Norwegian newspaper VG writes in an article yesterday(norwegian)  about what might be the next generation of barcodes.  MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is unveiling a new type of barcodes technology called “Bokodes” that uses light to transmit information next week.

Going to the source, MIT writes in their news section about “Barcodes for the rest of us“  and say that their Media Lab has created a new barcoding technology that will be presented  in New Orleans at SIGGRAPH, the leading international conference and exhibition on computer graphics and interactive techniques.

The tiny labels are just 3 millimeters across — about the size of the @ symbol on a typical computer keyboard. Yet they can contain far more information than an ordinary barcode: thousands of bits. Currently they require a lens and a built-in LED light source, but future versions could be made reflective, similar to the holographic images now frequently found on credit cards, which would be much cheaper and more unobtrusive. Continue Reading

If you are working with barcode readers and need to generate barcode test data there’s a few online sites that do that for free. My current favorite is Barcoding Inc.

I prefere barcoding.combecause the no-fuzz generation, just enter data, select type and preferred output format. Barcode symbologies supported is Code 39, Code 39 (Full ASCII), Code 39 (HIBC), CodaBar, Code 93, Code 128, UCC/EAN 128, Interleaved 2 Of 5, PostNET, UPC-A, UPC-E, EAN/JAN-8, EAN/JAN-13,  Bookland and output formats are PNG, GIF, JPG or bitmap

Wasp Barcode Technologies also has a web based barcode generator. It supports all the same symbologies as Barcoding, but since you need to enter your email to generate a preview, and have it emailed to your address if you want to save a copy i don’t use it much. Wasp has a couple of extra features that gives you options for with, height, caption alignment, barcode rotation and image dpi that is useful if you need to test scanner capabilities for size, quality and rotation.

curiously enough, both sites as an “Please link to this barcode generator”  an industry standard maybe?

Me, as my colleague - stumbled upon the blog of Lars Wilhelmsen, a  Microsoft MVP who was writing about Microsoft Tag -  which is a new, or rather improved technology by Microsoft for enabling linked content on static objects (i.e movie posters, news ads (yes, printed) etc).

Tag has been out as a beta service since January 7th  free for anyone to try, both for commercial and personal use.  A Tag client is available if you point your mobile web browser to http://gettag.mobi. The page try to detect your device and gives you a download link. Some of the devices supported are; Android, Blackberry, PalmOS, Windows Mobile and Symbian S60. Apple iPhone is also supported, giving you a link to iTunes AppStore for download, and finally a Java 2 ME client making the client available on almost any device available. Continue Reading