Forums / Fun! / Just For Fun

So, I noticed that a lot of the folks with iPhones are getting a new app that allows you to store info about your Starbucks card(s) on your phone. I thought to myself, why should iPhone users get all the fun?

So, I'm pretty sure that the actual app has more going for it than just displaying a scannable bar code, but really, that was all I was interested in, so I went to the Apple store and looked at a screen grab of the app:

There are a lot of different bar code formats; with a little digging around, I found out that this one is known as PDF-417. So, all you need to do in order to have a scannable barcode is to find (or download) a PDF-417 generator, encode the 16-digit number from the back of your Starbucks card (use "compact" format and don't forget a "quiet zone"), and upload the image onto your phone.

Now if your phone is like mine and doesn't have quite as big of a screen as an iPhone, the PDF-417 has a variable format, and you can set the number of columns to one, resulting in a scannable barcode that looks more like this:

This is the format that fit very well on my screen; you can experiment a bit and see what works for you. So, now instead of swiping a card at Starbucks, I scan my phone.

And that's the fun thing I did with my computer today.

….

I love you

I no longer need this:

Seriously, though, I don't know if this is incredibly cool or patently obvious, because it only took me about half an hour and a little trial-and-error. Should I post this on Facebook and let it spread?

Let it spread like an entire bucket of butter atop my fat and lazy good-for-nothing uncle's stack of pancakes.