BarTor Enters BitTorrent Barcode Scanning Market
A few weeks ago we introduced Torrent Droid, an application for Android-based phones that allows users to take a photo of a barcode and lookup torrents for the associated product. While Torrent Droid is still being developed, a similar app is now on the market and available for download.
The idea behind BarTor is simple but brilliant. The application allows a user to scan the barcodes of products they come across, and use these to search for torrents that match the product. If a corresponding torrent is found, it can be directly and remotely added to uTorrent or Vuze through the BitTorrent client’s web interface.
BarTor uses the web interface of the BitTorrent client running on your computer, and it even supports multiple clients for people who have more than one BitTorrent client they need to send torrents to.
The torrents start downloading right away and when you arrive at home, the music, movie or software will be done downloading and ready to use. It can’t get much easier. BarTor’s functionality is very similar to the Torrent Droid app we reported on before, but BarTor is the first to become available to the public.
The only downside is that the app is not available for free. It’s currently being sold in the Android Market for $2.99. Just like with most iPhone apps, however, it probably wont take long before it appears on BitTorrent sites itself.
Justin, the developer of the application told TorrentFreak that he is well aware of this threat to his business model and understands that his target audience is likely to pirate the application itself.
“I am sure it will happen and although i’d like it not to, there isn’t a whole lot I can do about it. I feel that there are a lot of people out there who will be willing to pay the nominal fee for this app,” he told us.
For people who prefer to buy the product instead, BarTor also works with Google Base’s product search. For every search it will return a list of retailers that sell the product, including the location and the price. Not free, but you might still save a few bucks.
BarTor, scan, search and download torrents.
