Lightning Labels Blog

New Barcode Scanning Technology Teaches iPhone New Tricks

"Coca #5 iPhone 3G" by nao-cha (left), available under a Creative Commons License

Last week I wrote about the RedLaser iPhone app, which allows serious shoppers to compare in-store prices with online ones by scanning barcodes with their iPhones. In the near future, RedLaser technology could also help you remember to pick up the milk, or select the perfect bottle of wine for any occasion.

Coupons, Inc. is currently figuring out how to integrate the barcode scanning technology into Grocery iQ, a grocery shopping application that works both the iPhone and iPod Touch. The finished product will reportedly allow you to scan grocery items directly into your shopping list on your iPhone, find and print coupons for those items, and re-arrange your grocery list to match the layout of your favorite supermarket.

Applied Ambiguities, LLC is also incorporating RedLaser technology into their Cor.kz Wine Info iPhone app. Fast Company has ranked Cor.kz as one of the 25 “must have” iPhone apps. Adding barcode scanning functionality to Cor.kz will make it easier for users to locate detailed information on almost any wine currently on the market using their iPhones.

You might be also be interested to know that RedLaser’s creator, Boulder-based technology startup Occipital, LLC, has also released the barcode scanning technology to iPhone developers everywhere. According to the RedLaser website, your iPhone could soon be able to perform all kinds of neat barcode scanning tricks. Here are a few to fuel your imagination:

• Pull up lists of a list of book reviews for books you spot at your local library (just scan their barcodes)
• Beam a list of movies you’d like to watch from the movie store to your TiVo at home (just scan their barcodes)
• Find online coupons for products you frequently purchase (just scan their barcodes)

New technology like RedLaser is giving barcodes an increasingly important role in product sales, which makes it more important than ever to have your barcode labels professionally designed and printed by someone you trust.

The (Possible) Future of Packaging

Last month on the Eye on Packaging blog, David Bellm featured this interesting video. It is the brainchild of Capsule, a packaging design firm in Minneapolis. Before you become alarmed Gobee Rocket Rations is a fictitious product. The video was created for the Packaging That Sells Expo in Chicago as part of their Futuristic Packaging Gallery video series. The idea of the series is to challenge package design firms to think about what might be possible in the future.

Whether or not we will have children's drinks that interact and inform, one thing is for sure, product labels and packaging are going to become more intelligent. With the advances in electronic ink and printed electronics the label printer of the future will need to know as much about electronics as they do about ink.

QR Codes Coming to Wine Labels

Last year I wrote about QR codes that were being used by Ralph Lauren. I recently discovered two Portuguese wineries that have just started using QR codes on their wine labels. If you take a look at the back label here you will notice a normal bar code and also a funny looking square next to the bar code - that is the QR code.

The idea behind QR codes is that you can embed information in them that can be easily scanned with a cell phone camera. The most common use of QR Codes is to embed a web site URL, so you can direct the person to a specific web site when scanning the label.

In the case of these Portuguese wineries they are directing wine consumers to Adegga, an online community of wine lovers that dubs itself as a "social wine discovery" service. This is how it works. You scan the QR Code on the wine label and you will be taken to a special page on adegga.com dedicated to that particular wine. You will be able to read other people's comments about it, check wine prices, read comments from the winemaker and much more. Adegga is undertaking a very ambitious project attempting to catalog all the wine of the world with something called an AVIN, which will be a unique wine identifier (similar to ISBN numbers for books). 

Obviously there is not broad use of QR codes yet in this country. But in Japan and Europe they are becoming more common. I expect we will start to see broad adoption of this kind of technology here within 2-3 years. If there are wineries out there that would like to become part of this project then we will be happy to print your wine labels with the QR codes.

Hat tip to Jose Eduardo at the Cortes de Cima Winery in Portugal for informing me about this.

Esquire Magazine Makes Printing History

Last week I bought the latest issue of Esquire magazine. It is the first time I have ever purchased this magazine and I did it because I wanted to own a piece of history. To celebrate their 75th anniversary, Esquire created a cover featuring electronic ink. To be more precise, a small 2" x 5" LCD display is embedded into the paper cover, along with a battery, to create the first ever digital magazine cover.

The screen blinks with the words "The 21st Century Begins Now" and flashes between white and gray. It is really very striking as it sits on my desk among other magazines and papers, none of which are blinking. The battery is supposed to last 90 days or so - mine is certainly still going strong after more than a week.

So what does this have to do with labels? Plenty. I believe we are looking at the future of print right here. It is probably decades off but one day most product labels on a retail shelf will in fact be these LCD displays that will blink, play videos, connect with web sites and much more.

Will paper labels ever go away? No, I believe there will be some product labels made with paper for decades or even centuries into the future simply because paper will be cheaper than electronics for a very long time. But I also expect the first electronic product labels to be appearing on high end products within a decade. Esquire magazine has proven it is possible to produce these thin screens on a large scale. With  improvements in technology you might be buying cosmetics or prescription drugs with electronic product labels some time in the not too distant future.

Ralph Lauren and QR Barcodes

I was reading the latest issue of TIME magazine over the weekend and came across this interesting article about a new initiative from fashion house Ralph Lauren. In conjunction with the US Open tennis tournament beginning on Monday August 25th, Ralph Lauren is launching a campaign featuring a QR Code - these are basically a two dimensional barcode like the one pictured above. 

This is how it will work. Ralph Lauren has placed these barcodes on billboards, in store windows, in magazine ads and catalogs. You will need a cell phone with a camera and software to read the QR barcode. There are plenty of web sites that provide free QR barcode readers - Ralph Lauren has one available for download on its mobile web site. I was able to download one called NeoReader quite easily for my iPhone. When the QR reader is loaded on your phone you scan the barcode by taking a photo within this software. Then the software will take you to the web site using your phone's browser. The QR codes used in the Ralph Lauren promotion will take you a special web site created just for mobile phones where you can buy merchandise direct from your phone.

In Japan there has been widespread use of QR barcodes for a couple of years now. In this country, we are still in the very early stages, but rest assured this technology will become very widespread in the near future. I don't think Ralph Lauren will be making much money on their first foray into QR barcodes, but they are positioning their company as being on the cutting edge, and they are certainly getting good PR out of it.

The QR barcode pictured above is something I created. If you print this page and scan this QR barcode it will take you to Lightning Labels' website on your cell phone. One day soon you will be able to scan one of these codes at the supermarket to find out more information about the product you are buying. For example you could scan a QR barcode label on a banana and immediately find out when the banana was picked, where it was grown and how it was transported. All the technology is available right now to do this (check out ScanLife or Winksite if you want to create QR barcodes), so I expect forward thinking companies to start using this technology in coming months. Of course, if you want someone to print QR barcode labels then Lightning Labels will be happy to assist you.

Scanning a Barcode With a Cell Phone

As you might have heard Google wants to get into the mobile phone business. Instead of writing all the applications themselves, in typical Google fashion they are having a competition called the Android Developer Challenge and awarding $10 million to developers. One of the winners in the first round is Jeffrey Sharkey, a graduate student at Montana State University, who developed an application that can scan barcodes with the camera on your cell phone.

Of course, it does more than just scan a barcode. His software actually analyzes the barcode to determine the UPC or ISBN numbers and then using the internet connection on the cell phone it looks up a database to give you more information. For example, a scan of the UPC code on a music CD (pictured above) returns information about this CD. You get reviews on Amazon, a list of the tracks on the CD, and most importantly a list of places selling the CDs including prices. It searches both online stores as well as brick and mortar stores near your location.

Right now this software only works for CDs, DVDs, and books, but it will only be a matter of time before this spreads to all retail products with a UPC code. Imagine you are about to buy a nice $25 bottle of wine from your local liquor store, but you are not sure whether you are getting the best value. A quick photo of the barcode and within a few seconds you will have a list of all the places near you, as well as online, that have this same wine available and the prices they are charging.

I thought this technology might be ten years away or more, but after seeing this new application it will probably be less than five years when the above scenario becomes reality.

Printing Without Ink

One of my favorite blogs is The Next Net by Erick Schonfeld, the editor of Business 2.0 magazine. He also produces a short video series for CNN titled the New Disruptors, that features new companies who are really disrupting their industry. The latest video I found particularly fascinating.

The company is called Zink, they are a new company spun off from Polaroid, the venerable old photography company. The engineers at Zink (short for Zero Ink) have invented this incredible new way of printing photos - without using ink. How can you possibly print without ink? That was my first question. Well the secret is in the paper. Zink use a special paper with millions of embedded crystals that when heated by the Zink "printer" melt to form one of the primary colors - Cyan, Magenta and Yellow.

The beauty of the technology is that the printers can be impossibly small - the photo here shows a device about the size of a cell phone. And another really cool thing about it is that the device will be able to wirelessly communicate with your cell phone so you can snap a picture with your phone and then print it out moments later. No word on pricing but they say the Zink printer (and paper) will be available by Christmas of this year. Check out the New Disruptors video here. Very Cool.

Podcast - The Future of Labels

Earlier this week, I did an interview with the people at PodcasterNews. For the uninitiated a podcast is really just like a radio show except the audio file is stored on a web site - here is a formal definition of podcast.

The Better Process Podcast discusses manufacturing news and they conduct interviews several times a week with business managers in the manufacturing sector. Our interview was quite short but covered a wide range of topics such as the advantages of being a small business manufacturer to the future of label printing. Here is the link to the podcast - just click on download show to listen to the MP3 file.

I subscribe to several business podcasts that I regularly download to my iPod. I listen to them when I am working out or just walking around the park in the morning. It is another great 21st century tool that you can use to further your business education.

Sony Announces Paper Thin TV Screen

Last week Sony announced that it has invented a flexible plastic display that bends like paper while showing full color video. Even though we are years away from this becoming a commercial product, it is truly an amazing breakthrough. You can see the video released by Sony (in Japanese) on YouTube.

The screen is a 2.5" display and amazingly only 0.3mm thick (about 0.01") and the video seems to be very high quality. You can easily see this leading to ever thinner cell phones, video iPods and other similar applications.

I also see the day in the not too distant future where you will be browsing the supermarket shelves and the "product labels" will actually be a TV screen on this kind of material. Right now, if you order product labels on our white BOPP with a gloss laminate then your labels are 0.0036" thick, slightly less than half the thickness of the plastic TV screen. So you can see that adding some adhesive to this plastic display and including a power source such as the paper batteries that are just around the corner, and you have a viable new kind of "product label" - the ultimate product sales tool.

Now, we have a lot of obstacles to overcome before this day arrives, but you can be sure this day will come and I expect to start seeing these on the shelves within 10 years. Of course, these "video labels" will be expensive but I also imagine a recycling program that will offset the cost to the consumer. You might spend $2 more for a product with the video label, but then you could send the label back to the manufacturer for a $1 coupon or something like that.

Here at Lightning Labels we like to be on the cutting edge of digital label technology. So even though these video labels are a long way off, when they become commercially available for product labels, we will be at the forefront.

Paper Battery Unveiled

I discovered this amazing news during my Holiday reading. A Korean company has invented a completely new battery technology that does not include any toxic chemicals and is paper thin. There is no talk of when this material will be commercially available, my guess is it will be several years, but if and when it happens the ramifications could be huge. You can read more about it here.

My guess is that if this technology becomes mainstream label material companies will work out ways to print on it and we could have a product label that is a power source. This opens up all kinds of applications. If you combine this product with electronic paper that I have written about before and suddenly the label is transformed and videos on product labels could become a reality.

My guess is we are years and probably decades away from commercial use, but you know when it happens Lightning Labels will be at the forefront.

Happy New Year everyone. Here's to a happy and prosperous 2007.