Quick Hit – A couple of interesting bar-coding tidbits

There were a couple of things about bar-coding in the web-stream that caught my attention today.

The first item was a tweet from @hospitalrx mentioning an application at USA.gov for the iPhone and Android OS that can be used to identify product recalls. The application is appropriately called Recalls.gov.

Now, those recalls are right at your fingertips, thanks to the new RECALLS.GOV mobile application. Whether you’re at your child’s day care center or a yard sale, whether you’re at a store or at home, you can now type a product’s name into your phone and learn immediately whether that product has been recalled because of a safety concern. You can also see photos of recalled products and learn what to do with recalled products in your homes.

Even though the website is lacking detail, the application does offer the ability to scan the bar-code on a given item to determine its recall status, although I have not tested this functionality. Additional mobile applications from USA.gov can be found here.

And from Barcode.com: “Motorola has released a tiny new barcode scanner called the CS3000. The CS3000, shown below, is just about 3.5 inches long, 2 inches wide and less than an inch thick. It weighs only 2.45oz according the Motorola spec sheet. It is capable of scanning 1D barcodes and has a 24 hour battery life. The CS3000 has a USB connector and also Bluetooth. It’s 512MB of flash memory can hold roughly a million bar codes.“

These things are neat. You can download the spec sheet for the Motorola CS3000 scanner here (PDF).