The App Rap: Red Laser
empowering women, families, and youth-at-risk through improved literacy, increased positive media, and tools for living.
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By Eric Pawlakos
Red Laser
Price: Free
For: iPhone, iTouch, and Android 5/5 stars


Everybody who shops wants to pay the best price possible for the products they purchase, especially in today's economy. Wouldn't be great if you could just take your cell phone, scan the barcode on the item you are looking at, and get a listing of where you can buy that product for the lowest price? Fortunately, there is an amazingly useful app called RedLaser, which does exactly that. It is available for both Androids and iPhones, and is free.
RedLaser is really easy to use.When you find a product you are interested in buying, hold your smartphone steady and align the product's bar code on your phone's screen and scan.RedLaser immediately searches online using Google Product Search, TheFind, eBay and Half.com. It then lists, from the lowest price to the highest, where you can buy the product online. Christine Requa, a recent graduate of Miramonte HS, said that "RedLaser does the on-line price searching so fast that you quickly know what the internet prices are."
But RedLaser does not just check for your product among online merchants.It does much more than that. It also uses your phone's location to do a local search of all nearby retailers that have your particular item in stock.It displays the retailers name, location and current price they are charging. Bobby Taylor, a senior at Miramonte High School, said that RedLaser is great because "you might find that you can save quite a bit of money just by driving a few miles down the road to another store."
A few other neat features include the ability to email yourself barcodes of items that you may be interested in buying, but at a later date.RedLaser also has the ability to list allergen and nutritional information on just about every brand-name packaged food.And, if you are looking to buy video games, scanning the barcode on the will bring up reviews on the games.If you want to be sure you are paying the lowest possible price for any product you buy, you definitely should download RedLaser on your phone.

Eric Pawlakos is a senior at Miramonte High School. When not at school he can be found playing rugby with Lamorinda Rugby, or learning guitar.

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