Barcode

Several years ago, every inch of the New York City Subway system – along with other public transportation systems around the world, was covered in graffiti. Now there's fewer tags, but more ways to express yourself. The virtual world is one new venue for graffiti and the art of tagging. Augmented reality app LZRTAG is hoping to advance those tags to images and even animations, but you need a smartphone to make that happen.  Read More

iCache Inc has announced the release of the Geode, a secure digital wallet for the iPhone 4 and 4S, which the company states to be the first of its kind, worldwide. Available in several colors and simultaneously acting as a protective case for your iPhone, the Geode is a device which promises to store all your credit, debit and loyalty cards in one secure platform - turning an average trip to the grocery store into something which resembles a scene from a James Bond movie.  Read More

At some point, we’ve probably all had a supermarket cashier ask us to identify the mysterious fresh produce that we’re attempting to buy. Once we’ve told them what it is, they have then had to manually type in its code – they have to enter it themselves, of course, given that fruits and vegetables don’t have barcodes. Thanks to Toshiba Tec, however, those days may be coming to an end. The company’s new Object Recognition Scanner is able to instantly identify grocery items of all types based on their appearance alone.  Read More

Over the past few years, it seems almost impossible to even take a trip to the grocery store without bumping into dozens of QR codes - those square graphics that can be scanned with a smartphone camera to bring up all sorts of information. Now it appears a Seattle-based organization has found another place to put them: in your pants. In hopes of promoting safe sex, Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest distributed 55,000 condoms with QR codes that track when and where people make the beast with two backs through their website, WhereDidYouWearIt.com.  Read More

It can be very frustrating trying to fix something, when the person instructing you isn’t there in person, but is instead communicating with you over a phone line – “Whaddaya mean, ‘The silver cap’? Which silver cap?!” This is why engineers sometimes need to be flown in to factories or other places that use complex machines, to make repairs that simply can’t be explained verbally. Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics, however, have developed an augmented reality system that lets those engineers provide real-time visual instructions to distant on-site technicians ... and it can be done without internet access.  Read More

Fans of the film Blade Runner may remember a scene in which the maker of an artificial snake is identified by a microscopic serial number on one of its scales. Well, in a rare case of present-day technology actually surpassing that predicted in a movie, we’ve now gone one better – bar codes on embryos. Scientists from Spain’s Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), along with colleagues from the Spanish National Research Council, have successfully developed an identification system in which mouse embryos and oocytes (egg cells) are physically tagged with microscopic silicon bar code labels. They expect to try it out on human embryos and oocytes soon.  Read More

It's only been a few weeks since Ricoh unveiled its G700 rugged camera and already the next phase in its evolution has been revealed. The new G700SE retains much of the feature set of the earlier model – including the 12.1 megapixel sensor, wide-angle zoom lens and 720p high definition movie capability – but adds Bluetooth and Wi-Fi functionality to the mix. It's also water and dust resistant and able to withstand the odd rough bump. The new camera also caters for the addition of optional units to provide GPS and laser barcode reader functionality.  Read More

Canon has announced a “Studio Version” of its popular EOS 7D DSLR. With an optional new barcode system that allows users to embed information directly into images and a “locking” feature that allows users to disable unwanted features and settings for studio environments the EOS 7D Studio Version is geared towards studio, event and school photographers looking for a way to streamline the organization of images.  Read More

Newly developed radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology could usher in the era of checkout line-free shopping. The inexpensive, printable transmitter can be invisibly embedded in packaging offering the possibility of customers walking a cartload of groceries or other goods past a scanner that would read all the items at once, total them up and charge the customer’s account while adjusting the store’s inventory. More advanced versions could even collect all the information about the contents of a store in an instant, letting a retailer know where every package is at any time.  Read More