A label for every serial, and a test bench for NFC tags

August 8, 2026

A serial-tracked thing can now carry a label of its own and has a page to open when you scan it — so telling one of forty identical boxes from another no longer means reading the small print. And knowing that NFC is unavailable is one thing; knowing why a tag you are holding does not work is another.

Open a line to read the whole story behind it.

• New Every serial-tracked unit has its own page, and searching for a serial opens it.

  Every serial-tracked unit has its own page: which product it is, the full path of the shelf it is on, when it arrived, and everything that has ever happened to it. Searching for a serial now opens that page instead of the product it belongs to.

• New A printable label for one unit, carrying a code that scans back to that exact unit.

  A printable label for one unit, carrying its serial and a code that scans back to that exact unit — not to the product, and not to another unit that happens to share a serial number. Print one from the unit’s page, or every unit of a product standing at one shelf in a single run, which is the case when forty of something arrive together.

• New An NFC tag for a single unit, written from its page beside the print button.

  An NFC tag for a single unit, written from its page beside the print button — for something handled often enough that a sticker rubs off. The tag carries exactly what the printed label carries, so the two can never disagree about which unit you are holding. Needs Chrome on an Android phone.

• New A test bench for NFC: read a tag, write a spare one, and read the browser's own errors back.

  A test bench for NFC, linked from “What this phone can do”. Read a tag to see everything on it rather than opening it, write a value to a spare tag, and read back the browser’s own error messages with timestamps — the page to open when tags half-work and you need to say why.

• New A bigger label roll to choose from: DYMO 99015, 54 × 70 mm, with a code 52 mm across.

  A bigger label roll to choose from: DYMO 99015, 54 × 70 mm. Its code prints at 52 mm across — more than twice the size of the roll most people load — so a shelf face or an aisle head can be scanned from across the room instead of up close. Nobody has run one through a printer yet, so print one and look at it before a batch.

• Improved The square 25 × 25 mm roll has been printed and checked on paper, so it no longer warns.

  The square 25 × 25 mm roll has been run through a printer and checked on paper, so it no longer warns that nobody has tried it. A label off that roll is nothing but the code — there is no room beside it for anything you could read by eye — and it scans.

• Improved Barcodes have moved to where the rest of a product is changed, and the product page lists them.

  Barcodes have moved to where the rest of a product is changed. The product page now lists the codes it answers to and says plainly when it has none; adding and removing them sits on the edit page beside the pictures. The field there says what a barcode is for behind its question mark: put in the number off the carton, and scanning that carton opens the item or typing the number finds it in search.