It looks like the Japanese are using barcodes for more than scanning, take a look at how they used barcodes as another place for advertising.  Great idea, I don’t see why U.S. companies are not doing this. This kind of creative barcode design is completely new to me, but ...

Here’s a cool hack if you use a lot of barcodes and carry a whole bunch of cards that you don’t need. A barcode is simply a number when translated. You can refer to our touchscreen barcode reader also for how to make a simple bar code reader. via ...