The National Blood Service in Russia assures the supply of high quality blood to medical institutions. This public entity coordinates blood centers all over Russia, making sure the blood donation process, including transportation and storage, is performed correctly. In addition, it assures the proper use of blood components and preparations.

The Challenge
One important part of the blood donation process is collecting data about the donor. The medical assistant must enter pertinent information about the donor and the quantity and quality of the blood collected in an electronic database. In the past, each region of Russia handled its territory’s database separately from the others. However, to assure quality control throughout the country, the National Blood Service determined that these records should be available to all regions. An automated system needed to be created in order to allow the entire work cycle to be kept under control.

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In has been 40 years now since a group of grocery store executives collectively decided to help unify product identification with the use of a barcode. No one would have know at that time that a simple set of black and white lines would become one of the most important technologies for trade in the 20th century.

The Universal Product Code (UPC) was the first movement to a standardized tool that every manufacturer and retailer could use to easily track products, maintain inventory better, and help speed up check-out lanes at the point of sale. The humble UPC hasn’t changed much since its creation in April 1973 but continues to provide an easy and efficient means to manage any product throughout its life cycle.

To better illustrate the UPC bar code’s extensive use and importance, Brussels-based nonprofit GS1, which maintains international UPC standards, has posted an online ticker to count the number of bar codes scanned around the world each day. According to GS1, the average number of daily scans clocks in at more than 5 billion! To think all this started with the first scan of a 10-pack of Juicy Fruit gum at a Marsh Supermarket in Troy, OH in 1974.

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As an industry leader in barcode and RFID technologies, Intermec has been a trusted and reliable provider of Auto-ID Solutions for over 40 years. One field that has seen a increased adoption of these technologies is healthcare. With initiatives to go paperless and ensure more accurate care of patients, barcodes are the perfect technology to improve accuracy and efficiency.  Intermec offers a full product line of printers, scanners, and mobile computers designed to compliment every step of the patient process from check-in to the administration of medication.

For more information or help finding the right Intermec solution for your application, contact us at Barcodes Inc.

Barcodes have become the default tool to use when tracking any kind of product or process due to how easy they are to implementation and the increased efficiency they provide. What once would have been done with paper and pencil, now a simple scan can do the same only faster and more accurately. With the help of scanners from Motorola, you can improve any process from asset management with an MC9190-G or simple attendance tracking with an LS2208.

This infographic is a great overview of some of the most common tracking applications and how barcode scanning makes things easier and more accurate.

For help finding the right scanner for your needs, contact us at Barcodes Inc.

New research into the mobile consumer buying habits of men and women reveals that, not only do men shop more via mobile devices than women, but they also make more use of barcode scanners.

As mobile devices become the most common way people get online, uSamp decided to conduct a survey of the mobile shopping habits of 1,100 men and woman, ages 18 – 75. The results may surprise many people in that it found men to be the bigger online mobile shoppers.

What was everyone buying?

• 27% of males purchase consumer electronics on mobile vs. 8% of females
• 23% of males purchase movie and event tickets on mobile vs. 11% of females
• 30% of males purchase digital content on mobile vs. 20% of females
• 13% of males purchase food and drinks on mobile vs. 8% of females
• 8% of males purchase office supplies on mobile vs. 4% of females

Another interesting result from the study was that 91% of the time men were scanning barcodes with their mobile purchase versus the 85% of women. The survey found that men and woman who scan barcodes with mobile devices are shopping at these types of stores:

• Electronic store: 27% male vs. 12% female
• Convenience store: 7% male vs. 3% female
• Health & Beauty Store: 6% female vs. 2% male

More info on the study can be found here.

The applications you can put QR Codes to use may range from coupons to advertising campaigns but this has got to be one of the more unique applications.

The New Zealand brewing company Yeastie Boys incorporate several QR Codes on the labeling of their Digital IPA.  These codes lead customers to various web pages including Facebook and Twitter accounts but one of the QR Codes lead to the full recipe of the beer, which essentially makes Digital IPA the world’s first open source beer!

If you are looking to incorporate 2D barcodes in your business and need help getting started, contact us at Barcodes Inc.

Scanners may have become easier to use than ever but choosing one from the long list of models out there is a challenge.  Luckily, you don’t need to know all the technical ins and outs of scanner technology to find a good fit for your business.  With the following 4 questions you’ll be able to narrow down your options to the right one for you.

Question #1 : What type of barcode are you reading?

This is one of the most important questions since you can end up paying too much for a scanner or get one that doesn’t work at all.  There are essentially 2 types of barcodes:

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Great Barcode Scanning applications are already on the Android Market – nod to ShopSavvy – but Google has just added that function to their own stable of services within Google Product Search. A post published on the Official Google Mobile Blog highlights the addition.

Google Shopping suffers from the same issues as apps like ShopSavvy – it usually only works with certain types of products and Google acknowledges this:

Today, barcode scanning works best for products like electronics, books, movies or video games, but we’re working on adding more barcodes for other items. Of course, if your scan does not return a result, you can always type in the product name just as before.

This is pretty awesome if you ask me and an obvious next step for Google. Although I feel kind of bad for ShopSavvy who seem to be getting cornered out of the market, everything is free game and I’m sure that ShopSavvy will have its fair share of users stick around.

It is interesting to note that Jeffrey Sharkey, an Android Developer Challenge 1 Winner, was the developer behind a barcode scanning/shopping application called Compare Everywhere and he is now a Google employee working on the Google Android Team. However, he didn’t know about this new feature until I told him! Jeffrey informed me that he has been extremely busy with other fun stuff like widgets, for example.

Be warned, this is only available in the US and UK on Android Phones.

(Original article: http://phandroid.com/2009/05/14/barcode-scanning-with-google-product-search/)