“There’s one in every seven Kinder eggs!”

The times of playing the same old game of chance are as good as gone! We’d been wracking our brains lately to develop a special algorithm and are now proud to introduce you to the fruits of our labor: say hello to the barcoo EggScan for iOS, Android und bada – right on time for Easter.

People young and old have had the pleasure of buying the brightly colored Kinder Surprise eggs – a unique mix of chocolate, suspense and fun – for over 40 years. And yet, time and time again, the surprise inside the egg is a disappointment. We all know that sinking feeling: you crack open the milk chocolate shell, open the yellow capsule and out pops… a toy you neither want nor need. Even worse is the problem facing avid collectors of Kinder Surprise toys: getting the same toy over and over again. Until now, the only method for securing the desired surprise had been to gently shake the egg and guess whether the noise made by the toy inside could correspond to the toy you desired.

And it’s precisely these sounds we’ve spent hours listening to, analyzing and integrating into our newest feature, which helps you to effectively narrow down the myriad of surprise possibilities.

Here’s how the barcoo EggScan works:

1. Select the barcoo EggScan from the <Extras> tab
2. Scan the egg’s barcode
3. Hold the egg in front of your smartphone’s microphone
4. Shake the egg gently in front of the microphone until all five bars are full
5. Wait a moment while the app searches database and pulls up the result!

Info: We’re continually striving to expand our database so that the predictions made by the barcoo EggScan are as accurate as possible.

Amazon’s not only good for books these days: Now the industry giant supplies us with everything from shoes to power tools; from diapers to mobile apps.

Whether Amazon is destroying local businesses and thus bringing about a retail wasteland has been the subject of great debate in the US for some time now. Although Germany still has a ways to go before it gets to that point, it’s worth checking out how the competition between online and retail sellers looks on barcoo.

We analyzed the availability and price competition of the top 1,000 scans in the Electronics category. Aside from the Food category, which is still a difficult market for online retailers, this one is our biggest success.

Verfügbarkeit der Top 1000 Elektronik-Scans bei Einzelhändlern

The findings are surprising. Amazon is the clear frontrunner in terms of availability: of the 1,000 electronic products, 867 were either available at the Amazon Marketplace or directly at amazon.de. However, Amazon only offered 76 of the 1,000 products at the lowest prices. Medium-sized retailers getgoods.de and notebooksbilliger.de ranked in second and third place with 28 and 26 products, respectively.

The local retailers still win points over the online retailers: 54% of all products were also available locally, and in 6.6% of the cases, the local products were even cheaper. This puts them at just about the same level as online retailers, since buying online often entails additional shipping costs and complicated warranty procedures.

Amazon is far from the best with regards to price – good deals are everywhere. That’s why barcoo’s price comparison function is especially useful. But price, of course, is not everything. barcoo allows you to choose retailers based on their ecological sustainability and fair trade practices, so you can also shop with a clear conscience.

If you’re an Android user, you can either access the shopping list right from your start screen or, when you’re on another page, from the context menu. If you’re an iPhone user, you can find the list on your Extras tab.

In order to add an item to the shopping list, you can either scan the barcode directly onto the list or use the text input field.

Einkaufsliste in barcoo

Anytime, say, the margarine tub is empty, you can quickly ‘jot it down’ on your shopping list. Another nice thing about the list is that you can even use it when there’s no internet connection (as is known to happen in supermarkets). You simply check the entries when you’re done and then they get bumped down to the bottom of the list.
We plan on creating more functions for the shopping list in the future, so if you have any ideas or requests, write a comment here on our blog!

Zur Pressemitteilung

After scanning a product, you will get a information, if the product is produced by a company, who rejects animal testing (in Germany). Check out the German post.