Hazardous and resistant bacteria in german chicken meat. Check out the German post.

We had a great year with you. Check out the German post.

From day one at barcoo, our main goal has been to provide consumers with maximum transparency for all types of products. Aside from displaying items’ prices and evaluations, we also include a “food traffic light” and test reports from over 320 journals and the Stiftung Warentest (the main consumer protection agency in Germany). We also provide information on manufacturers’ sustainability and a product’s carbon footprint, along with the possibility of comparing it with other products in the same category.

And all of that is just a mere barcode scan away!

We also know that barcodes, with their charming knack for identifying products quickly and unambiguously, can do much more. On top of that, we’re aware that our users are very creative and have a ton of ideas about the kinds of practical and fun upgrades for barcoo.

For that reason we are thinking about enhancing the application and our interface so that you can design your own plug-ins that are then directly integrated into barcoo and made available to all other users.

That’s why we are inviting you to send us an e-mail at post@barcoo.de today with your suggestions for functions or features you’ve always wanted to see in barcoo. We also welcome you to design your own plug-ins. If we can gather enough suggestions, we’ll adapt our systems so that you can design your own plug-ins and have the ability to make them available to all of our users.

Your feedback-happy barcoo team.

This is just an April Fool’s joke (unfortunately).

It’s one of our biggest and most costly projects so far and we’re particularly proud to announce the offical launch of barcoo store view.

What started out as a vague idea two years ago in a pub in Berlin is available in the barcoo App and on www.barcoo.com starting today.

The thought behind it is as simple as it is ingenious: consumers can not only find any product in a store quickly and easily but can also be navigated through the store according to their shopping list.

To accomplish that we spent two years pushing a specially customized shopping cart through all medium-sized and big stores and took pictures of their inventory.

But it’s not only finding product that barcoo store view focuses on. You can also find out everything about the product and its manufacturer.

You can either scan the barcode or use the built-in augmented reality product recognition to view food traffic light, other barcoonaut’s comments and ratings or see how sustainable the manufacturer operates (meaning how good they treat the environment, society and their employees).

Before launching barcoo store view today we conducted a test period of three months with selected manufacturers. We received some good and some bad reviews, which we take quite seriously.

For that reason we offer a form where manufacturers can register to have their products blurred in the shelf view. The registration period for this begins today and will end on June 30th, 2011.

To activate the barcoo store view module in the barcoo app simply enter “barcoostoreview” in the field for text searches and you will find a new menu item with with the same name.

We look forward to any feedback and are grateful for any suggestions or ideas.

Your barcoo team.

Sorry, this post is not available in English.

The recent food contamination scandal in Germany, where an animal feed additive has been found to contain dioxin, was reason enough for us to move quickly and add another function to barcoo: Users can now enter the code printed on the eggs to check whether they are contaminated or not. To get the information we’re using a list of codes published by the consumer agency Hamburg.

This is another step in our mission to bring transparency to consumers to make it easier for them to shop healthy and sustainable products.

Sorry, this post is not available in English.