We recently discussed the Motorola ET1 Enterprise Tablet, and how it’s bringing Android to the workplace. And earlier this year, we noticed that Blackberry usage
had been declining amongst government agencies. While nothing is certain, as Android usage continues to soar in the consumer marketplace, it has a growing interest amongst enterprise businesses, especially with enhanced security features.

Perhaps you already knew all that, but did you know that Barcoding Inc. offers Android application development? Recognizing the possibilities of the Android operating system, Barcoding Inc.’s Mobile Development Team now develops and deploys full-service Android solutions that can be customized to fit your organization’s exact needs, including:

• Porting existing applications to Android compatible devices
• Android enterprise application development
• Android application maintenance and upgrade
• Android application testing

Learn more about incorporating Android applications into your small business or enterprise.

iPad Kiosks are appearing in businesses everywhere—learn how they can help you

While everyone knows the iPad as a “magical device,” many do not know that it has a variety of different business uses across industries, such as healthcare and retail. But, businesses in just about any industry can make use of the iPad through self-service kiosks.
iPad kiosks are revolutionizing the self-service experience in retail, hospitality and transportation. While the iPad does provide businesses with communications cost savings, increased customer engagement is the largest benefit. When kiosks are intuitive and easy to use, shoppers can easily get to the information they need faster, making it far more convenient than the typical hard-to-navigate kiosk.

By maximizing customer exposure, retailers are leveraging iPad kiosks by improving customer loyalty, creating competitive differentiation and reducing operational costs. Learn more ways retailers are using iPad kiosks from our partner, Zebra Technologies.

Finding the right ERP software for your company is always a challenge, but if you’re a small manufacturing business, seeing a large ROI is crucial. Learn about different ERP software options from guest blogger Derek Singleton.

Small manufacturing businesses are constantly looking for a way to remain competitive in this global economy. For years, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software has been an effective means for manufacturing companies to reduce costs and increase efficiency. Until recently, ERP software has been out of the price range of small manufacturing businesses. Even though ERP software is now more affordable today than ever before, many manufacturing businesses still operate on spreadsheet and enter all of their data manually. For those that are ready to get off of spreadsheets, I’ve put together a shortlist a affordable solutions that should make the shortlist for first time buyers.

First, let’s take a look at the functionality that each vendor brings to the table.

Read the rest of this entry »

PayNearMe, an online cash payment network, recently announced its latest offering—Embedded Barcode Remittance (EBR). With EBR, billers are able to embed barcodes directly onto customers’ statements. Customers can take their bill to a store, such as 711, and pay with cash at the register, instantly receiving a detailed receipt. Once the barcode is scanned, the billing company’s database is updated in real-time.

Why would I do that when I could just pay online, you may ask yourself. But, did you know that approximately 60 million adults do not use bank accounts and often have to rely on expensive money orders. With EBR from PayNearMe, billing companies reduce their cash-processing expenses by accepting cash at 7-Eleven stores.

“PayNearMe’s ability to integrate Barcodes directly into mail-house billing operations…demonstrates yet another innovative way our cash-payment network can be used by various industries for remote collection of cash payments. Embedding PayNearMe EBR also creates new business opportunities for billers and billing aggregators,” said Danny Shader, CEO of PayNearMe.

While it may be hard for those of us who practically live our lives online to understand, PayNearMe’s EBR will offer great convenience to those without bank accounts.

You’ve more than likely seen a Zebra before, but did you ever make the connection that their stripes somewhat resemble a barcode? Now, a team of US biologists and computer scientists have come up with a “zebra scanner,” which is able to identify individual animals based on a still photo.

Their “zebra scanner,” coined StripeSpotter, requires only a small amount of human input. By using a photograph of an individual zebra, scientists can select part of the zebra’s side. This visual information is then automatically sliced into a number of horizontal bands and each pixel is transformed into 100% black or white, creating a high-contrast version of the zebra’s stripes. From there, each stripe is encoded as a “StripeString,” which is basically a sequence of colored blocks that represent different lengths. This collection of StripeStrings forms a SripeCode, the zebra equivalent of a barcode.

Once a zebra has been entered into the database and given a StripeCode, the researchers match another picture of the same animal by comparing the StripeStrings of the new and original images. From there, each image generates a different set of StripeStrings, but the original ratios of white to black remain similar. The StripeCode with the most similar StripeStrings in the database will match to identify the correct animal. The researchers plan to present their work at the International Conference on Multimedia Retrievalin in Italy later this month.

Zebras have always reminded me of barcodes, and evidently our friends at Zebra Technologies felt the same way! Let us know what you think about StripeSpotter, the barcode system for zebras, by commenting here, or on our facebook or twitter pages.