The Appcast #45: December 13, 2009 – Bar Code Scanning Apps

720263This week’s show: Bar Code Scanning Apps. We take a look at apps that scan and inventory anything with a UPC.

Episodes can be downloaded by clicking the Episodes tab above.

Intro Music: Borderline D.U. Mix  from Mixter Two – I Don’t Know What I’m Doing by Brad Sucks.

Show Outline:

  1. Introductions
  2. News: AT&T suggests tiered data plan
  3. News: AT&T releases app to report on network issues
  4. News: Microsoft asking that 360 Live be removed from App Store
  5. News: Apple bans developer for mass review fraud
  6. Listener Feedback
  7. New Apps for the Week
  8. Core Topic: Bar Code Scanning Apps
New Apps Discussed on December 13th, 2009:

  1. 446764 Dragon Dictation – Free – Voice to Text is always a big item on everyone’s mind since dictation is the easiest way to take notes, especially if you’re not used to a tiny phone keyboard. Dragon Dictation is pretty good at understanding what you’re saying, but I’ve never actually had it get everything down 100% right. There’s always a few hiccups here and there. Granted it’s free and updates down the line will likely improve this app, don’t go expecting a whole new world just yet.
  2. 792525 IMDb - $1.99 – The official native iphone app is finally here. The popular internet movie database is presented in one place with easy navigation to look up movies, actors, and crew. You can also watch trailers, find showtimes for nearby movies, and access pretty much any content that is you’d find on the web site, but formatted nicely for the iPhone or iPod Touch.
  3. 049728 Beaterator - $4.99 – What a pity that Rockstar Games, the makers of Grand Theft Auto, can’t properly port Beaterator, their PSP rhythm game/toy, to the iPhone. What you get are just some samples, the ability to mix things into recorded tracks, tune each beat’s volume and sound, and that seems like it. I was excited because Beaterator on PSP is a $40 digital download, but this port is just so awful, you’re not actually saving money, but wasting it.
  4. 695430 Music God – $0.99 – This a cute, fun little app that allows you to analyze and report on your music library, interests and any other amusing facts that the app can pull. You get statistics on how much music you have, how long you’ve spent listening to your library, quick bits on songs you like the most (and those you like the least), as well as information on how much your music library costs and it’s weight in cassette tapes (for those that can’t leave the 80s).
  5. 583887 Driver – $6.99 – Speaking of ports, Gameloft has put together a great port of Driver, one of Ubisoft’s older titles that was created to compete with the Grand Theft Auto series. Here we get a Playstation 1 era game, in full presentation (at least what I can remember of the original), sound, video, gameplay and all in a great package that will have nostalgic fans smiling and new fans somewhat impressed. This isn’t a game for the ages, but it was a solid title during it’s time and a lot of the simpler driving and evading elements still hold. In Driver, you play an undercover cop assigned to become a wheelman for the Miami crime scene. As usual, there’s the twists and turns in the story and the whole vigilante aspect of the driving gameplay. You deliver goods, perform getaways, and even take out hits while going through a simple crime story. It’s all here and it all runs very smoothly on the iPhone.
  6. 657931 Boom It Up! - $0.99 – The latest game from Gamevil, the makers of Hybrid Whisper and Baseball Superstars! This time, you get a much simpler game that involves tap-timing to launch cannonballs up along a vertical stage (think vertical platformer). Other objects like buckets and trampolines help you try and achieve higher aspirations along the way. It’s very simple, something we don’t usually see from Gamevil, but for the price, it’s solid and quick fun.
Apps of the Week:

362690 UStream Live Broadcaster – (Kevin) – Free – Wow. UStream has really done it. Stream video from your iPhone to a UStream URL. It really works, and even over 3G. Granted, there’s a tiny bit of lag, moreso on 3G, but it really works and the stream is more visible than I expected. It’s as simple as that, or you can record your videos, share them to UStream, YouTube, Twitter or Facebook. And it’s all quite simple and easy to do. I can’t wait to use this more during my vacations or even for fun with friends in the future. Easily, *the* app of the week for me.

490898 Twin Blades - (Bob) – $0.99 – In this side-scrolling hack-and-slash shooter, you get to play an anime-styled Nun that wields a scythe and magical gun in order to fight through endless hordes of zombies. Every defeated zombie will earn you points, while their hearts can be collected to upgrade character skills and weapons. It gets even more exciting as you reach the fancier guns, though there are only three levels repeated for each “day” and only two types of enemies appear. Animation is smooth and slick, but there could be some more animations provided to really ease up the repetition. There’s a lot of gore and blood splattering, so those that are squeamish might want to avoid this one.

Silly App of the Week:

704149 AkaPee – (Kevin) – Free -In this 3D pissing simulator, you can pee in a urinal, drown flies, and just pee on the floor. It’s mighty fun and it even suggests you hold the iPhone on your groin area. Tilt and turn to pee in different directions. You can even scribble on the wall to let other people know what you think. It’s actually quite awesome.

296990 Yoga4Dudes: Fully Loaded – (Bob) – $0.99 – Watch scantily-clad women perform yoga. The developers and creators made sure this app would stand out by pushing the humor as a selling point. The download itself is mostly all videos, so it also takes up a significant amount of HD space. However, if you’re looking for some more risque silliness, this might not be such a stretch.

Core Topic: Bar Code Scanning Apps

720263 RedLaser - $1.99 – Incredibly fast scanning, mostly like 1 second. No need to take any picture, it just knows when it sees a UPC. Using the Occupital-developed system for scanning barcodes, RedLaster recognized food items like Ramen Cup Noodles and even Velcro. Other items like video games and books were easy enough. Barcodes get saved and can be emailed. There’s also options to search Google and TheFind, but not Amazon (unfortunately).

828953 ShopSavvy - Free -This barcode scanner’s biggest strength is that it’s free and that it gets through looking up your items very well and can find online and local listings, as well as reviews, of the products you scan. However, the scanning system is a bit more touchy than that of RedLaster or some of the other scanning apps that use the licensed Occupital system.

485453 eyeBuy Visual Search - $1.99 -Includes a feature called “Visual Search”  in which it tries to identify an item from a picture of it rather than the barcode. Actually does quite well for things like books, CDs, and DVDs – even a Japanese-only CD. Amusingly, EyeBuy calls on RedLaser to scan barcodes. Thus, to scan, you will actually need RedLaser to do the scanning, thus raising the actual cost of this app to $4 if you wanted the full functionality. On a side note, the search results aren’t the easiest to understand.

434168 Underscore Price Check Pro - $0.99 – Has it’s own scanning engine that works fairly well, but is not as good as the Occupital system. Has Amazon searching, but you can also choose a different search engine from the built-in list. Does a decent job of looking items up and the selection of search engines is quite nice.

184122 iBARCODE - $0.99 – Uses the Occupital scanning engine and smart.apnoti.com to look up the prices. This app is actually more like a front-end for the smart.apnoti.com site. The Search function works well enough, though it is a bit confusing figuring out where the prices come from. However, search is limited to online only.

360778 Save Benjis+ - $1.99 – Uses the Occupital scanning engine and does a decent job with search results online. There isn’t any local search, but you can limit the stores in the search through the app’s settings. In addition, this app includes some coupons/discounts if it knows them.

644799 barcodescan pro - $2.99 – Also uses autoscan, though you can also go by picture. It recognized most items, like the ramen or regular media, but for the velcro, it found nothing, but allowed me to submit information about the item. barcodescan pro also let me go straight to a Google search for the item if it was something like ramen. It keeps a history of all scanned items and lets me email them too. I can create custom lists to inventory items as well.

740640 pic2shop - Free – Has autoscan, but wasn’t able to find the ramen, but it did find the velcro. Th presentation is a bit clunky and the adds at the top of the screen are ok given that it’s a free app. The auto-scanning doesn’t work as well as the other apps, but if you get used to holding it at a certain distance and angle, then it becomes a bit easier.

591617 Grocery iQ - $1.99 – Found the velcro and the video game, but couldn’t find the ramen. I do like the ability to use the scanning along with putting together a grocery list. The added ability to scan for coupons was a nice touch and the aisle organization seems like a great idea, though I haven’t been able to test it out yet. I was disappointed that my food item didn’t appear, but other organization aspects of this app definitely make it a cool item for future shopping.

837416 PricePad - Free – Scanning was very frustrating since it hardly ever worked and when it did, the item wasn’t in their database. The ability to save items and inventory everything together was nice, but without the item info being filled in by the app, I’d rather just use pen and paper.

532335 ZebraScan - Free – Just don’t get it. Even if it is free.

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categories The Appcast | suberunker | datetime December 14, 2009 10:09 pm

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