As I said in one of my previous articles, barcodes are all around us. It is beyond shadow of doubt that these encoding labels ease our existence greatly. Actually I made a little mistake – they are not only labels – there can also be forms and shapes, engraved or applied to certain surface. To put it bluntly – barcodes are not only 1D and 2D – they can be 3D as well.       To begin with the world-wide known zebra–stripped barcodes. These linear markers, some of them numerical, some – alpha-numerical, are the oldest ones. Firstly used for designating a pack of chewing gums, they now are exploited everywhere. GS1 has accepted two main standards – UPC and EAN13 – to be used in the purchasing and retail industry. What is special about 1D codes is that they represent data horizontally, under the form of black bars and white spaces. ID numbers or short tags are perfectly encrypted in them, but that is all. Strings, that have more than 25-30 characters, result in unbearably long symbols that are inefficient. Texts and URLs cannot be encoded. Despite their low data capacity, one-dimensional barcodes are simple-to-create and respectively easy-to-read and that is why they are the most widely used. From them, them more famous are UPC, EAN, Code39, Code128, ITF14, Code93.   We continue with 2D codes. They include DataMatrix, Maxicode, PDF417 and probably the most popular among the general public for the last 2-3 years – QR code. Data capability is the first major difference. As long as information is encoded both horizontally and vertically, under the form of rectangles, thousands of characters can be carried. URLs and contact details can now be easily represented in a 2×2 cm black and white square grid. All the two dimensional barcodes offer error-correction levels which is quite handy – your code can undergo some substantial damages and still provide the information it bears. Places where 2D find their application are numerous. PDF417, for example, is widely used in the industry and air-transportation as a static database (it can contain up to 1800 letters). Most commonly the Portable Data Format provides specific parameters about tiny electronic parts or if it is on your boarding pass – details about your flight. Other unique feature for some of the square barcodes, particularly for the QR, is that it can be scanned with a modest mobile phone, equipped with a camera and simple decoding software. This advantageous characteristic makes the Quick Responsive topology a perfect way to engage practically everybody as a target group. As a result QR has become one of the most powerful contemporary marketing tools.   So far I...

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Has the way you read/watch the news changed in the last years? I’ll be surprised if you say “no” because it was just a decade ago when the first digitalized versions of press editions were brought to the world. The process of digitalizing, also known as digitizing, is the transformation from analog to digital signal, or turning everything into 0s and 1s. The binary representation of a data makes it manipulable from computers and makes it shareable in the global web. The digitalization process nowadays mainly concerns newspapers, magazines, radios and TV programmes. People who adopt it are undoubtedly favoring at least one of the benefits, listed below: • Their media engages wider audience; • The publishing method does not require much efforts and funds; • News reach people faster; • Digitalizing helps preserving not only old and invaluable historical archives but sentimental family video records as well; Thanks to the extremely high internet and mobile connectivity more often we prefer to search information in the virtual space, not in books or from other paper sources. This habit appeals mostly to people who lead a hectic lifestyle and barely have time to buy the daily newspaper. A less lingering practice for them is to read it online through their smartphone or tablet. There they would find what they are looking for much more easily and quickly. Digitalizing turns out to be advantageous for the local medias more than for the national ones. If we have a newspaper, let’s name it “NY” and it is being issued only in the state of New York, it will be available only for the residents of this particular state. What is more, if I am a New York citizen and I go on a vacation in California for 2-3 weeks, the chances to receive the newspaper are quite minor and I will be kept in an informational eclipse for those 2-3 weeks. Rather inconvenient, isn’t it? But if this particular “NY” newspaper creates its own site or application, accessible through the internet, it will not only keep its local regular readers but will attract others from different states, or even from the whole world. You might have seen one of those big printing houses, with “fresh” newspapers and magazines dashing on their fast-going assembly lines, huge ink containers and complex machinery and software. Does everything have to be so complicated and money-demanding? What if all the periodic publications jump into the digital world of zeros and ones? Advertising – the most profitable sector in the publishing industry won’t be diminished – there are virtual banners and commercials which are even said to be watched by more readers. To continue with the inevitable alleviation....

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  One of the greatest innovations of 2010 was the introducing of Geolocation or said with other words – the ability of people publicly to share their current position. The last one can be very easily defined because nowadays the majority of mobile phones are equipped with GPS chips. It connects the satellite, the satellite measures your coordinates and sends them back to your phone. Having such chip is not mandatory – you can be detected through 3G or Wi-Fi connection as well.     In the last ten years, with the boom of the smartphone industry, we have witnessed the unprecedented success of the social networks. Facebook, Twitter, G+, LinkedIn, they all are one of the most visited sites nowadays, because people want to share, they want to open themselves for the others. But if in Facebook you could change your status and upload some pictures and in Tweeter you would say what you are doing then where can give answer to the question: “Where am I?”   The pioneers in Geolocation were companies like Foursquare and Gowalla, that are now worldwide famous. They have developed their own software, allowing their users to “check-in”, when visiting certain places. As a reward the “signed” person receive some points, which later can be redeemed for gifts or other prizes. You can be also qualified as the major of a place if it is visited by many people, for example a café, and you are the one with the most “check-ins”. Respectively there might be some advantages for you like free cappuccino every Monday morning. The success of these geoapplications was rather astonishing – in the middle of 2011 Foursquare had more than 10 million registered users and an average of 3 million “check-ins” per day on a global scale. With these impressive figures it was only a matter of time for the social giants – Facebook and Twitter – to join the game and their answer wasn’t late. In August 2010 Facebook introduced Facebook Places. Lately, together with Twitter, they presented the option to geotag your photos and statuses. When taking the picture, the device you use establishes a connection with a satellite or a server, receives the current coordinates and encodes them into the photo file. Systems like Picassa and Flickr can use can use that geodata to show you pictures of your friends from the place you are currently visiting. This is a chance to see how everything had looked like before. For example you are going to the Grand Canyon and after checking-in from there you are provided with pictures, taken a year before from some of your acquaintances.   The opponents of geolocating and geotagging would...

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With the recent rapid advances in the technology sector, computers are integrating deeper and deeper in our lives. Their main function is to ease us and to improve our life in all aspects. For that purpose these machines have to be provided with information to manipulate but it has to be understandable from them – the so called binary data, composed of Zeros and Ones. Talking particularly about identification numbers, the one way is to input them is through a keyboard, but when the strings become longer than 15 characters and you have to enter 20 different ones, things become quite sluggish. That’s why barcodes were brought into existence in 1949. Enough talk – let’s check it out! Since then quite a lot has changed for them. They have become numerous and extremely diversed – from black and white, zebra-stripped to 2-dimensional and smartphone-scannable. Unlike the 70s and 80s when barcodes were mainly used in the industry, trading or shipping, nowadays they can be spotted almost everywhere serving as an identification designator or as a security precaution. Sometimes in the buildings of companies with large staff, there are sectors/rooms that only certain workers are allowed to enter. In order to gain access they have to type-in their password. This practice is globally adopted, but it has some drawbacks. For example you have to remember all the characters of your identification key and to be careful someone else not to watch you while submitting it. An appropriate solution is the company in question to start using barcode recognizing technique. As a result the privileged employees will be given special badges or cards with barcodes on them and the secured rooms will be fitted with laser readers on the doors. Clerks will no longer enter long strings of symbols – only slide their card through the scanner. Moreover they won’t be afraid of someone to see their password because barcodes represent only machine-readable data. In the end both workers and employers will be satisfied with the new modernized, less demanding and improved work environment. Currently such security barcode methods are actually adopted by many hotels, libraries and university campuses all over the world. Instead of metal key like before, guests or members are given access card with one-of-a-kind authentication set of characters. The most preferred standards for this type of use are code128 or code39 because of their alpha-numeric encoding capabilities. Look at our Code39 generator and Code128 generator now. Apart from the reliable security, barcodes offer something else as well – better employee control. Each member of the staff is given and employee badge/card with his unique barcode. He has to scan it at the gateway when arriving and leaving...

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  DataMatrix code is a two-dimensional barcode mainly used in Europe and in the USA. It is composed of small black and white dots, usually aligned in a rectangular or square grid. These dots are also called cells and each one of them stands for a bit. They can be colored in dark or light tints respectively corresponding to the binary type of data – 1 and 0. Check out Mobilio’s Data Matrix code generator right now and download it from the Mac AppStore. DataMatrix can store substantial amounts of information – more than 1, 5 kilobits which is equal to 3116 digits or 2335 alphanumerical characters. “Nothing special” – you would say – “It’s like the other barcodes” but things are not quite like that. DataMatrix has two main features that make it different: High data density; High levels of data security; If I have to define places of application it is mainly used in the industry and in the medicine, where identification or referential set of characters has to be provided on a very small area, and when saying small I really mean small – DataMatrix can encode around 50 numerical characters in 2x3mm symbol. Such proportions are sometimes needed for tiny electronic machinery like chips and integral circuit, or in the medicine sector for assigning surgical instruments and pharmaceutical production. Of course there are certain limitations in the size – in order the code to be readable, a single cell should not be smaller than 4-5 device pixels. In addition matrix barcodes are rather tolerant to their users – they are legible even at 20% contrast ratio between the dark and light dots, so it is not mandatory for the colors to be black and white.   Continuing with the spheres of usage I can not forget to mention banking, postal services and even aerospace programs. Due to its adequate encrypting schemes, DataMatrix offers high levels of data security. Currently the code is adopted by the Deutsche Post, the US Department of Defense and by the Air Transport Association (ATA). All of them use it as an unique designator for parcels, weapons and aircraft parts, because it does not only make the workflow more accurate and effective but provides sufficient security for the carried information as well. Undisputedly safety is uppermost especially when talking about the government.   Apart from the top-secret military stuff, DataMatrix is also accepted as a marketing tool, known as Semacode. It is type of DataMatrix code used for advertising, which in the recent years has become really popular. In contrast with the normal checked black-and-white symbol, Semacode encrypts only URLs. It does not require any modern decoders or scanners like the...

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  As I said in my previous article cell phones nowadays are becoming smarter. You can not only call and send SMSs to someone, but also write e-mails, watch online videos and socialize yourself. Of course all this is possible only if your smartphone is connected to the global web. Practically this is what a mobile data plan is – a plan, according to which you are granted with internet access by your mobile provider.     Mobile internet became popular among the general public with the development of 3-rd generation (3G) technologies. Sounds great, right – being able to browse websites from the gadget in my pocket. But can’t I do this through Wi-Fi connection instead? Yes you can, as long as your phone has wlan chip, but there is one major difference between 3G and Wi-Fi – the range. The Wi-Fi signal is being transmitted by a router, most of the times, and then received by your mobile device. Sadly enough these routers have range from 50-100m or maximally 200m if it is really good. On the other side 3G, known also as the EDGE standard or HSPA standard, is being delivered directly from your mobile provider. In essence if you have mobile signal, you will have internet access. The result in figures is more than 90% coverage. Pretty beneficial for the users, who want to enter the global web not only from home or from the office but while being in the car or on the street as well. Understandably technologies continue their rapid advance and new things like HD/HQ videos or online 3D games are developed. Higher-bandwidth connections are required in order everything to go smoothly. 3G offers decent data rate but it is nothing compared to the abilities of the newly presented 4G standard. If 3G offers theoretical download speed of 15Mbit/s then in 4G this speed is increased to the amazing 100Mbit/s. Moreover 4G nets are composed only from IP addresses in contrast to the 3G networks, made of circuits and packet switching.   So far so good. Having mobile internet access almost everywhere and the high data speed makes the regular user more than satisfied. Respectively more users equal more profit for the carriers, but something else has be bared in mind. Higher data speed connectivity means that more information has to be delivered to the customers. If the abilities of the system, providing the signal, are not considered well enough all that might finish with unsustainable need of traffic. Such was the case of the Norwegian mobile operator Telenor – one of the first companies that supplied its clients with unlimited data plans. It seemed very convenient – you could do...

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