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.

Okay, so it’s still in an experimental phase. But it’s cool anyway, and that’s why all Android users can give it a try now immediately: We have integrated object recognition into barcoo in cooperation with Deutsche Telekom Laboratories. It’s only a limited test-run for now and works exclusively with drinks. That’s why we need your help. Object recognition is a great thing because all you have to do is hold up your smartphone’s camera to a product, which is then automatically recognized, thus rendering the search for the barcode unnecessary. When starting the Android app you’ll find the following little button on the bottom:

When you click on it, the camera window automatically appears, allowing you to search for bottled or canned drinks and to try and identify them.

Object recognition in barcoo

Since we can’t always find out the exact product immediately, a short list appears from which you have to select the appropriate product. When you do that, you’re helping improve recognition technology. The visual search doesn’t work with character recognition like our peers’ (cool) Goggles (for products) which would “only” iniate a Google search for “rivella” for the example above. When using barcoo, it’s only that specific product by rivella that gets identified. Have fun giving it a try!

barcoo is a great example of the ‘Wisdom Of The Crowds’ concept. Our numerous user-contributed reviews are a good example of this. We will be taking this a step further by launching “Ask barcoo” – a new service targeted at manufacturers and agencies that wish to ask our users a few short questions regarding products. During the initial phase, the service will be limited to Germany, where we have over three million users.

Source: David Sim

Preliminary for our blog readers here our brand spanking new first German TV spot:

First and foremost: With regard to radio activity at the moment we (in Europe) can eat all food from Japan without hesitation:

• The percentage of food imports from Japan amounts in Europe to a mere .1%. Typical Japanese food like shiitake mushrooms don’t actually come from Japan, but grow in European greenhouses. The sushi consumed in Europe only rarely comes from the North Pacific.
• There is no way that potentially contaminated food could already be in Europe. Fish from Japanese waters end up on the German market no sooner than three months after being caught (according to the Bundesverband der deutschen Fischindustrie).
• Soy sauces (the most significant foodstuff import from Japan) mature in barrels and are thus safe to consume for at least another year (according to the Verbraucherzentrale Hamburg).

So there’s no reason to panic for the time being. However, some believe that in the long term there will be a danger for us European consumers. That’s why with barcoo you can find out, for example, where that fish you want to buy comes from. All you have to do is type in the catch area number and then you receive information about whether the fish comes from the North Pacific or not. At this point you can take the opportunity to see whether the type of fish is an endangered species or not. Currently, in terms of radio activity, you can eat all products from Japan. Should that change, you can find out in barcoo (and probably in every other news source out there).

When you buy Fairtrade products you can be sure that “the farmers’ and employees’ living and working conditions are being improved via fair trade prices and premiums. On top of that, child and forced labor are prohibited.” So far so good. Still, it’s all pretty anonymous. And behind fair trade products there are human beings with faces. Though these hadn’t been visible before, that’s changing drastically with barcoo! Whenever Fairtrade has more information about a product’s origin and the people who participated in its production, you can get this information using barcoo.

You can find out which companies or cooperatives work on a product or its ingredients as well as where and under what sorts of conditions they work. Once you’ve scanned the fair trade product in front of you, the information gets integrated into barcoo. When you click on the page of a fair trade product, there are often photo galleries or a history of the producers. So get out there and scan lots of fair trade products… and maybe buy them, too!

Since barcoo’s inception in January 2009 (in Germany), we’ve made an insane amount of changes and developments in just about everything but our app’s design (the very format of the information), which has stayed more or less the same. But the ever-accumulating information on barcoo’s database too often ended up diffusing into endless snaking chains and word blocks, which became quite the eye sore.

Now, after having thoroughly analyzed barcoo’s usage, we’ve developed a whole new design that will enhance your usage of the app. Here’s what it looks like:

There are three so-called ‘tabs’ that structure all of the contents: information, prices and evaluations. The product information is preselected by default (with the food traffic light, the sustainability traffic light and lots of other background information). However, the core information of the other two tabs is still visible in the top righthand corner. This design is immediately available for each of the two million people who’ve already installed barcoo! Marcus is looking forward to your Feedback.

We started a self-servicing portal for German retailers. They can upload any local offer information easily like that. Expansion to other countries will follow in the next months. Full German version of article.

After the first few months in our new office we had the long awaited office warmin party on December 09^th 2010. We’d like to thank our partners and friends that have taken  the occasion to celebrate last year’s success and toast to an exciting and successful new year. We had a great and fun evening, we were delighted to have you and enjoyed shaking a leg on the dance floor – until the police showed up!

Nights in Kreuzberg are long and days can be exciting. How? Just become Senior Software Engineer at barcoo! ;)

Because some rudimentary German skills would be cool, check out the German description and apply via jobs@checkitmobile.com.