I'm not a shopaholic. I can quit any time I want!
Yeah, sure you are. The nice man from the credit card company would like to have a quiet word with you now.
The Internet has changed the way that most of us shop, and certainly moved the goalposts when it comes to what we expect in terms of pricing. When you're shopping at home, big shopping portals such as Amazon.com are just a click away. But what about when you're out and about in a shop and you spot a book, CD or game at a supposedly "bargain" price?
Well, with any smartphone with a half-decent browser, which encompasses most of the market these days, you could always head to your favourite shopping portal and slowly... slowly.. search for that same title. There's an easier way to do this with a couple of quite clever apps, however.
Pic2Shop
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| Quick price comparison at your fingertips. Bear in mind that prices are in US dollars, though. |
Barcodes are an absolute standard across books, CDs and DVDs, and they're rarely obscured from the customer, as the store needs to scan them in order to price them in most cases. Here there's a choice of applications open to you. Pic2Shop (Free) uses the iPhone's camera and imposes a red bar onscreen. Line that up with the barcode and one very loud (and possibly embarrassing) beep later, it'll let you know what it knows across a number of regions.
RedLaser
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| Comparisons also include plenty of no-name stores |
This $2.49 app gives you an onscreen capture area and a somewhat faster recognition engine in our tests. $2.49 also gets you an ad-free environment if that's important to you.
NeoReader
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| Even QR codes are covered for your scanning pleasure |
This free app uses QR codes for much the same purpose, although you'll need to find a product with an embedded QR code to make much use of it, or be willing to manually enter barcode numbers.
Barcodes
Barcode readers do have one critical problem, though. They only work with US-compatible barcodes, and in many cases Aussie products have different number setups on their codes.
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| Not every barcode will be found, sadly |
Snaptell
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| Snaptell's cover identification is quite precise, and links to lots of supplemental information. |
This is where the free Snaptell can come in handy. Rather than snapping barcodes, you just take a photo of the front cover of your book, CD, DVD or game of choice. It'll then attempt to identify it and present you with relevant online prices. It sounds very gimmicky, but it works quite well, and even links out to Wikipedia and other sites for more information where it's available.
Bear in mind with any overseas-based online shopping that you've still got to factor in the shipping costs, which can be considerable. Naturally, you've also got to forego the convenience of picking up the product that's right in front of you as well, but you're at least much better informed as to the relative pricing before you jump at the next bargain.
GetPrice Comparison Shopping
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| Buy locally -- as long as GetPrice knows about it, that is |
If you do want to do your shopping in a more local environment, there's a couple of options. GetPrice's free iPhone App is the not terribly well named GetPrice Comparison Shopping. There's no scanning support, sadly, but you do get prices in Aussie dollars.
Lasoo
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| Why bother picking up a store catalogue when you've already got one on your phone? |
Lasoo also offers a free iPhone application, and this one has the hook of having some rather well known vendors on board, including BigW, Myer and Target.