Abstract: A tag for a bottle having a neck, wherein the tag comprises a band for engaging the neck of the bottle and a label portion extending from the band. The band frictionally engages the whole circumference of the neck of the bottle in order to maintain the placement of the tag on the exterior surface of the neck of the bottle. The label portion of the tag extends outwardly from the band at an angle with respect to the vertical axis of the bottle neck.

Abstract: Disclosed herein are systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for capturing images of barcode enabled loyalty cards, detecting the compatibility of a barcode scanner with a virtual representation of a bar-code enabled card, and for location-aware handling of virtual cards. A system configured to practice the first method outputs a template of an expected size, and presents, within the template, a real-time image, obtained via a camera, of a card having a barcode. The system takes a picture of the card and, based on a card-template size relationship, extracts an image of the barcode. A system practicing the second method outputs a stored card image for a barcode scanner, and monitors an image feed of the bar code scanner scanning the display. If an associated scanner class indicates that the barcode scanner is unable to scan the stored image of the card, the system generates an alert.

Abstract: In a method and apparatus for allocating processing in a network, a processing request is received. It is determined if a first processing node in the network is capable of handling the processing request. If the first processing node is incapable of handling the processing request alone, one or more additional processing nodes from the network are allocated to assist in handling the processing request.