Seeking to provide free-tool portal-style services in the growing print-to-web market, CueCat provides free barcode readers for your computer. Radio Shack is giving them away in their stores so you can browse information about products you see in their printed catalogs. Wired also gives them to subscribers to find more information about their printed ads.

The software that comes with the scanner can read all bar codes, and if it sees one it recognizes, it'll take you to an appropriate web page (a Slashdot reader reports success on a Pepsi can and a DVD, for example). The scanner being generally useful, however, you can easily write your own software to use it for more practical matters. Indeed, the thing plugs into your PS2 keyboard port and spits out ASCII characters of what it reads. Programs that print bar codes are readily available as well, including the GPL'd UScan package.

Barcode 1 has all the information you'll need on bar codes and their standards, including the familiar 1D Code 128, probably readable by the free scanner, and 2D bar codes of many different specs, probably not readable by the free scanner. Barcodes are pretty.