I wouldn't have thought it was possible to get an iPhone to capture barcodes clearly, but Occipital has done it with a new $1.99US iPhone app called RedLaser [App Store]. Why capture barcodes? One good use is to find better prices for a product. Scan a product in the store, then RedLaser captures the barcode and does a quick Google or Amazon search to give you quick price comparisons.

I tried the app at a bookstore and my local Best Buy and was surprised how well it worked. You need pretty good light to capture a barcode, which is an issue with the iPhone camera, not the RedLaser software. You need to hold the camera steady. The best way is by holding down the button to take the picture, then release when you are steady.

RedLaser gives you the option to try again, and guides you on how far the camera needs to be away from the barcode. Then RedLaser instantly goes out to the internet and gets you the price comparisons.

In practice I had some misses. The camera wasn't at quite the right distance, or I was a bit shaky holding it. In most instances, however, I was able to get the barcode and see the price comparisons I was looking for. It's also important that the camera not be tilted in relation to the barcode. Try to keep everything lined up. And the app will not work at all unless you have an internet connection. It would be nice if it could store the barcodes, then go out and identify them when you have a good signal.

You also get the ability to mail your product list to yourself or a friend to read it on a bigger screen when you get home.

The clever technology in the app is able to sharpen the image a great deal, making the iPhone camera a feasible platform for this app. When you take the picture the barcode will look pretty fuzzy, but after a couple of seconds of processing it looks quite good, which is the magic that RedLaser accomplishes.

I'd expect this will work fine for most people, but there are some negative comments at the iTunes store as well, largely, I suspect, from people who couldn't hold it steady, had bad light, or glare falling across the barcode. When I eliminated those issues, it seemed to work fine.

Note: This app only recognizes US and UK UPC and EAN barcodes. It works works best on standard-sized barcodes, but I had success with some smaller ones as well.

Here's are some screen shots of RedLaser in action:

An iPhone user in Australia was playing around with his camcorder's NightShot mode (which can see through some materials), when he found that behind the rear plastic clamshell is a DataMatrix 2D barcode.

Engadget suspects the barcode is the handset's IMEI and serial numbers.

If you have the ability to see and scan your handset's barcode, let us know what information it contains with a comment below!

Some things sound really cool -- until you actually have to step up and do them in real time. TUAW reader Gerald Buckley's story about traveling with his iPhone strikes me as belonging to this class.

When he approached the American Airlines counter to use his iPhone as a boarding pass, the coolness quotient for his entire trip got bumped up several notches. It seems that he navigated over to AA.com using Mobile Safari, signed in and displayed a PDF of his boarding pass on-screen. The American Airlines counter agent in San Antonio "humored" him and scanned the barcode as displayed on his iPhone. The scan worked, and Buckley proceeded with his travels (much to the envy and amazement of his fellow passengers, no doubt).

Here's the thing though. If it were me, this would have totally gone another way. First, while waiting on line, I would have had bad WiFi. It would have taken me about 20 minutes to type in my information and the people behind me on line would have been coughing *significantly* to get me to keep moving along with the line as I tried to type, move all my luggage and possibly keep three extremely rambunctious children in order. Finally, I would get to the gate agent and I would have gotten the snarky impatient version -- somehow I always do. Assuming that I could even get all the typing and navigation done, I know in my heart that the response would have been "you need a printed boarding pass, ma'am."

Of course, this is entirely academic because I have not been granted a boarding pass for the last 5 or 6 years due entirely, I'm sure, to my last name. It's always "You must check in at the counter" -- which is way easier than even a boarding pass because I just swipe my credit card.

All that having been said, TUAW congratulates Mr. Buckley's ingenuity and offers the example of his experience to speed you your travels in a uniquely geek fashion.

If you've got the travel bug (with or without your iPhone), be sure to visit our sister site Gadling for all things flight-related.

We are blessed on the Mac platform with many good ways to keep track of our stuff -- but Intelliscanner takes it to the next level, with a range of integrated scanner and software solutions that will have you tracking your movies, books, wine and comics with barcoded accuracy and ease. We visited the Inteliiscanner booth at Macworld for a demo of the Mini, a handheld scanner that can hold 150 item scans before downloading via USB to the host. The bundle retails for $299 but there's a show special through the end of January (and I'm contacting Intelliscan now to make sure it's still running & get the discount code for you) and unlike some other Macworld vendors, they really mean "show special" -- the offer ended Friday. Video after the jump (and pay no attention to the title card... editing mixup on my part).

Scott Stevenson has posted a very short but sweet preview of Delicious Library 2, due out sometime after Leopard hits next week (according to Wil Shipley, it may be as late as February). The already beautiful program (that coined a generation) looks better than ever, and it's made better, we're told, by all the great stuff going into Leopard, from Core Animation to the new Quicklook (you'll be able to drag books and DVDs out of the library to make little files of their own, which will then be viewable in Quicklook itself). And there's other touches, too-- selected items glow, when you delete a book it "shatters," and details don't just appear, they "pop into view" like on the iPhone.

And there are updates behind the graphics, too-- a faster barcode scanner, some super seekrit features (that is "worth the purchase price" for parents-- ??), and sharing features, which means finally, this program has a real purpose other than just staring at the stuff you own. You'll be able to share your collection with friends and even strangers-- can't wait to see how that works.

Sounds like fun. Stevenson says he wants Delicious Library 2 to set the benchmark for the first generation of Leopard apps, so we can definitely expect big, shiny stuff from these folks. Please, Delicious, show us how it's done.