By Andrew Liszewski
If you’ve ever accidentally bought the same album, book or DVD twice because you forget you already had a copy at home, then to be honest, you have too many albums, books or DVDs. (Seriously, you don’t need to serve as a redundant backup for the Library of Congress.) But if you just can’t help yourself, and don’t want to carry long lists of what you already own, the Groqit will serve as your own personal librarian. It’s basically a pen-sized scanner that reads, stores and organizes barcodes from most consumer products. So the next time you’re at the store and aren’t sure if you already own a particular item, you can just scan the barcode and the Groqit will let you know if it’s already in your collection.
While it only has 128MB of storage on-board, that’s enough to keep track of more than a million barcodes, so there’s a good chance you’re not going to fill it up in your lifetime. One feature I particularly like is the company’s online service that will not only translate the barcode data into actual product info, but also allows you to share your lists with others. So the next time you’re trying to pick out a DVD for a friend’s birthday, you can avoid the embarrassment of choosing a title they already own. The Groqit pen is available on their site for $95, while the online service is $4.95 a month.
