Red Laser is a barcode scanning application for the iPhone produced by Occipital. The app is aiming to change the way we create lists, queue movie downloads and many other things. While still early on in its feature implementation, Red Laser can already do many things to help a user with his shopping or product research.
In this review, I will be demoing the 2.1 release that hasn't yet made it into the app store. In earlier versions of this app, barcodes would have to be scanned by taking a photo in the app and then sending the photo to their servers. With the new version, the app can automatically scan the barcode to the device and see results almost immediately. The app scans barcodes and then shows results from Google's product search. This allows users to scan in a movie or really any type of media to compare online prices really quickly. This is wonderfully handy if you are building a list of things you would like, or happen to be walking around a store and want to remember a product for later.
While this program has great promise for the things it may be able to do in the future, the key is that it cannot do much currently. Results are only pulled from Google's product search and anything else must open Safari to be seen. It would be nice to see a complete search of sites like amazon and others right inside the app. Also, the program lacks any summary and specs of products that a user could look at. It would be nice to be able to click the recognized product and see a summary of specs and features. That would really make this app a need-to-have accessory to the iPhone. Until then, I cannot justify the price being asked for the app and recommend keeping an eye out for future releases.