Dynamsoft Blog

Accurately capturing data from paper forms can be extremely challenging. Re-keyed-paper-based-form data not only is human-intensive, it’s also error-prone. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) can help reduce the amount of human involvement. However, it still requires some human supervision to ensure the data capture process is done correctly.  QR Code has...

How to Scan Multiple Barcodes and QR Codes in Bulk? Open the online barcode and QR code scanner. Drag and drop images from your computer. [Optional] In the left panel, make adjustments to the settings.  The results are returned in the right panel. Multiple barcode scanning is time-efficient in various...

Introduction Have you considered how many barcodes you come across on a daily basis? From UPC codes on every product on the grocery shelf to PDF417 barcodes on your driver’s license, barcodes are widely adopted for their convenience and low-cost factors. Accuracy is a key metric of barcode reading SDKs....

Today, barcode technology has become an inseparable part of the retail industry, and QR codes have become ubiquitous because of their outstanding usability and benefits. While QR codes and barcodes provide many advantages, the crumpled ones can become a source of frustration and problem for retailers and customers alike. It...

Inventory management is the foundation of any successful retail business. A robust inventory management system helps ensure satisfied and happy customers, reduce costs, and increase profit margins by minimizing out-of-stock, reducing shrinkage, simplifying processes, and improving forecasting. To implement an ideal inventory management system in your retail business, barcode technology...

Retail businesses need robust barcode solutions for improving sales and inventory procedures. With the advancing technology and global disruptors like the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of barcodes in retail has become even more important than ever. When it comes to choosing professional barcode solutions, commercial-grade barcode readers clearly have the...

As social distancing became imperative, retailers started using technology, such as barcodes, to limit physical contact by click-and-collect as part of omnichannel retail. There are multiple advantages of barcode technology in retail. It creates dynamic sales opportunities, offers deeper consumer insights, and empowers employees.  Here is how retailers can use...

Just like many other industries, the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the retail realm in 2020. Adapting technology became a necessity for all sorts of retailers to cater to the new normal. Since the pandemic hasn’t ended, most of these changes are here, along with some new ones. Here are the trends...

Organizations today deal with too much paperwork, especially in industries like healthcare, finance, law, etc. More and more, paper documents need to be digitized, processed and indexed to better serve different business workflows and requirements. Having a good document scanning tool to efficiently digitize your paper documents is a critical...

The North American produce market is undergoing a massive product traceability process redesign to dramatically improve produce safety for consumers. The proposed changes involve redefining what and how barcode data is used as well as an effort to introduce blockchain technology for produce traceability. Food recalls have been on the...

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the retail industry, forcing retailers to make changes and adaptations to protect their customers, employees, and their own survival. Some of these changes are here to stay,  even after the pandemic. One of these changes will be the increasing need and use of digital technologies....

Looking for a web-based document scanning toolkit for your users to do online document scanning and uploading easily to your website? Scan Documents on Desktop You may try this web application to access scanners from within a browser: Scan Your Documents Online Browser-based scanning SDK for software developers The web page above...

Barcodes have long been used to track and manage inventories; however, the use cases for barcode scanning don’t end there. As the world continues to face the Covid-19 pandemic, innovators and governments of various countries have been trying numerous ways to contain its spread. Barcoding technology is one of them....

As with every industry, the educational system is undergoing a digital transformation. An ever-growing number of courses are now offered online, computers and tablets are replacing textbooks, and teachers and classrooms have changed their curriculum to better match the needs of the modern-day labor market. In addition to these changes,...

Retail stores continue to find new ways to engage customers and build better customer relationships, even or especially during COVID-19. According to Small Business Trends, there are at least five things customers want from a retail store. These include personalized customer service, online/offline integration, the use of mobile technology, loyalty...

Barcode technologies are used to quickly identify items. As a provider of professional barcode SDKs, Dynamsoft has been involved in computer vision for more than ten years. In this post, we list 11 facts you should know to help you choose a barcoding solution. We aim to make that selection...

Retail store checkout today has evolved with new technologies to choose from. Among them, two are mobile-point-of-sale (mPOS) and self-checkout solutions. Both are widely popular. For example, according to a Global Market Insights report, mPOS terminal adoption sales will reach $55 billion by 2024. Meanwhile, Retail Customer Experience reported 66 percent of...

Have you noticed your bank starts to charge for paper statements and keep nudging you to go green by transitioning to digital statements? This global phenomenon of digitizing paper documents began a long time ago. The initiative was to make documents more accessible and easier to manage. Although the use...

Intelligent Mail barcode, Postnet and Planet are three universal postal barcode types developed by the United States Postal Service. In this article, we will discuss the usage of each symbol and make a comparison between them. Basic introduction The Postnet (Postal Numeric Encoding Technique) barcode symbology was used by the...

Basic introduction A QR code (Quick Response code) is a 2D barcode type. It consists of black squares arranged in a square grid on a white background, which can be read by a camera, scanner, or other imaging devices. PDF417 barcodes are a type of stacked, variable length, bi-directional 2D...

Code 39 and Code 128 are both 1D barcodes that support both numeric and alpha data. They are widely used in non-retail environments, such as library books, membership cards, small items, etc. In this article, we will compare the two barcodes and help you understand the differences between them. Scan...

Are you wondering about what types of barcodes you should use for your particular usage scenario? Are you confused by the many similar barcode types? To help you differentiate the different barcode types, we have published a comprehensive guide to 1D and 2D barcodes. In this article, we will dive...

Today more than ever one would think that U.S. businesses consume less and less paper each year. Despite the many opportunities that exist now to take a business digital in place of paper, paper consumption in the U.S. continues to increase. Regardless, there are many organizations turning to solutions for...

The US has so far had well more than one million confirmed cases of COVID-19. It has forced practically every major city to temporarily close businesses to stop its spread. But, as people look to get back to work at physical locations, without proper precautions corporate offices might be amongst...

Google has announced that the good old user-agent string will be deprecated in the Chrome browser later this year. This change will provide better monitoring abilities, and let people know who is using this information and ultimately improve the end-users’ privacy. It is worth noting that this phase-out is currently...

Barcodes have an array of applications – they are business critical in warehousing for inventory management. They can be productive in retail marketing campaigns and much more. Here is a short but useful collection of how a couple of European and a couple of California businesses leverage barcodes for their...

Nowadays people expect their interaction with technology to be easy and uninterrupted regardless of location or device. A kid watching a cartoon in the living room television wants to continue watching on the iPad in his bedroom from where he left off. Adults in the workforce want that same experience...

With so many 1D and 2D barcode types, how do you choose the right one? In this article, we give you a comprehensive guide to 1D and 2D barcodes, covering 18 major barcodes types. Collectively, they cover the bulk of application needs. For 1D barcodes, they include: UPC-A UPC-E EAN...

It’s estimated 94 percent of adult Americans use a mobile phone and smartphone ownership is also growing rapidly around the world. In the modern digital age, people are busier than ever, and are on the go all the time. It goes without saying that we spend a lot of time...

Document scanning functionality is a critical component for a software developer building a website, content management system, or office automation system. There are several different scanning drivers in the market: TWAIN Scanner WIA Scanner ISIS Scanner SANE Scanner Naturally, you may be confused as to what is the best solution for...

There are a lot of different barcode reader solutions on the market, including some free open source options, which begs the question – Why choose Dynamsoft Barcode Reader? While ‘free’ sounds good, there are some factors you may want to consider. Hidden Cost First, let’s address the obvious – cost....

You may be wondering what’s the difference between an SDK and an API. The short answer is that they are used in different ways and for different purposes. In this post, we discuss what is an SDK, and what is an API. What is an SDK? A Software Development Kit...

Recently, a potential customer reached out to our Support Team during a Live Chat session and asked us if we had any JavaScript APIs to capture MICR from a Canon scanner.   After asking a few follow-up questions to get a better idea of their project requirement, the question was asked:...

How to improve macOS user experience continues to be a critical task for software developers, especially for those who develop document management applications. These applications have a main focus which is to improve efficiency and reduce workflow processes. There are lot of factors that can be consider for user experience....

Barcodes and agriculture are not new, but they continue to find new ways to work together. Thanks to mobile app developers and barcode scanning SDKs, farmers are using barcoding technology to improve efficiencies within the supply chain such as: Monitoring yields Handling fresh produce Improving communication Enforcing accountability In this...

There are a few ways to set a process’s CPU affinity. In this article, we will discuss a few options. Web Server Ngix With Ngix on FreeBSD and Linux, you can bind worker processes to a set of CPUs using the worker_cpu_affinity directive. Please find the details here: Worker_cpu_affinity. IIS...

Improving accuracy and decoding rate remains a top priority for developers working with barcode reading SDKs. While configuration tweaks and improvements in the algorithm can result in drastic improvements, end users can also play a significant role by improving the image resolution at the time the image is taken, ensuring...

Looking for the best barcode reader SDK for your application, but aren’t sure how to evaluate the different options, and what considerations you should be making? You’ve come to the right place. There are more than a dozen commercial-grade barcode reader SDKs on the market and it can be time-consuming and...

Barcode technology has been around for decades and shows no signs of slowing as retailers continue to find new retail solutions to use barcodes. While reliable and robust, there are still many challenges to overcome, especially in retail environments. Unsuccessful barcode scans from damaged codes, or simply missing a barcode...

Businesses are turning to intelligent warehouse management to vastly improve efficiencies by leveraging automation. Computer vision technology empowers many businesses to track goods with proven-reliable barcode labels. But, what are some considerations to get started with barcode-based intelligent warehouse management? How a Modern Intelligent Warehouse Works To move beyond manual...

There is no question that a digital document management system provides easier access to documents from anywhere compared to a paper-based system. This is one of the primary reasons for adopting a DMS – accessibility. A DMS can remove all kinds of barriers to access, allowing for teams to collaborate...

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology is a mature technology with wide business use. Essentially, it lets users extract text from an image so it can be manipulated in a word processor or database. In other words, it turns an otherwise difficult-to-use image into meaningful content. So, what are some of...

There are a myriad of technology enablers to help organizations go paperless. Among the top considerations is optical character recognition technology (OCR technology). OCR is a powerful tool that is often part of any document management system (DMS). But, how can organizations ensure they get the most out of it?...

The market for barcode scanners remains robust with at least one estimate calling for CAGR growth of around seven percent through 2027. They’ve been around forever and as a result, there exists a variety of hardware to scan barcodes, each with pros and cons depending on your goals with barcode...

Mobile content capture continues to grow as more and more, smartphones are being used as primary devices. As Statista points out, automatic data capture solutions are regularly deployed for factory, warehouse, and logistics applications, and include both handheld and stationary bar code scanning and imaging devices, as well as bar code printers,...

Inventory tracking is critical for a lot of businesses. While it’s certainly more critical to some industries, such as retail, other less obvious industries can also benefit. For example, it’s said US retailers are sitting on $1.43 in inventory for every $1 they sell. A small business can also use inventory tracking...

The market for inventory management software is expected to grow with a CAGR of more than eight percent by 2020 and with barcode technology at the core of any such solution, the potential applications are many. We came across six good ideas for using inventory tracking or barcode technology. Tablets...

Barcode technology has been around for decades, and it continues to grow in its use across many industries such as retail, transportation, logistics, public security, automated production, healthcare and more. Barcodes have become very mission critical to countless organizations. In healthcare, it’s even been argued barcodes have actually helped save lives...

Dynamsoft contributed an article to CREDIT UNION JOURNAL that ran Dec 21, 2016. Start reading it below. In the old days, people went to their bank’s ATM to deposit their checks. Sometimes, they even ventured inside the bank and visited a teller to deposit their checks. It was inconvenient for...

A growing trend in identification and access control is the use of biometric authentication, especially from fingerprints as it offers more security and convenience that traditional user name and password identification systems. Some of the most common Biometric identifiers include: Fingerprint Palm veins Face recognition Retina DNA These biometric identifiers are...

Barcodes have been used commercially since the mid-1970s. While they are commonly known for use in retail or warehousing, today barcodes are also widely used in document management. In the field of document management, typical usage includes splitting routing renaming indexing Working together with low-cost scanners, barcode decoding can be used...

Business productivity goes down when the paper starts stacking up in the office, which makes it impossible to have an office workspace without a document scanner. Every day millions of documents are scanned for finding, storing, verifying, and sharing information. This digital transit of documents requires a fast and accurate...

*Dynamsoft contributed an article to CMSWire that ran May 25, 2016. Start reading it below. As organizations increasingly turn to mobile devices to meet their needs for improved efficiency and better customer service, the demand for mobile document scanning grows. Yet, according to a recent survey of enterprise IT and...

An inventory system is a process for managing, accounting for, and locating objects or materials. Such systems are widely used in all types of industries. Items that can be tracked can include many types of goods, such as food, equipment, beverages, medicine and much more. Sometimes, the accounting of items...

  Dynamsoft contributed an article to Document Magazine that ran Jun 8, 2015. Start reading it below. Barcode technology was created in the 1940s and has really taken off in adoption rates ever since the 1970s. Today, it’s widely used in industries like retail, transportation, healthcare, logistics, public security and...

In 2011, we published a great article called 10 Rules for Evaluating Web TWAIN Components. It helped many software developers with understanding their scanning project needs and getting perspective to evaluate TWAIN SDKs for web applications. But, quite a few things have changed since 2011. Quite a few. Since 2011, the...

More and more companies and institutions are implementing digital document management systems for daily work processes to improve efficiency and save money. To ensure an optimal problem-free system, it’s often a good idea to implement standards-based technologies. For example, you’ll probably want to use TWAIN as the application programming interface...

Buy it or build it? Today, this is an age-old question in the IT world. The mere outcome of one versus the other can yield grand differences in the scope of desired benefits, cost, and time to accomplish. This major decision is one many organizations also face when deciding upon...

Dynamsoft contributed an article to SD Times that ran Sept 4, 2014. Start reading it below. Ever since Apple created the iOS ecosystem, countless developers moved to focus their energies on the mobile world. As a result, more and more content is being consumed and more apps are being used as routine parts...

Dynamsoft contributed an article to THE BarCode News that ran July 13, 2014. Start reading it below. The use of barcodes in healthcare markets has been advocated going back to the 1970s. The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) has emphasized a high priority on using barcode technology to reduce medical errors for...

Dynamsoft contributed an article on using TWAIN in web based document scanning APP to HTMLGOODIES*. Start reading it below.* If you’ve used an imaging device to scan something, chances are you’ve come across TWAIN somewhere in the scanning software. Using the TWAIN standard to scan something has been made quite simple over...

Encode a QR Code with user filled-in data from web forms for data capture flexibility A new year is practically upon us. At Dynamsoft, we are celebrating a successful 2013 and planning for an even better 2014. ^_^ Like many other software vendors already looking to the New Year, the...

Dynamsoft contributed an article to Dr. Dobb’s Journal that ran June 17, 2013. Start reading it below. TWAIN, WIA, and DirectShow are three popular APIs for imaging apps. How do they differ and which one should you pick? Online image-scanning applications continue to grow in importance. More organizations need to digitize...

Document digitalization significantly changed the business world. It improves the efficiency of information delivery and helps the offices paperless yet more organized. In this article, I’ll share with you 5 ways of storing scanned documents. 1. Upload the images to your database. Beside the image itself, sometimes it’s necessary to upload extra...

Update May 6, 2015 - A lot of things have changed. A new article named “10 Rules for Evaluating Web TWAIN Components – for 2015 and Beyond” is written to address those changes and considerations. You can get it here. TWAIN is a software protocol developed by member companies of...