iPhone app scans bar codes for health, enviro ratings
(Credit: GoodGuide)Just in time for the crazed holiday shopping season, San Francisco-based GoodGuide releases the first iPhone app that lets you scan bar codes for what the guide calls "impartial" health, environmental, and social responsibility ratings of not only the products you are scanning but their companies, too.
GoodGuide's free app lets you scan an item's bar code and instantly retrieve info on that product's health, environmental, and social responsibility ratings.(Credit: GoodGuide)
As our Webware staff wrote in August, "GoodGuide is the reason we have awards for tech services and products: it's a small and relatively unknown service that demonstrates real leadership on the Web." And as we report in Health Tech just this week, GoodGuide is an invaluable resource when shopping for toys, as it provides the levels of lead, mercury, chlorine, etc., that might be in the toys.
But GoodGuide's newest app is quite possibly the group's pinnacle achievement thus far. Now, instead of having to be organized enough to do your research online before hitting the stores, or using the app's 2008 iteration, which involves entering a product into a GoodGuide database on your phone, now anyone with an iPhone can literally scan bar codes while shopping.
Seriously, this could become a tick. I kind of want to spend all day scanning bar codes with the same fervor I used to pop package bubbles as a kid. As GoodGuide spokesperson Suzanne Skyvara (mother of two boys, ages 8 and 5) tells me in a delightful English accent that somehow makes everything sound healthy and socially responsible: "It's making it easier to be good. We all want to do this, but god, who's got the time to research it all?"
I envision scoffing with delight at the higher-priced products that don't actually measure up to their less expensive counterparts, a discovery likely as satisfying as catching a poker player mid-bluff. Or, conversely, I can see justifying a slightly more expensive product that is far healthier for my body and environment.
Of course, the value of such a system hinges on how good the information is. GoodGuide licensed Occipital's RedLaser bar code-scanning technology for this app and culled ratings for more than 62,000 food, personal care, household chemical and toy products and companies, and plans to add thousands more every month. Learn more about GoodGuide's rating system here.
Best of all, of course, is that GoodGuide's app is free--a fact that also sounds delightful in an English accent. All you need is the funds to own an iPhone, but that's a different story.
Elizabeth Armstrong Moore is a freelance journalist based in Portland, Ore. She has contributed to Wired magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, and public radio. Her semi-obscure hobbies include unicycling, slacklining, hula-hooping, scuba diving, billiards, Sudoku, Magic the Gathering, and classical piano. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
I have a 3G that can't take advantage of any bar code readers because the camera is so lousy.
Do all of yourselves a favor and switch to Google Android.
Apple gives only what they need to sell the next phone. I didn't buy into it when the 3GS came out and 80% of the apps are worthless for it.
Apple Sucks. Google give everything away for free.
Keep in mind there are a going to be 100's of Google Android Phone's and all the apps will work on any of their devices.
Apple = 1 OS, 1 Phone
Google = Phones on every network and all apps are compatible regardless of your carrier.
Apple. Good luck with AT&T. Google was smart enough to make their OS compatible with any network.
[CNET editors' note: Prohibited content deleted.]
mental.
Some yell at you when taking pictures of things you may want or to do research later on. I like to see them stop us when the camera is embedded into our eye-ware. Ha ha ha....
http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=2222539
There are other bar-code readers which are more efficient, give you price-comparisons, etc.
- by David_G. November 19, 2009 11:48 AM PST
- This is all about a flashy way to promote products... They rate WAY TO HIGH things that are extremely bad for your health or for the world... They even say things like "This had one of the lowest score for your personnal health" but since the "health" tab uses around 4 different informations, and since the other informations have nothing to do with health, it have 8.5 for the thing I checked... This is not well done at all. But a good idea. It's love to have this kind of app, but this is not what we want it to be...
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- by DigitalFrog November 20, 2009 7:13 AM PST
- Also makes me wonder if this isn't a sneaky way to gather marketing information about your purchases as well...
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