Aside from keeping product and price information as up-to-date as possible, barcoo also strives to keep the application’s technology on the cutting edge. In recent weeks, we treated barcoo’s core to an upgrade to Ruby on Rails 3. While our programmers primarily reap the benefits of the upgrade, you’ll profit from it, too, since we’ll be providing you with several significant new features in data security and performance.

Current security standards for barcoonauts

Reports about hacker groups like “Anonymous” or “LulzSec” are popping up more and more frequently in the media. Such groups have made it their duty to break down the security measures of existing server systems and then publish stolen customer data on the internet. By using new technologies (on the server’s and client’s ends alike), we are already keeping our security measures as strong as possible: it’s too often the flaws that have been around for years in outdated server systems that hackers end up exploiting.

New flexibility for more performance

The upgrade to Rails 3 is able to reduce the server load via its modular construction and by optimizing operations among the various internal processes. This enables us to process more new user requests at once, which is particularly important when the amount of requests drastically increases during a typical “rush hour” (e.g. Saturdays). While that may not noticeably improve the application’s reaction time at average operating hours, it affords us much more flexibility for new optimizations. One way we’ll do this in the future is to bundle many separate data packets into one big packet. That saves on key kilobytes and makes a noticeable difference in the performance of mobile terminal devices.

New basis for exciting technologies

Regardless of our company schedule at any given moment, our developers always have the possibility of exploring exciting new technologies. That’s reason enough for us to have a modern and open working environment. The members of barcoo’s team freely exchange their ideas about new technologies with each another all the time. In recent weeks, for example, we had presentations about Git, Prediction API, NoSQL/MongoDB, Reverse Proxy Caching with Squid and CoffeeScript. Only after discussing matters openly with one another do we decide about whether it’s possible to use such technologies for new features within barcoo. As the engine under barcoo’s proverbial hood, Rails 3 has brought our basic framework up to the highest technological standard. So we are looking forward to new challenges and solutions that will promote the further development of the app.

Are you a Web developer who believes in beautiful code? Then check out our current job openings. Our favourite activity is to sit outside on the grass at Engelsbecken (literally, “Angel’s Pool”) – just a two-minute walk from the barcoo office – in Berlin Kreuzberg and think about new technological and content-related strategies. Contact us if you feel like taking part one day!

There are various classifications of visual impairment. barcoo has received calls and emails from many visually impaired people who report that they use barcoo to identify products while shopping and at home. How does that work? The right-hand image below (taken from Digit-Eyes, a “competitor” specializing in visual impairments) shows how some consumers see products:

© Digit-Eyes

If one can’t see labels or colors, how can it be possible to tell which package contains, say, dog food? barcoo makes it possible. Since many visually impaired people still manage to find the barcode, once they do, the smartphone reads barcoo’s results out loud – including the name of the product, of course. And since we don’t know of another database in Europe as comprehensive as ours, the chances of getting a hit are extremely high.

In case you don’t know how to use it, here is the instruction for activating such functions on an Apple iPhone. In general, we encourage you to let us know if you use barcoo in an unconventional way because it’s your experiences that help us keep pushing barcoo forward.