Hi everyone, today I would like to share two interesting web-based services. One of them can create a barcode image while the other can read (decode) a barcode. But before we jump into topic, first I want to ask you. Do you remember what the logo appears on the google search engine on 7 October a year ago? That date is the anniversary of 57 years since the barcode patented (on October 7, 1952). Yeah, at that day, Google changed its official logo and display the barcode image. This is quite interesting because many people was wondering, what is the meaning of the words behind the image? Actually it is very easy to guess, surely the answer is Google.

In daily life, we often find barcode image on products sold in supermarkets and this became a very important part in the checkout system. Behind the barcode sticker attached on a product, there are a lot of information relating to the product, such as ID, type, name, price and more. At the checkout point (cashier), barcode will be read by a machine (scanner / decoder).
Actually it is easy to create or read the barcode, you don’t need any barcode machine to do that. The following are sites that provide these services. Both are web-based tool so that you do not require any software.
Free Online Barcode Generator
Website : Morovia
By using this tool we can create barcodes easily.
Screenshot :
1. Select the barcode format you want (support Code 39, 25, 11, 39Extended, 39HIBC, 128, 93, Codabar, GSI-128 (UCC/EAN 128), Interleaved 2 of 5, UPC-A, UPC-E, EAN-13, EAN-8, Bookland, Telepen, Telepen-Numeric, Postnet, Royal mail, MSi /Plessey, DataBar 14, Databar-Stacked, Databar-Truncated, Databar-Stacked-Omni, Databar-Limited, Databar-Expanded, PDF 417, and DataMatrix).
2. Type the code or text data into the data Input
3. Input X-Dimension (in pixels), Bar Height (in mils), and Rotation data.
4. Check / Uncheck “Show Human Readable Text” (up to you)
5. Click “Submit” to generate barcode
Free Online Barcode Reader / Decoder
Website : Zxing
Screenshot :
The user interface is very simple and easy to use. Basically, there are two ways to read the barcode using ZXing. You can either choose to enter the website URL that contains a barcode images or upload images from your computer. Click “Submit Query” to decode the barcode.
You may also interested: Barcode Add-in for Word and Excel





