MANUFACTURERS and mass-market vendors have long used bar codes, those seemingly random sequences of lines, in conjunction with laser scanners to manage price points and monitor inventory. Now media and business organizations are joining the fray to facilitate the flow of information and make online purchases easier. Readers of The Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colo., for instance, can use handheld video scanners to scan printed bar codes that access specially prepared material on the Web. This technology is the brainchild of Charleston, S.C.-based GoCode, and according to Prioleau Alexander, the company's senior vice president of marketing, it makes the newspaper experience more interactive. "Our technology makes printed material truly come to life," he says. "Why publish a [URL] when you can just stick in a bar code?"
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GoCode is a leader, but other companies, such as Tualatin, Ore.-based Digimarc and Dallas-based Digital Convergence, offer bar code technologies as well. All three vendors use 2-D bar codes that contain ASCII text, turning ordinary line sequences into portable data files that can redirect a Web browser in seconds. Customers must purchase video scanners to read these codes (most retail for less than $150), and in most cases, they must run the scanner over a code by hand.
"Think of our software as GPS for the Internet," says J. Jovan Philyaw, chairman and CEO of Digital Convergence. "This technology will revolutionize the way people interact with the Web."
To date, only a handful of publications have signed on to incorporate the bar codes into their product, and no vendor has sold more than a few thousand scanners. Some companies are exploring other new applications of bar code technology for commercial use. With the help of Pitney Bowes, Digimarc plans to develop digital watermarking systems for metered mail, which should be available June 1. GoCode is already using a series of bar codes that enable purchasing managers to order items by scanning SKUs right out of a product catalog.
