Tag: Barcode scanning »

It's been done with with many iOS devices before. In public, no less. Pretty much everyone has done it, but there's no shame in it. I am, of course, referring to using an iPhone/Pad's wifi (or 3G) capabilities to look up an item's price online while still in the store. Maybe it's to check for a better price or even to see if it can be "flipped" for a decent profit, but no matter the reason people do it all the time. Now TechCruch has pointed out a new app that makes the process super easy.

Amazon Student, along with a few other Amazon apps, enables users to do all that and more. A quick scan of a barcode is all it takes, really. The idea is that it makes looking for a good price on textbooks easy, but it works on just about everything sold en-masse in a retail environment. The big difference here is that it also allows users to scan their own items to sell on Amazon if they're eligible for trade-in. Just scan it, and if it's a "yes" then Amazon will pay for shipping and send out a gift card.

I think the word "neat" pretty much covers it.

[via TechCrunch]

Barcode reading is really rather useful. In the case of Barcode Reader and Barcode Reader Pro, it enables users to find the lowest price for an item within the US simply by taking a photo of the relevant barcode.

Barcode Reader has also now become the first and only barcode scanning app that works with the iPad 2 as well as all other iOS devices.

The app enables users to search through a whole wealth of places in the quest to find the best price. It searches eBay, Amazon, Target, Google Product Search, Walmart.com and many others offering a comprehensive price comparison service.

There's also a built-in browser to help users read more about a product and it's possible to use the current location to find prices in nearby stores.

All in all, Barcode Reader could be a great way of saving money for the savvy shopper.

It's available now in free and paid ($0.99) forms and as previously mentioned, it's currently the only barcode scanning app out there for the iPad 2.

While we cover plenty of games here at 148Apps, they're all on the iOS side of things. But especially during this time of year, there's definitely an interest in games from the traditional gaming systems, both handheld and portable. Whether we're just shopping for gifts for friends and family, or trying to kill time at GameStop while others shop in far less interesting stores, the 'traditional' game has yet to go away. The problem is that just looking at the boxes of these game doesn't exactly tell you everything; tiny screens and admittedly biased descriptions don't tell you much about games. Sometimes there's a need for more info. That's where Cedemo steps in.

Cedemo lets you look up a game and instantly get a chance to see it in action, as video starts playing when you look up a title, allowing you to get a feel for a game that boxart alone cannot provide. It certainly makes window shopping for games far more visual than static images provide. So how do you look up the info on these games? Well, you can check out the top 10, "Hot", and "Oldies" lists in the app, or you can manually search for titles. However, there's one other way to look up titles - you can scan the game's UPC on camera-enabled devices to instantly watch video of the game as soon as the barcode is recognized. If you have trouble scanning barcodes, whether you have a device without an auto-focus camera or just can't keep your arm from shaking your device to get a lock on the barcode, you can just manually key in the UPC.

The app is currently available for free on the App Store, and works on all iOS devices (with barcode scanning disabled on non-camera devices, and the app does not run in iPad native mode), and there is supposedly a version for Android available as well, but it is not currently available on the Android Marketplace. The only feature in the app besides video playback is the ability to post the games you find with Cedemo to Facebook; the ability to see reviews of games could be another huge help for game shoppers this holiday season. For now, this could be a useful app for those of us stuck looking through the game shelves while out shopping in the next month.

[gallery]