Comparison Shopping With Camera Phone

While I applaud the major media for exposing Scanbuy and the physical world connection, I wish they would use another example from it besides comparison shopping.

From Christian Science Monitor A new way to shop by phone

Many times, after returning home with my purchase, I discover (thanks to an ad in the newspaper or an Internet search) that I paid too much.

Lo and behold, that technology now exists. It's called Scanbuy Shopper. And some very smart people are suggesting that it has a very bright future that will make many retailers very, very nervous.

According to the New York company's website ( www.scanbuy.com), Scanbuy is a technology that "enables camera phones to capture and immediately decode printed or electronically displayed bar codes." Currently it works best with books, electronic equipment, and CDs.

When you're in a store and find an item of interest, simply take a picture of its bar code using an Internet-capable cellphone with a built-in camera. Then connect to the Web. (You don't have to take a picture.

Instead, you can just punch the bar-code numbers into the phone.) Scanbuy checks prices at comparison-shopping websites such as PriceGrabber.com and Amazon.com's Marketplace. It then sends you information on the best prices.

But as I mentioned earlier, some people see bigger things in Scanbuy's future, particularly working with the search industry's 800-pound gorilla, Google