A Day Made of Glass... Made possible by Corning. Google Wallet Updated, Now Includes In-App Offers and Improved Use Experience. Google Wallet has been updated to include a variety of new features, an improved UI for the transaction detail screen and several bug fixes, according to the search giant. For those unfamiliar, Google Wallet is a new service that allows users to make mobile payments from their mobile devices using Google Prepaid Cards or a Citi MasterCard. At the moment, the service is extremely limited — only available to users rocking Sprint’s Nexus S 4G — but availability to other phones and carriers should be announced in the coming months. One of the biggest improvements is the addition of in-app offers, which replace the email notifications that were sent our for each offer when the service was first announced. Here’s a full list of the updates and enhancements: Google has high hopes for Google Wallet, but until compatibility and NFC adoption catch up, it’ll remain limited to a select group of users.
Barcode Hero Takes On The LBS Retail Space With Gaming-Based “Social Shopping” App. Another day, another LBS app enters the space. Today, Kima Labs — a startup founded by two Amazon veterans — announced a new LBS app dubbed “Barcode Hero,” which uses the same game-mechanics as Foursquare, but does so for product categories instead. In an attempt to “make shopping more social,” Barcode Hero works by allowing a user to take their phone into a store, launch the app and start scanning the barcodes of items they’re interested in. Doing so unlocks points and rewards such as dukedoms and kingships for various product categories. Instead of becoming the “mayor of Starbucks” in Foursquare, you become the “duke of smartphones” for example. At present the user-experience is purely game-based, acquiring points for scanning items and being awarded titles for doing so, but the app also serves up price comparisons through a partnership with PriceGrabber. . , makers of the location-based app Whrrl.
iPhone apps to help you stick to your budget - iPhone app recommendations - Kristen Nicole. Staying on budget is a real concern for many Americans, especially as the holiday season approaches. As you run your errands, you may find yourself trying to calculate things in your head, ensuring you remain on budget. I am not the best at this, so I find myself turning to my iPhone on several occasions, such as calculating my grocery list as I shop, or checking on which upcoming bills I have before buying those shoes.
There are several iPhone apps that can help you stay on budget when you're on the go. I find this especially helpful as it aids me in making real time decisions about my spending. Read on to see some general-purpose calculators that can help you stay on track financially. Personal finance iPhone apps Mint is a well-known app that will keep you focused. Cha-Ching can also help you stay on track financially, but with fewer integration options, you are still left doing most the work. Out and about with iPhone apps Bread and Milk is an iPhone app for grocery shopping.
ShopSavvy (Barcode Scanner and QR Code Reader) Ocr sdk open source. Open-Source OCR Software, Sponsored by Google. Google sponsors the development of an open-source OCR software at the IUPR research group.
"OCRopus is a state-of-the-art document analysis and OCR system, featuring pluggable layout analysis, pluggable character recognition, statistical natural language modeling, and multi-lingual capabilities. " "The goal of the project is to advance the state of the art in optical character recognition and related technologies, and to deliver a high quality OCR system suitable for document conversions, electronic libraries, vision impaired users, historical document analysis, and general desktop use," explains Thomas Breuel, who leads the project. The software is partly based on Tesseract, the best open source OCR engine available for now. While the project is expected to be released at the end of next year and will be used for Google's book scanning project, the team has some interesting applications in mind:
WorldCard Mobile - business card reader & business card scanner. Top OCR Apps for Android and iOS.