Data capture site reinvents itself

AutoIdeas.com has resurfaced with a new name and a fresh focus.

By -- Modern Materials Handling, 9/1/2000

A site we first told you about in December 1998, AutoIdeas.com, now has been reincarnated as DataCaptureBiz.com .

AutoIDeas.com started out providing weekly tips on automatic identification technology from auto ID vendors and end users. Users could browse a library of past tips, but they couldn't do much else. Then, in June, the site was relaunched as DataCapture Biz.com. Behind the relaunch is a Kansas City-based Web publisher known as BizSpace.

As DataCaptureBiz.com, the site continues to offer data-capture tips. But the emphasis now is on news about all sorts of data capture technologies-bar codes, smart cards, radio frequency identification, biometrics. Users can read about auto ID company product launches, personnel changes, court cases, and financial results. They can even get free, weekly e-mail updates.

Other new offerings include a discussion area, a job-search function, and a buyer's guide. At press time there were few buyer's guide or job listings, but the discussion board was fairly active, with users advising one another on where obtain a UPC database and how to scan items at long range. The discussion forum in effect replaces the data-capture tips, which aren't updated as often and lack the animated graphics that often illustrated them in the past. Still, the tip library continues to offer handy advice: You can find out the fastest way to print labels with a Windows driver, or how to determine the symbology of a bar code simply by looking at it. DataCaptureBiz.com definitely deserves a second look.