Android's Final Challenge Winners | Hacker News Reader

Android's Final Challenge Winners

code.google.com

19 pointswave13 comments

My favorite of these is "GoCart". I want an Android phone just for this:

"GoCart is your shopping cart on-the-go. Users can scan the barcode of any product using their phone’s built-in camera. Once scanned, it will search for all the best prices on the internet and through the inventories of nearby, local stores."

Fully agree with you. Some of the apps look great. I bought an iPhone as its the best out there for what I need, but I'd definitely get an Android phone if it proves to be as good. Now I need to find out if there's an app like this for the iPhone. If not, then we should create one!

How do they get the inventory of nearby, local stores?

I guess one way would be to require the user to type in the price of the object they're reviewing, to seed the database... although that would only work well for a community with a lot of Android cell phones.

Now that I think about it, a database telling which products local people are comparing would be pretty valuable to local stores... They might be willing to trade pricing data for search data? Or a "featured" listing position?

GoCart gets the local prices from the website itself. Several merchants' websites have a "check local inventory" feature where you supply the zip code to get a list of stores. Check out the video at http://www.biggu.com

I'm glad to see The Weather Channel didn't receive any money even though they were a finalist. I don't think they need it as much as a small developer bootstrapping their app.

I'd hope that Google, of all companies, is better than that. "You do better work, but we're looking for someone a little more pathetic" is not going to get them anywhere.

I'm guessing that it would be more a factor of 'bang for your buck'. That money is going to go a lot farther at a startup than at a company worth billions of dollars:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landmark_Communications

Plus, a weather app is kind of obvious, even if well done.

Some clever ideas in there which shouldn't be too hard to port to iPhone.

1. Port ADC winning entries to iPhone

2. ???? (sell on AppStore)

3. Profit!

The share your whiteboard app looks especially cool.

http://code.google.com/android/adc_gallery/app.html?id=39

What, that Augmented Reality/Google Maps mashup didn't make it? That was 10x more impressive than any app there!

You talking about enkin?

I read that they are apparently working for Google now.

http://androidguys.com/2008/08/26/googles-not-so-secret-stra...

So the real winner(s) got bought by Google...

http://twitter.com/sacca/statuses/897820817

A lot of these would make great web apps/sites too.

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