Is the bar code dead thanks to Microsoft's Tag technology?

Question

Not sure how many people out there work with bar codes in their applications. I have been on a few projects that required bar codes to be programatically generated. Having seen this new Tag technology from Microsoft I am wondering if anyone has worked with MS Tag yet? Do you have some examples of programming against MS Tag?

Answer 1

I seriously doubt that the bar code will die any time soon. it's cheap, and well understood. The only advantage of the MS Technology is that it allows more data in the same space. MOST bar code users don't NEED more data. you've got plenty of room for you item IDs and your ISBNs and your package reference numbers, etc.

Also, users of bar codes are often very conservative WRT new technology. They don't want to spend money if they don't have to, and they've already got the bar code readers...

Answer 2

This isn't a response to your question body, but to the subject: No way. I suspect that we will be living with bar codes for a long time, even though there have been better alternatives for years. There are millions of items in your supermarket and every other store and they all have barcodes, and I'd be surprised if that changed even in the next 30 years. Could you imagine what it would be like to replace all the point-of-sale devices? And that won't happen until every item has something standard to replace their barcode. And that won't happen until the POS devices...

Answer 3

Quite the opposite. I think Microsoft Tag is Dead On Arrival. QR and other optical codes are much more relevant that anything Microsoft can shove down our throats.