RedLaser, the barcode scanning mobile app that eBay acquired from Occipital in June 2010, is nearing a significant milestone—nine million total downloads of its iPhone and Android apps. That’s up from 2 million downloads at the time of the acquisitions, which is nearly a 350% increase in downloads.
RedLaser’s barcode scanning technology allows users to comparison shop on the go. Anyone can scan a barcode on an item at a store and then automatically access any eBay listings and local availability (courtesy of Milo) 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. RedLaser’s technology was also integrated into eBay’s dedicated iPhone and Android apps. → Read More
eBay is adding QR Codes scanning to its barcode scanning app RedLaser, which the company acquired from Occipital in June.
The app, which has has seen over five million downloads from the App Store (that’s 3 additional million downloads since June), looks up price comparisons in its product database by scanning the barcode of an product. QR Codes, which is short for Quick Response (because they can be read quickly by a mobile phone through its camera), are used to take a piece of information from a transitory media and put it in to your cell phone – this can be links, videos, text, photos and more. → Read More
The Online Computer Library Center is one of those quiet organizations making a huge difference in the world. They don’t attract a lot of attention to themselves, normally, and much of what they do is plumbing that helps other organizations. They’ve recently partnered with Occipital, creators of the iPhone barcode scanning app RedLaser, to bring access to their enormous database of books to your iPhone. Just how big is OCLC’s database? It indexes “more than 165,000,000 books at more than 75,000 libraries in 112 countries.” That represents “more than 5,000 years of human history in a single, searchable database” — that’s a lot of books! Now you can snap a picture of a book’s barcode, and within moments find out whether your local library has that book in stock, and whether it’s currently checked out or sitting on the shelf. Yay technology! → Read More
