App of the Week- RedLaser
July 26th, 2010
Selena Narayanasamy is extensively involved in all things technology, social media, blogging/writing, entrepreneurship and productivity related. When she’s not dabbling in any of the above mentioned things, you can find her drinking her life substance (coffee) and blogging on Search Engine Journal and her website, Esvienne. Follow her on Twitter- @esvienne and@selenavidya, and like her on Facebook.
How many times are you walking through a store, and you see something awesome that you want? Then you look at the price and see it’s about $40.00 more than you want to pay? This happens to me a lot. Not because I have expensive taste, but because it seems everywhere you look, people are trying to make money and up the prices on items.
RedLaser for iPhone fixes that problem. I spent many an hour scanning things just for the fun of it. It’s impossibly accurate and can literally scan almost anything that has a barcode.
The way it works, is you open up the application and hold the scanner far enough away- so that it hits the left and right side of the barcode. It then scans the item and lets you know what it is.
- From there, you can:
- comparison shop (online and local)
- find books in different libraries
- check for food allergens
- search electronic reviews online.
Checking for food allergens is probably one of the biggest selling points of this free application, mainly because it’s impossible to find ingredients on some foods, and others don’t display everything. If you’re allergic to something that isn’t typical, this application will help you find it and possibly prevent you from eating it and having a reaction.
For books, I always find it nice to be able to find another place where you can borrow the book instead of buying it. I’m not sure how many people actually use libraries anymore (with the nook, e-reader, ipad etc) but I still love to go there and take out a book- because you can risk it being horrible and it’s free 
Sometimes barcodes like to be bad- If the barcode can’t be read, for some reason, you can also enter the number in manually.
This app really is a must-have for the shopper. It provides you with so much information to help you make a calculated decision before you accidentally get ripped off buying something. Oh yeah, and it’s fun to scan things for absolutely no reason, too
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