2D Barcodes & High Fashion

One of these days someone is going to bring barcodes to the masses. Today's NY Times has a piece about QR codes on custom scarfes.

Kaywa, the company involved, is in Europe. Phone capabilities are as much a function of the wireless carrier as the physical phone itself. That means yanks have to wait til the Japanese & Europeans figure it all out.

Dennis Quaid Is Down With Barcodes

Imagine my surprise and delight when I read that Dennis Quaid is a barcode fanboy. He's going to sue Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles unless they implement a barcode system.

Hey Dennis, wanna be on my Board of Directors?

Do barcodes need a Wiki of their own?

To quote those involved: "a site for storing user generated information to be stored against a product, identified by its barcode number."

A show of hands please. All in favor say "aye"...

China & Tibet

Sometimes current events are so stark and immediate that they demand that we all do the right thing. To that end, I sent the following email to both the Chinese embassy and the China's ambassador to the UN:

Wang Guangya
Ambassador and Permanent Representative
Chinese Mission to the United Nations,

I would like to lodge a strong complaint about how the People's Republic of China has responded to the recent citizen protests in Tibet and other regions of China.

The violent suppression of these protests, especially those led by Buddhist monks, underlines how misguided Beijing's policy towards Tibet is. His Holiness the Dalai Lama is NOT some evil mastermind behind the current protests. The protests are the direct result of years of discrimination and oppression of the native Tibetan people by the Chinese government.

It is the will of the people to be free and to have control over their lives. This is a univeral wish shared by all people around the world. Yet the official government policy is diametrically opposed to this attainable ideal. Undermining the Tibetan people's struggle for self-determination will result in the undermining of the Chinese government. Remember: the international community has not forgotten Tiananmen Square.

I'm sure you're aware that the whole world will be watching China as the 2008 Olympics approach. Further repression of citizen protests in Tibet and elsewhere will shine an ugly light on an ugly domestic policy. I strongly encourage the Chinese government to stop, pause, and reach out to the Tibetan people and His Holiness the Dalai Lama and open a truly honest and sincere dialog.

All power to the people!


Jerry Whiting, President & CEO
Azalea Software, Inc.
Seattle WA

Barcodes & Christians? What about 666?

Hey. I thought Christians associated barcodes with Satan. You know, UPC barcodes include the Mark of the Beast. The Devil's in bar codes.

Well, here's a church embracing barcodes.

Barcodes in Excel, Word, and Access

Need to make barcodes in Microsoft Office applications? Mail merge with Code 128 barcodes using Excel and Word? Perhaps you're doing UPC barcodes in an Access database.

Wouldn't it be nice to have free sample code like macros, plug-in's, etc. to do all the hard work for you? Heck, who wants to write code from scratch for things like check digits? Not me! I'd rather bolt on a pre-built widget, how about you?