SnapTell Blog

NY Times: "The fanciest iPhone app I tried was SnapTell"

The Gadgetwise blog of The New York Times has a great piece on the shopping apps available for today's generation of smartphones. The article, Big Shopping App Shootout: iPhone vs. G1 examines the well known issues with bar-codes as well:

I didn’t think the bar code readers would recognize tags at a chain store, because I expected them to have their own proprietary bar codes. But I was surprised when national brands of clothing at a department store didn’t register either.

SnapTell for the iPhone earned kudos from the author Roy Furchgott for its accuracy and ease of use:

The fanciest iPhone app I tried was SnapTell, which doesn’t use a bar code, but makes a search from a photo you take of an item. SnapTell correctly recognized the CD from the cover, and returned nine online prices, starting at $10.65. It should have given results for local stores but didn’t, so I tried a more common item, the Doris Kearns Goodwin book “Team of Rivals.” SnapTell not only found it online, but also at two stores less than 10 miles away — and at a discount.

SnapTell Explorer for the iPhone: Rated #2 in Lifestyle Category

SnapTell's Explorer is now at the number 2 spot in the Lifestyle category. The new version of the app with an improved UI and support for local prices has been greeted  with great enthusiasm among the IPhone user community!

SnapTell Explorer lets you take a picture of any CD, DVD, book, or video game and get back reviews, prices from multiple online and local sources within seconds.

We are releasing the Explorer for the Android platform very soon. Our app for the Android platform is capable of recognizing ordinary barcodes, as well as the cool image-recognition feature that works even when there are no barcodes!

SnapTell Explorer for Everyone (almost)

People have been asking us if we'll be releasing the SnapTell Explorer app, currently available for iPhones, for other platforms such as Google's Android and Windows Mobile.

The answer is yes -- we already have beta versions for Android and Windows Mobile in development, and will soon release them. We anticipate that we'll have them ready for download in time to assist you in finding the perfect gift for everyone during the Holiday 2008 shopping season (for everyone but those super organized types who finished their shopping way back in August, anyway.)

Thanks so much for your interest, and stay tuned to this blog for news on the forthcoming SnapTell Explorer releases.

TechCrunch Reviews SnapTell Explorer

TechCrunch has this to say about our iPhone SnapTell Explorer app:

If you have an iPhone, you’ll probably want to check out SnapTell Explorer, a free application now available on the App Store. The premise is simple: take a photo of the cover of any CD, DVD, book, or video game, and the application will automatically identify the product and find ratings and pricing information online.

I was skeptical when I first saw the app - the iPhone has had difficulty with image processing for barcodes, and most image recognitions systems I’ve tried on other platforms have been iffy at best. But SnapTell just works. Every time.

The app correctly identified just about everything I threw at it: Xbox games, Pocketbook O’Reilly manuals, The Dalai Lama’s Little Book of Wisdom, Kurt Vonegut novels, and a number of more obscure books (yes, it worked on The Twinkies Cookbook). It even managed to ID a copy of Civilization 4, despite the fact that it was covered in obnoxious price tags and stickers. I actually tried to mess it up by taking photos in poor lighting and odd angles, but the app still stayed nearly flawless. No, it doesn’t have everything - I managed to stump it on a book about Danish Grammar - but it will do just fine for any trip to a retail store.

SnapTell's Explorer for the iPhone Reviews

We're getting some great reviews from bloggers on our newly released free iPhone app -- SnapTell's Explorer for the iPhone.

AppVee posted a video review on YouTube:

2 Cents posted this review:

I am an iPhone Apps junkie.  I download the things on a whim, impressed by the capabilities, only to discover weeks later that they have almost no practical application what so ever.  However, I happened upon one today, that just might prove useful.

SnapTell is a free iPhone app that… Well here’s the description:

Snap a picture of the cover of any Book, DVD, CD, or Video game and within seconds see a rating, description and links to Amazon, Wikipedia, IMDb and more.  If you like the item, click on a link to buy it right away.

CogDogBlog reviewed the app, and added some interesting thoughts on image recognition app use in educational/museum settings:

I’ve been playing a little with the QRCode readers like NeoReader on the iPhone, especially in Japan, where there where QR codes in the newspaper, on stores, on public signs, but its a challenge because you have to get a square on framed shot, it’s hard to get a good photos of the small ones. It takes too much effort.

So I gave SnapTell a quick test last night, taking a picture of a paperback that has been traveling with me, so its front page is curled and torn, and I took this photo under room light, what I would call non-optimal photo conditions. So I took the image in the SnapTell app, clicked “use photo” and within 5 seconds it correctly identified it. 100% correct as Anything for Billy by Larry McMurtry. More than linking to Amazon, it ferrets a relevant link in Wikipedia to the author plus a link to a preset Google search (and Yahoo) for more information.

Thanks, everyone! And if you haven't tried SnapTell's Explorer for the iPhone yet you can download it for free here, from the app store.