit it to. If you’re undervalued, then you have a communication problem, one that you can solve by telling accurate stories that resonate.

Far more likely, though, is the second problem. If there are reasonable substitutes for your work, and those substitutes are seen as cheaper, then you’re not going to get the work. ‘Worth’ in this case means, “what does it cost to get something like that if something like that is what I want?”

A cheaper substitute might mean buying nothing. Personal coaches, for example, usually sell against this alternative. It’s not a matter of finding a cheaper coach, it’s more about having no coach at all. Same with live music. People don’t go to cheaper concerts, they just don’t value the concert enough to go at all.

And so we often find ourselve stuck, matching the other guy’s price, or worse, racing to the bottom to be cheaper. Cheaper is the last refuge of the marketer unable to invent a better product and tell a better story.

The goal, no matter what you sell, is to be seen as irreplaceable, essential and priceless. If you are all three, then you have pricing power. When the price charged is up to you, when you have the power to set the price, there is a line out the door and you can use pricing as a signaling mechanism, not merely a way to make a living.

Of course, the realization of what it takes to create value might break your heart, because it means you have to specialize, take risks, create art, leave a positive impact and adopt generosity in all you do. It means you have to develop extraordinary expertise and that you are almost always hanging way out of the boat, about to fall out.

The pricing power position in the market is coveted and valuable… The ability to have the power to set a price is at the heart of what it means to do business profitably, so of course there is a never-ending competition for pricing power.

The curse of the internet is that it provides competitive information, which makes pricing power ever more difficult to exercise. On the other hand, the benefit of the internet is that once you have it, the list of people who want to pay for your irreplaceable, essential and priceless contribution will get even longer.

Chad Burgess is the Marketing Manager at SeatGeek, a forecasting and search web application that helps fans save money on sports and concert tickets. You can find more from Chad on the SeatGeek Blog or follow him on Twitter at @chadburgess.

We’ve previously shown you how to discover music, how to find concerts online, and how to share setlists. If you’ve got those areas of social music covered, you might now be looking for concerts when you are on-the-go.

If you want to simplify the concert process on your smartphone, mobile apps make it easier than ever to find and attend concerts in your area. These five apps will evolve your music lifestyle so that you never have to miss another concert again.

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1. Local Concerts

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Local Concerts (by iLike) is the “#1 concert app” on the iPhone. This simple app allows you to browse concerts in your area based on music in your music library. The search function lets you perform both artist and venue searches. You can also set up alerts so that you don’t lose track of your shows.

Being able to access just “My Artists” is the core benefit to most of these apps, as it simplifies the browsing phase by eliminating random artists and bands. The ‘Venues’ screen is extremely comprehensive, but does not allow for filtering. The ability to sort by ‘Most Popular’ venues in your area would be a really nice feature for general navigation.

Summary: Local Concerts has been one of the most popular concert apps since its debut. If you are looking for a simple UI and an easy way to find concerts, this may be the app for you.

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2. preAmped

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PreAmped provides popular concert apps for the iPhone, AndroidAndroid, and the Palm Pre. PreAmped was created to “capture and share the experience of a concert.”

Once you have found the event you are looking for, the app has options to share with your friends (by e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter ), find tickets, and view directions to the show. The app features “Shows,” “Artists,” and “Venues” screens, and also offers the ability to toggle by location on the venues screen. This feature lists the venues closest to your GPS location.

Similar to most top apps in this space, the preAmped app allows you to see upcoming concerts based on your music library.

Summary: If you are constantly on the go and like to easily discover new venues in your current location, you will want to check out this app.

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3. Gigbox

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Gigbox is an app for Android that allows fans to find relevant, local events tailored to their music tastes. Gigbox has a rich social feature set including live chat, ratings, and picture publishing. “Live” mode is designed to enhance the shared experience of concertgoers by surfacing pictures, ratings, and “mood” sourced from all users in the audience. This content is then aggregated and published on the Gigbox website for future reference. Although these features require a high adoption rate, they are unique and potentially useful.

Gigbox is integrated with Last.fm, which provides comprehensive data, streaming music, and the ability to sign in with your Last.fm account.

Summary: A socially ambitious app that you should check out if you are active on Last.fm and/or an Android user looking to enhance your concert experience with social media.

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4. StubHub

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StubHub’s app is another great download. Currently only on the iPhone, it offers the ability to sort by “Upcoming,” “Events,” “Favorites ,” or “Search,” and then ultimately purchase tickets within the app.

“Upcoming” provides a complete list of events in your area including sports, concerts and theater, with corresponding tickets. The UI is a little cumbersome as you have to scroll to the end of the long sports section to access the concerts. An “Events” screen allows for easier filters by “Sports ,” “Concert,” “Theater,” and “Venue” which can be improved in future releases with additional sub-category sorting options (currently it is alphabetized).

The “Favorites” screen allows you to toggle to “iPod Artists” to view only tickets that match artists in your library. What separates StubHub ticketing is that they offer a tightly integrated buying experience directly in the app. Tickets can be purchased by credit card or with an existing StubHub or PayPal account.

Not to be left out on the social side, StubHub offers social media integration via Facebook and Twitter, so you can share upcoming events with your friends.

Summary: StubHub is best for those looking to easily purchase tickets on-the-go.

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5. YP Mobile

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From YP.com (the redesigned yellowpages.com), YP Mobile is the sleeper hit on this list. Even though it is within the umbrella of a traditional media company and is not strictly for finding concerts, this app (available on iPhone, Droid, BlackberryRocks!, and Pre) has partnered with ZventsZvents to produce some surprisingly robust event data.

YP Mobile allows you to search thousands of events by venue or city in addition to offering all the “what” and “where” search capabilities that we are accustomed to on YP.com and other local verticals.

Summary: If you want a single app to find a local concert, a restaurant to go to before, and a bar to go to after, this might be the choice for you.

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Image courtesy of iStockphotoiStockphoto, mattjeacock