Red Laser, Save Money and Shop Smart
For many months the G1 has had a barcode scanner, in fact it came standard with the phone, and finally Optical, LLC, created Red Laser for the iPhone. Red Laser is a barcode scanner. Any barcode can be scanned with this App. Red Laser will cross-reference many online websites and find the cheapest price for the item being scanned. It mainly utilizes Google Product Search and Amazon.
When the app first starts, a scanned products screen is displayed which contains a database of everything that has been scanned. Items in this database can easily be deleted just like deleting an email. There is also the ability to email the product list to a specified email address. Scanning products is a breeze, when the scan button is pressed the iPhone utilizes its camera, a box will appear with an image in the background; line the image up with the barcode and it will automatically capture it. The best part is it will auto capture it when it gets a good read so there is no need to constantly take pictures over and over trying to get a good read.
On top of taking pictures there is also the ability to manually enter a barcode, which is also useful if a good scan cannot be obtained. When a product list is emailed out it will only display the items and a link to Google Products and Amazon so the prices can be seen there. It will not send the prices in the actual email, which was a bit of a disappointment.
When it comes to barcode scanning Red Laser isnt always perfect. It will not locate some products, which is understandable. The fact that it only searches Google Products and Amazon is a bit restrictive, Google Products does utilize a lot of websites, but a lot is not enough. When I search for cat food I would expect it to search all of the major pet retailers including Target, Wal-Mart, PetSmart, PetCo and so on but it only searched for the food in PetCo and other various online retailers. When I am buying cat food I am more interested in going down to the store instead of ordering online and paying for shipping. If this could be worked out it would be the perfect barcode app and would be well worth the $1.99. If you dont mind comparing online prices and ordering off of the internet then this app is well worth it, if you expect it to search all of your major local retailers then you will be disappointed.
Better yet, use Red Laser to build a database of all your books. Here’s how I do it. Scan all your books’ barcodes, send/email this list of barcodes (ISBN numbers) to yourself (comes as a text attachment), import contents of this text file into a desktop database application like Librarian Pro. Once have ISBN numbers in as one ISBN per record, click on the Amazon icon to fill in the rest of the book fields–will also include the book cover.
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some nice tips.
nice review , i agree ……..
I too want to compare prices in store then buy….
cheers mick