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.

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.

With Android devices steadily gaining more of the market share, it comes to no surprise that there’s now an easy Bluetooth Input Method available for it; meet BluePiano.

BluePiano is used for barcode scanning with external Bluetooth barcode scanners and generic data gathering tasks, such as medical device data. BluePiano offers a Bluetooth-enabled soft-keyboard, which captures data and forwards it to input fields of pre-determined apps, thus appearing to be entered by the user.

BluePiano is available in English, French, German, Russian and Swdish keyboards and provides up-to-date connectivity feedback. In addition, BluePiano can scan barcodes using Android’s built-in camera, no special barcode scanners required!

Would you use BluePiano on your Android device? Let us know by commenting here, or on our Facebook or Twitter pages.

Socket Mobile recently released SocketScan™ 10 Software Development Kit, allowing developers to create custom mobile applications for the Socket Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner (CHS) Series 7 portable barcode scanner.
The kit is compatible with Windows Mobile 6, Windows 7, and BlackBerry OS5 and features:

ScanAPI library with easy access to functions
• Scan API Tester sample application shows how to interface with Scan API, trigger and scan functions, display number of characters and data scanned in a dialog box
• Includes latest version of SocketScan 10 keyboard wedge software featuring 1D and 2D barcode support, instant connectivity to CHS host devices and remote acknowledgement.

For more information on Socket Mobile and their products, learn more here.

Zebra recently released a new id card software, CardStudio, specifically for Zebra card printers. The software will be available as a bundled and stand-alone product, and will support current and legacy Zebra id printers.

CardStudio is available in three different versions:

Classic
Create and print professional photo IDs with easy-to-use templates and template designer.

Standard
All of the features of Classic, plus others such as an internal database, additional templates, magnetic encoding support, and the ability to import text files

Professional
All of the above features, but is recommended for enterprise application, providing additional advanced features such as smart card and UHF support, security panel and biometric managements.

If you’re not sure which version is for you, you can easily upgrade to another version via a licence key.

For more information on Zebra and their products, learn more here.