iPhone App Uses Barcode Scans for Product Recommendations

Blake Scholl and Jason Crawford are two Amazon alumni transferring their e-commerce background and social product discovery experience to mobile in the form of Barcode Hero, an iPhone application that is receiving a massive update today.

Barcode Hero is designed to be a community where people share product recommendations through barcode scans. The application [iTunes link], a product of Scholl and Crawford’s KimaLabs, originally launched in August. Today’s update better surfaces those recommendations to help app users make more informed purchase decisions while shopping.

In version 1.0, Barcode Hero users could scan barcodes on products, leave short product comments and give their review in the form of a thumbs up or thumbs down. The application was built to be incredibly social in nature, so users could find and follow friends, post products to their social networks and compete Foursquarefoursquare-style to become the king or queen of each of the 50,000 product categories.

With version 2.0, the focus shifts from sharing to recommendations, so users can now scan products to see recommendations from friends. For instance, users can scan a bottle of wine to see reviews on that bottle, but also uncover the most highly recommended wines in the same category, according to the community. Of course, there’s also price comparison additives to ensure that users aren’t getting ripped off.

The updated app now supports browsing and search for products, photo uploads for additional points and the ability to discover if users’ address book contacts are using the app.

Scholl was reluctant to share specifics around application users or downloads, but he did disclose that users are very active — 30% leave thumbs-up product recommendations and 10% leave short product comments. Apple also plans to feature Barcode Hero in a list of featured holiday shopping apps beginning today, which should cause a spike in downloads and activity.

Barcode Hero resembles a slew of other applications including Stickybits and myShopanion. What makes it unique is its core purpose is to help people choose amongst products. The founders also don’t plan to add rewards in the immediate rewards, which prevents the app from infringing upon the store scanning and rewards zone that Checkpoints and Shopkick occupy.

Barcode Hero has raised $770,000 in seed funding from top notch backers including Ron Conway’s SV Angel and former MySpace CEO and Amazon alum Owen Van Natta. The company will likely raise an additional round next year.

Image courtesy of FlickrFlickr, littleREDelf

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Spying from Space: U.S. Launches World’s Largest Satellite

The United States has just launched the largest satellite ever to orbit earth; while its exact purpose is secret, we know it’s not going to be monitoring the weather.

Its mission will be to gather intelligence for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office.

The satellite, dubbed NROL-32, was sent into orbit yesterday by a Delta 4 Heavy rocket — the largest unmanned rocket with the most powerful liquid-fueled booster. U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Director Bruce Carlson said the NROL-32 would be “the largest satellite in the world.”

All this superlative hugeness isn’t likely just a result of Americans’ obsession with size; in fact, the NRO launches almost as many small vehicles into space as it does large ones. More to the point, however, NROL-32 has a very important job: replacing a slew of Cold War-era satellites currently in orbit past their expiration dates.

Carlson gave an address (links to a PDF that’s a good read on the bureaucracy of space) last month in which he stated that the agency had adopted a new charter and “a remarkably aggressive launch campaign” to go along with it.

Referencing the then-upcoming NROL-32 launch and related launches, Carlson said, “This is the most aggressive launch campaign that the National Reconnaissance Office has had in 20 years… These [satellites] are very important, because they all go to update a constellation which is aging rapidly. We bought most of our satellites for three, five, or eight years, and we’re keeping them on orbit for ten, twelve, and up to twenty years.”

Carlson also said then that those aging satellites “designed to essentially operate during the era of the Soviet Union… are today doing tactical intelligence collection that leads us to actionable intelligence on bad guys every day. Every day.”

We hope the new, huge satellites being sent into orbit will continue to do exactly that, as well as accomplish the NRO’s science and technology goals.

What do you think of this satellite launch?

Image courtesy of United Launch Alliance, Pat Corkery.

Souce: Space.com

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eBay’s iPhone App Combines Buying And Selling, Adds Barcode Scanning From RedLaser

As the holiday shopping season ramps up, retailers are expected the use of mobile phones for shopping activity to be big this year. According to the Mobile Marketing Association, 59 percent of mobile consumers plan to make use of their mobile phone for shopping and planning purposes this holiday season and 64 percent of consumers plan to use their mobile phone to help scout out deals before leaving for the stores. With that it mind, eBay is launching a new version of its popular marketplace iPhone app, which allows users to browse, bid and buy from eBay auctions.

The app, which has seen 13.5 million downloads, will now consolidate its buying and selling iPhone apps. Previously, eBay had a separate iPhone app for sellers that allows users to quickly take photos of items and post them on eBay. Now sellers can do this directly from the primary eBay iPhone app, and access research sales trends and more.

A new ‘Quick View’ home screen allows both buyers and sellers to see instant updates on items. If a seller is listing a similar item sold or selling on eBay, users can simply use eBay’s “Sell One Like This” feature to create a listing that is automatically populated with information like category and item condition.

eBay is also adding technology from RedLaser, the barcode scanning iPhone app that eBay acquired from Occipital in June, to the iPhone app. eBay says that total RedLaser iPhone app downloads have tripled since eBay bought the technology, but I wonder if that growth will continue now that the app is included in eBay’s primary app.

One of the great benefits of RedLaser’s scanning technology in the app is the ability to comparison shop on the go. Users can scan a barcode on an item at a store and then automatically access any eBay listings of the product on the marketplace. Sellers can also use the scanning technology to scan and item and list the product in very little time.

Other features included in the new version of the iPhone app is a featured Daily Deals listing, a more integrated PayPal experience and the ability to save searches and set up reminders.

eBay is on pace to reach a whopping $1.5 billion worth of goods sold via its mobile apps in 2010 if all goes well this holiday season. eBay has made it pretty clear that mobile shopping is a key part of its future business. This year alone, the company launched apps for iPad, Android and Windows 7 devices for its auction business. And eBay added a new Half.com app, and a Fashion-focused app to its library.

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Pandigital's 9-inch Novel now on sale... as a QVC exclusive

By Vlad Savov posted Nov 22nd 2010 3:02AM Those wily shoppers at QVC have beaten the world once again in securing an exclusive on Pandigital's 9-inch Novel tablet. You'll recall that we weren't exactly overwhelmed with joy after handling the 7-inch Novel, and sadly this new slate looks like nothing more than a growth spurt, bringing as it does the same resistive touchscreen, B&N ebook store access, 2GB of integrated storage, and 802.11b/g WiFi highlights. Admittedly, QVC throws in a 4GB microSD card and prices it at an affordable $214, but we're always wary of Android devices that neglect to state which version of the OS they're running. Hit up the source link if you're more courageous -- or if you just want to watch the longest infomercial of your life.

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Twitter Analytics Could Have Been a Money-Making Machine

Twitter is set to launch an analytics service allowing users to track the popularity of their tweets, their own popularity on the service, and the number of retweets, replies and faves each tweet received.

In short: TwitterTwitter is launching a powerful tool that will make marketers salivate.

What’s more, it’s being reported that the product may start at a surprising price: Free.

Is Twitter simply throwing away money?

That’s the topic of my latest CNN column.

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Google Voice Goes Down Yet Again

Let the Fail Whale jokes begin.

I’ve been using Google Voice on a daily basis for around a year now, and the last month has been by far the worst in terms of connectivity issues.  Right now, it looks like the service is having yet another outage — both Michael Arrington and I are having problems, and other users on Twitter are having them as well. Outbound calls ring endlessly (and sometimes get a “This Call Cannot Be Completed” error message); inbound calls don’t get through.

Update: As of 4:10 PM PST Google says the problems have been resolved. Looks like there were at least 90 minutes of downtime.

We’ve reached out to Google to find out how many people are being affected and when we can expect a fix. Update: Google has given us this statement for now: “We’re aware of a problem that’s affecting some users, and we’re working to resolve it quickly.” “

As I said, this is only the latest in a string of recent problems. There was downtime on November 2 and again on November 5. It’s really getting to a point that’s beyond acceptable, and I may soon have to start handing out my ‘real’ phone number for mission-critical tasks. People rely on their phones for their most urgent business and personal matters — if you want to be a phone company you can’t go down.

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Nexus S still leaking on public photostreams, showing exciting new angles

By Chris Ziegler posted Nov 22nd 2010 11:07AM We know that Samsung's upcoming Gingerbread-powered Nexus S is curved in a pretty unusual way, and a new photo on Picasa -- on one of the same photostreams where we've seen "Nexus S" and "GT-i9020" in the EXIF data before -- gives us a new glimpse of the phone at a three-quarter view where we can really see just how curved it is. It's still unclear to us whether the display is involved in the curving or if it's restricted to the bezel above and below the actual screen, but either way, it's a distinctive design element that's sure to attract a lot of attention. Interestingly, the picture was captured on a Google employee's stream just this weekend, suggesting devices are definitely still out in the field -- so let's hope it launches right alongside Android 2.3 in the next few weeks.

[Thanks, John]

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