ShopSavvy

Top Black Friday apps for iOS

Black Friday is rapidly approaching and we all know that means people are going to be hitting the stores both online and at brick-and-mortar locations to grab gifts for friends and family. But if you want to find the best deals, you're going to need a little help, and I have just the right apps for the job on iOS devices.

Whether you plan to brave the crowds on Black Friday or stay home and shop online, these apps will get you the best deals and hopefully make your gift shopping a little easier.

Editors' note: For Android shopping … Read more

Shopper's helper

If you believe in comparison shopping, do yourself a favor and download ShopSavvy. The free, ad-supported app seeks out prices for goods when you either scan the barcode with your Android camera or type in the product name. ShopSavvy then spools out online prices and local offerings at major brick and mortar stores. You can read other peoples' product reviews, and can save what you like to a wish list. When you select a Web entry, you can view it in the browser, e-mail the link to a friend, or broadcast your find on Facebook or Twitter. ShopSavvy's price … Read more

Shopper's helper

If you believe in comparison shopping, do yourself a favor and download ShopSavvy. The free, ad-supported app seeks out prices for goods either by typing the name or scanning the barcode with your camera. ShopSavvy then spools out online prices and local offerings at major brick and mortar stores. You can read other peoples' product reviews, and can save what you like to a wish list. Too bad you can't e-mail that list out to others. ShopSavvy's price alert feature is a nice touch, alerting you when a product's price meets your criteria.

As neat a concept … Read more

Shopping with Google Android: Which app is best?

ShopSavvy, Barcode Scanner (by the ZXing team), and CompareEverywhere (an Android Challenge winner) are three free shopping applications for Google Android poised to help you find the best deals in town and online.

At their core, they're nearly identical, using the phone's camera to auto-focus on a barcode. That barcode is then matched to a product using an open source decoding library, ZXing, that was developed by Google engineers last year. (You can also search by product name.)

While these shopping apps share a back end, the front ends are distinct. Unfortunately, they all produced varying results that … Read more