Monday, August 01, 2005

More Barcode Price Comparison News From ScanBuy

From ABCLocal.com Cell phone camera can scan merchandise

PP Readers know how I feel about price comparison using a barcode and cell phone, but this is more recognition for physical world connection space
.

Michael Finney from 7 On Your Side and Olivier Attia walked into Amoeba Records, where soon shopping will never be the same. (I'm not familiar with Amoeba, but I did see what music giant Virgin MegaStores announced today)that utilizes the physical world connection

I will give ScanBuy credit though, they are getting the physical world connection story out there. I don't know that it's the story about the killer app though.

Michael picks up a CD for sale. He turns the CD over and points the cell phone camera at the bar code and scans it. In less than ten seconds, the phone accesses the internet, and up pops a picture of the product. Amazed?

Scrolling down, the phone displays the CD customer rating, Amazon price, shipping information, best new price, best used price, and similar products. You can actually buy the product and have it shipped to your home with the push of one button on your cell phone

I see William Shatner and his new PriceLine ad on TV. The theme is, "shop and compare, BEFORE you buy". That's my point to comparison shopping. You do it BEFORE you're at the store, probably on Froogle.

I don't see the "go to store, compare prices on your cell phone and buy" model working.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's another company that does price comparison, Shelron with their ActivShopper Mobile Edition. They have licensed NeoMedia's IP to do so. ScanBuy is being sued for patent infringement by NeoMedia; seems like they should be licensing NEOM IP as it seems they also access this information via the same method ActivShopper does. That's just one of the potential uses of linking the physical world to the internet (comparison shopping) but as you point out, VanGorilla, there are many more compelling uses.

Anonymous said...

Hello,


Please send me a new email adress because I can't send any email to that adress: Vangorilla@aol.com.

(for now I can answer to your question about talk digger).


Thank,

Salutations,

Fred