PDA Scanner for offline Pricing of books, CDs, and more
Update: 7/11/07 - First demo video of an early alpha version. Doesn't proove much to you, as I could have coded it to just look for that book, but I assure you, I just picked it up off my bookshelf. Currently we have over 1.5 million books in our database, and around 1 million CDs. Still no pricing information on the pocket version, but that comes next. Still several beta tester spots open, so send me an email if you are interested
Progress
- Basic database created
- Ugly proof of concept app created (see video)
- 2-3 year old PDA test - Still a bit slow, but it is searching 2.5 million records.
Test Environment
- iPaq H2200 PDA
- 2GB CF card
- Symbol CF Barcode Reader
About
The motivation behind this project is that my parents have 1000's of books. They love going to library sales and flea markets to buy more books, but they cannot remember what they have. So usually they come home with 20% duplicates, because they know what they like. I also go to bookstores/CD shops and see vintages/rare cds that I usually cannot find, but I never know if I can get them cheaper online.
Another driving force is all those people that sell books on amazon.com/half.com/ebay.com and go to such sales looking for books to resale. I would like to give them a good indication of what a book usually sells for, and how much demand there is for such a book. So, if you see a book at a yardsale, it's old, it's a first printing, whatever, how do you know if it will yield you a profit online? From a buyer or seller's perspective, there is much demand for knowing the online price for such an item.
So, PocketPricer was conceived. There was a problem with fitting such a vast collection of all prices and all items onto such a limited storage device, but they have been overcome. Limitations of searching a huge database under limited computing power has been overcome. The sky is the limit. The world... in your pocket is now!
How it works
You will load our software onto your PDA, and run it. When you are at a store, or libary sales, flea markets, garage sales, whatever, you will scan a potential item and instantly (or.. quickly) details about the item will be displayed. We are not yet sure what information is valuable to the user, but right now, it displays title (for verification) and Amazon Price. Soon, we will display other metrics like # for sale on amazon, and probably other sources of book selling/buying (half.com/alibris/abebooks, etc).
Beta
We are now accepting applications for beta testers for this project. The requirements are a Windows based PDA (PocketPC) with any of the following:
- PDA with both SDIO (Secure Digital IO) card slot and additional storage (usually CompactFlash)
- PDA with bluetooth capability (for Bluetooth UPC scanners)
- PDA with built in UPC Scanner
- PDA with user who doesn't mind a lot of text entry (of UPC).
To apply for beta testing, simply email us here with your current PDA model, whether you have access to a UPC reader (for beta testing, you probably do not already have such a device, and that is ok), and finally, your use for such a product