vikingisson

Why would anyone feel good about a free app that doesn't work? What we're saying is that this app does work. It also happens to be free. So the only difference is how you bitch about it, you can participate as a user in the development of a free app or complain to the company that sells a non free app. Perhaps you should find one that costs money.

Perhaps I use it differently but I also understand how they work. No camera is going to be ideal compared to a proper laser. There are all kinds of bar codes and only some of them are product codes that have a chance to be used for a consumer lookup. The others are routing, tracking, internal, yada codes. You can find URLs, plain text, all kinds of codes.

I have no interest in scanning a can of pop (soda to you yanks) but when I scanned a utility cart at the hardware store it worked perfectly. It found the product and told me the price range in my area.

The better codes for camera based scanners is the qrcode you might see sometimes around here. Those are much easier to scan and there are better consumer databases for it in places like Japan where it is used for this kind of app. We don't have the qrcode product codes available here to do it better. Amazing that it does it this well but we're doing it the hard way.

Go Hard or Go Home

It appears you did actually read what these apps do, so I guess you missed the part that specifically says to not try to scan everyday stuff.

Big in Japan | Scanning Coke or Water? Why?

Maybe you should read up on how to remove apps from your phone and get rid of these crappy apps.

PDXMike

I've been a lurker until now...

I've had my droid for about a month. The other day was bored at the bar I work at with a buddy, was looking through the marketplace and found "shopsavvy." I dled it and started scanning things around the bar including, a bottle of coors lt, the movie goonies, a plastic wrapped CD. I will say the bar I work in is only lit by colored red fluorescent bulbs and a few spotlights. I had to be in a good amount of light for these to scan, but it was obvious once one item scanned what the camera should look like for it to work. It didn't give me a price on the Coors lt, but did identify it. The plastic wrapped CD didn't scan until I unwrapped it, but when it did scan it didn't find the completely no name demo cd left behind. The Goonies scanned easily and pulled up the amazon and walmart price, walmart complete with address of the closest one.

A few days later I was at REI, found something I was interested in, but couldn't find the price. Scanned the barcode in about 2 seconds, and pulled up REI's listing for the product, price, and closest location, which happened to be the one I was standing in.

Since then I've scanned a bunch of random crap. What I've found, case pack products, like soda, if you scan the bottle or the individual product not the case or wrapping I've had much better results. I don't know why this is, but I found the case packs rarely find anything, while the actual item would scan 95% of the time.

There is one thing I could see as being a problem with this app. It takes a little getting used to where the camera needs to be, and at what angle to make sure light is able to get to the barcode when trying to scan. Once I got a few to scan it was a no brainer.


Hope that helps.

Sportster

Hard, I dl'd shopsavvy from the market. There was no indication or info telling me it does not work on everyday items. That may be a important bit of info they should mention in their description of the app. On a sidenote: why don't they use the cameras LED to help with lighting when scanning? That would make it easier to use.

Sportster

Also noticed there were a lot of posts with folks wanting grocery info. I agree with one of the posters who said what good is it if it does mainly high priced items? Those I'm going to be price checking on my home PC. The desire is for it to do grocery items. There's a definate need for it and I see the devs are hearing that and are working on it, which is great. I'd def pay for a app that does that well...

amuse

Okay, so when we developed ShopSavvy we assumed most users would use it to scan items that might have a big price difference. For example, consumer electronics like TVs, DVD Players and Appliances. It turns out that we were right half of the time. 50% of the time our users scan consumer electronics - this means that half of the time our users are scanning other stuff.

What else are they scanning? 25% of the time they scan books, dvds and games. We see lots of price differences between local stores on DVDs and Games (books are pretty competitive). We also recognize almost all books, dvds and games. The remaining 25% of scans are on groceries, health and beauty products and soft goods like clothes. We don't do as well in these categories. Why? Well mainly because retailers won't give us access to prices. Without access to price and inventory from grocery stores we can't help users determine if they can save money. We are, however, getting better at identifying these items (just no prices).

How does ShopSavvy work? We access inventory and price from more than 20,000 local and online retailers. Some retailers give us private access to their prices while others offer public access via the internet. Our users want to know a) does a retailer have an item in stock (mostly local retailers) and b) how much does it cost. If this information is wrong our users usually get mad and let us know about it.

So what doesn't scan at all? Private label stuff - REI makes their own stuff or has it made for them. If I scan an REI item I may know what it is, but is almost certainly NOT sold anywhere else. This means I can't offer a comparable price on the item from another retailer. This is true for Macy's Nordstrom and other retailers that have items made exclusively for their store.

We are working on a very cool solution for groceries, soft goods and health and beauty products - I suspect it will be available in March or April (sorry it isn't faster, but we are swamped with supporting all of the new Android phones). Hope this helps. For more info check out our FAQ:

http://www.biggu.com/***

Alexander Muse, Co-Founder Big in Japan and ShopSavvy
214.550.2003
amuse@biggu.com
Big in Japan | Developers of ShopSavvy

katahdin

Is there a bar scanning app that saves the info? Thats what Id like. Say scan BC on a btl wine to get info on it, then take & attach pic to desc and file away.

DolphinDroid

I understand the OPs desire to have a barcode scanner program that can give comparison price shopping for common items like groceries. That would be cool... unproductive, but cool!

I understand the way the present programs are designed and the reason for them. When I was at the local Lowes looking to buy a dishwasher I wanted to make sure I was getting the best deal and provide other prices as they price match. I scanned it in.. found another price... and saved $75. That is where it makes a big difference. Also I used it to find the best price on other items where I saved a minimum of $3 for an item.

Groceries are completely different. I do not go to four or five different stores each week to get my groceries. I create a shopping list and go to one grocery store each week to get them all (usually my regular grocery store unless another one has sent me a coupon to save $25 on my next grocery visit). I cannot see myself going to a store, scanning a can of soup that is 95 cents, finding it for 90 cents at another store and deciding to go somewhere else to buy it. I know that if the can of soup is 5 cents cheaper somewhere else something else on my list is 5 cents cheaper where I am. It will all work out to be close to even regardless of where I grocery shop.

I am sure if there was a product that would allow me to scan each grocery item and comparison shop I could divide my shopping between three or four stores to save $10 to $20 dollars. If I can spend five minutes and save $10 that is great, but if I have to scan twenty different items, make multiple shopping lists, and go to four different stores (spending a lot of extra time and gas driving to each one) it is not worth the savings (when you calculate the cost of the time spent and gas it really is not any savings). Now if there was a program that allowed you to scan the gorcery item, located the cheapest price, and organized the shopping list for each store... that may save money and not take up too much time =)

Aurelius

ShopSavvy is an outstanding application. Whenever I use it, I feel like I've fallen into a tear in the space-time continuum and ended up living in the future.

Grocery pricing would be a fantastic addition, but I'm not crying because it's not in there at present. It's a free app and this kind of development takes time.

I mean, really, what do you want? The moon on a stick?

Nexoid

Careful man... Gotta be watchin out for those instant karma situation's... lol jk

BTW Savvy works wonders, never had a problem with it.

NewYorkLaw

You need to upgrade to version 3.6.0, it now works on gumballs.
(add me to the list: never had a problem with Savvy).
Pete

fireshaper

Thank you for that info, Alexander, I think this is exactly what the OP needs to read, if he's even still around.

I use ShopSavvy exclusively now that they scan QR codes and have had a few times where I scan something (mainly groceries or a store brand) that doesn't come up but for everything else I've had no problems. My best purchase was the TV that my wife and myself bought as our Christmas present for ourselves, we found the TV we liked at Sams Club, the price was in our range, scanned it with ShopSavvy and found that it was cheapest in town and Amazon couldn't beat it so we bought it!

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alostpacket

So this Barcode walks into a...., uh, bar. The scanner behind the bar says, "what'll be?" So the Barcode replies, "don't you know? You're the scanner."



Yep. Barcode scanning is a joke. But not a very funny joke as you can see here^

InstantKarma

Hey, gumballs can be pretty competitively priced, you know. lol

Nexoid

Yes they can be.

Hint (Google Goggled) - "Turn the vending handle all the way to the right (Clockwise). Give it a smack.. wham gumballs are now free"

hood420

Has there been any indication that retailers will begin putting grocery prices online? It would seem to me that the first to do this could really benefit from it. Or do grocery items vary too much by location?

vikingisson

I doubt it. They go through a lot spying on each other's prices and don't want to make it easy for you and me. Back a few decades ago I had a scanner plugged into a TRS-80 Model 100 (yes, a notebook computer in the early 1980's). I got lots of dirty looks from grocers, they didn't like me doing that. Funny thing is that this was a real scanner, not camera based. hrmm, USB based is technically possible on android...

crankerchick

this is iD10t error

rtfm