Comments on: RedLaser #2 Paid App in the AppStore!

By: hypest

hypest — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:35:45 +0000

I've prepared a RedLaser custom App, to use costpad for the barcode lookup. The relevant link can be found at the costpad start page at http://costpad.com (look at the "RedLaser users" paragraph. Not sure if this works ok since I have no iphone to test it...

By: hypest

hypest — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:53:12 +0000

Yeah, I show that "unpublished" RedLaser feature and probably adapt a page in costpad.com to provide a compatible results page. My only problem is that I don't have an iPhone

By: Jeffrey Powers

Jeffrey Powers — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:03:46 +0000

You should check out RedLaser custom apps - http://redlaser.com/apps . You could quite easily make a custom app that sends barcodes to a mobile Safari costpad.com page. It's all URL-based, so users just need RedLaser installed, nothing else.

By: hypest

hypest — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:03:08 +0000

shameless plug:

I've been developing such an app for WindowsMobile for a while now (Barcorama opensource) and a free+open accompanying website http://costpad.com
So, perhaps RedLayer2 can be used as a tool to access costpad.com…

By the way, feel free to contribute purchase products and prices

have fun!
hypest

By: Yuri

Yuri — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:52:26 +0000

Jeffrey, no arguments on the great job you did, nor on your technology potential, and not even on the app pricing. Did I buy it? Yes
do I find it useful today? No
would I reccomend it to my friends? No
hope this is helpful
average Joe

By: Jeffrey Powers

Jeffrey Powers — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 10:38:08 +0000

We believe that seeing online prices is incredibly valuable. It allows you to make the decision between buying now, or buying online. Seamless barcode scanning paired with online prices was our first step, but we also see the value of local results and per-item prices, among other things. If you're interested in using RedLaser to scan for local prices right away, you can use RedLaser Custom Apps, which is a novel use of custom iPhone URLs to enable scanning and searching for almost any website that accepts barcodes -- right from the iPhone Home Screen. Check out RedLaser Custom Apps here: http://bit.ly/3fVXpt With RedLaser installed, this link creates a custom app to scan & search for local prices in 80302 via Krillion: http://bit.ly/tiBfZ We recognize that, even as we continue to enhance RedLaser, we will never be able to cover every valuable use case for barcode scanning (e.g. wine information, grocery lists, etc). So we've made our technology available for third-party developers via an SDK ( http://redlaser.com/SDK.aspx ). Jeffrey Powers Co-Founder, Occipital

By: Jeffrey Powers

Jeffrey Powers — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 10:36:24 +0000

By: Kyle

Kyle — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 01:49:13 +0000

The idea is good, but the implementation is fairly useless. Doesn't look like the RedLaser guys have done the hard work of actually incorporating local price data.

By: Robert Dewey

Robert Dewey — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:17:07 +0000

I like the integration of the web into the real-world. A few years back (actually, before camera phones were big), I had a similar idea during a brain storm session. The problem then was that you couldn't easily capture the UPC code (it would have required typing it -> sending through SMS).

This looks awesome.

By: Nari Kannan

Nari Kannan — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:24:43 +0000

Brad – Thanks for highlighting this application! With the ability of just the onboard camera to read bar codes, the real applications are numerous elsewhere – especially in Healthcare – Scanning patient tags in ORs to make sure that you are operating on the right patient, scanning drugs to record that the right drug is being given, scanning a patient tag when in-patients order things from the hospital menu etc. We are putting together an iPhon/smartphone based Healthcare Checklisting solution and this idea will enhance our product to do many fancy things like the above!

By: jrpowers

jrpowers — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:09:34 +0000

The possibilities for bringing the science of computer vision to commercial applications are incredible. As practitioners, we're kind of reeling because the CPU power needed to do this stuff just sort of showed up one day, and now the applications are way behind what's possible.

By: @CamiloALopez

@CamiloALopez — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 01:52:07 +0000

I can see Occipital being at a advantage point to eventually do optical image recognition search with the iphone camera. I tried that 1 year ago with mix luck. the technology is not at the level where consumers can do an image search with reliable results.
What do you guys think is the maturity level of the current technology. What are promising technologies out there?

I am not sure if that would be an strategic direction for Occipital, but certainly the have a kick ass product right now!

By: Camilo

Camilo — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 01:50:19 +0000

I am not sure if that would be an strategic direction for Occipital, but certainly the have a kick ass product right now!

By: pwb

pwb — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:29:14 +0000

Nope. Free apps outnumber paid apps by 10x or 100x. With an app like this you want it to be in as many hands as possible.

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:46:58 +0000

um…i don't think they're hurting on the usage side. did you miss the title?