bookpublishing

Here’s a cool new application for anyone who likes to use their cell phone in innovative ways: the Barcode Scanner application, a new searching tool available for download on Android-powered phones. When you open up the application on your phone, the screen shows your camera’s view. When you line up the camera in front of a book barcode, it will automatically zoom, focus and scan the ISBN without clicking the shutter. This opens the book in Google Book Search if it’s in the Google directory and allows you to search the book.

This can be a really useful too, especially for books that don’t include indexes (or with very basic indexes). Let’s say you’re trying to decide between two cookbooks. Your in-laws are very particular and will only eat dinner at your home if you cook lamb. Which cookbook will give you more recipes that include lamb? If you use this application and search for the term lamb, it will tell you which book includes more instances of the word. Voila! That decision just became easy. Although, with any luck, the book will have a useful index and the whole scanning the barcode process is just something you can do to impress your friends.

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