Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Cool tools, Odds and ends, Freeware, iPhone
Snaptell Explorer retrives product listings from the iPhone's camera
Oh man -- finally, we're getting an app that fulfills the promise of the iPhone. Ever since we knew the iPhone would have a camera and an internet connection, we've been waiting for SnapTell Explorer, and now it's here and free. Download and install it on the iPhone, and then snap a picture of any book, CD, movie, or videogame, and bingo, you've got links to listings for it (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Wikipedia, Google, etc.) around the Internet. I have no idea how it works (some type of picture comparison script hooked up to a database, surely, though it's amazing that it works that well with just the iPhone's camera), but that's fine, because it makes it all the more indistinguishable from magic.The main drawback is that it takes a bit to search their database -- while wifi or 3G are much faster (obviously), Edge will have you waiting a few minutes for a find. And at this point, all they have are links to pages -- it would be nice to see a price comparison right away and/or a quick rating (to see instantly what people think of a movie if you happen to be standing in a video store making your choice). Finally, it would be nice to see this extended to all sorts of items -- I tried scanning a few groceries that I might be price shopping, but for now it's just books, movies, and music.
But otherwise, it's awesome -- even in low light/bad light situations, as long as you can get a recognizable picture of the case, it works. This is exactly the kind of thing the iPhone is made for, very cool to finally see it in action.
[via Waxy]
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
EJP said 3:36PM on 11-20-2008
"retriEves"...
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mrtrik said 3:37PM on 11-20-2008
Very cool idea. Definitely need the price comparison... cuz typing into google would be faster no?
As for speed - I'd guess the time difference (edge, wifi, 3g) is uploading the photo, or downloading the results, not searching their database. Their speed doesn't change.
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Stephane Daury said 4:05PM on 11-20-2008
In related news, "fbFund Review: Pongr": http://www.allfacebook.com/2008/11/pong/
It seems they have an iPhone app too, from the video.
Works with barcode OCR.
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jonathan said 4:13PM on 11-20-2008
the g1 has something like this, where u take a photo of the actual UPC and then it takes u to the amazon online store or a froogle page and compares prices.
good to see this make it to the app store finally. i've had plenty of g1 friends asking if we had an app like this...
all i said was, not YET.
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vandil said 4:21PM on 11-20-2008
Delicious Monster wrote some awesome code to allow an iSight to be able to scan barcodes. I wonder if someone out there can dothe same for the iPhone's camera. The G1's offering is pretty cool looking, though I expect it doesn't work as fast as it does on the commercial.
jonathan said 4:27PM on 11-20-2008
@vandil:
im from rochester. i feel your pain from monday night. ouch. norwood all over again. almost as painful.
also it seems the Pongr app is already in the app store. im going to be trying it out now.
jonathan said 4:27PM on 11-20-2008
actually forget that. the Pongr app only lets u TYPE in a upc code. but it does the same image type searching that snaptell does, for free.
works ok so far.
brian said 4:36PM on 11-20-2008
For those who are interested: One possible way to check images is to shrink them to a standard size (like 150x150px) and then convert to greyscale. Though they still have to figure out how to discard the surroundings or deal with the fact that your thumb is visible. Still, it's a neat trick, and yes, I wish someone would also make a system like Delicious Library's barcode-scanning system. I'd pay for the app, and maybe they could partner with Griffin to give users a discount on the Clarifi macro lens/case?
http://www.tuaw.com/2008/09/17/new-iphone-products-from-griffin-technology/
http://flickr.com/search/?q=clarifi&w=all
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scw said 7:32PM on 11-20-2008
From the tests I've seen, and the ones I've run myself, it will be pretty difficult to use the iPhone camera stock to read barcodes - it just doesn't have the macro capability to focus on the UPC. The Delicious Library code is pretty amazing, though and might be enough to overcome the issues.
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Nate True said 7:45PM on 11-20-2008
I'm surprised you guys haven't figured out how they do the recognition. Have you heard of Amazon's Mechanical Turk? They just pay people to do it :)
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Brian Redban said 7:54PM on 11-20-2008
I just did a video review of this application, wow it rules!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR4cdQRrk1s
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Mike said 9:07PM on 11-20-2008
tineye.com
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Jay said 11:08PM on 11-20-2008
I hate in when people seem to have nothing better to do than correct spelling in blogs.
If perfect spelling is your thing go read the dictionary and quit annoying the bejesus out of people who read the blog for it's content, not to run a spell check on it.
Peace.
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ern2150 said 12:20AM on 11-21-2008
That should be "its" -- no apostrophe.
aaron Alexander said 1:15AM on 11-21-2008
I wanted to make an app to scan barcodes and do price comparison but the problem is it would most likely take a few tries to get a pic that's suffecient. I "could" use the live camera feed and the app would work awesome, but apple wouldn't allow it in the store. So it's a loose loose situation for everyone.
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