Listen to more stories on the Noa app. To marvel at the choice and convenience of modern shopping, go visit your grocery-store mustard aisle. My local Whole Foods sells more than 20 different kinds: ...

Scanning QR codes with smartphones is easy. However, sometimes you don’t want to use your smartphone and wish to scan the QR code natively on your computer. The good news is it’s possible to scan QR ...

The barcodes that appear on almost every product bought and sold in shops around the world were born 75 years ago on a beach in Miami (Credit: Alamy) Few people think twice about the barcodes on their ...

Once upon a time, a restless cashier would eye each and every item you, the consumer, purchased and key it into the register. This took skill but also time—and proved to be an imperfect way to keep ...

Few people think twice about the barcodes on their shopping, but in the 75 years since they were first dreamed up, they have helped save lives, gone into space and stoked fears of the Antichrist.

It was invented for labelling automobile parts - but now QR codes are used in a much broader context in everyday life. The two-dimensional matrix barcode, created by the Japanese company Denso Wave in ...