As Christmas nears, a new iPhone application has been developed to make shopping a little more accessible.

The app, called Shop Social, was developed in the Grand Valley State University Mobile Applications and Services Lab, which creates apps for the iPhone, Android and other mobile devices under the supervision of professor Jonathan Engelsma.

Shop Social lets users scan Universal Product Codes to see reviews, videos and prices for given products. Social media has also been integrated into the app — once a product has been scanned, users can upload the information to Facebook to let friends know what they buy. YouTube and Flickr are also integrated into the app.

Shop Social has a badge system to reward its users. When users do certain things, such as scanning their first item, they will earn a badge.

Engelsma said he has been toying with the concept behind the app for some time.

“It’s an idea I’ve had for a long time in various forms and we started with a really simple idea,” he said.

The process to create Shop Social began in January 2010. Engelsma and his team started out with brainstorming, and before the app went public, the team let their friends and family give it a try to gauge response.

During the creation of Shop Social, Joseph Roth, student researcher at the MASL, said he worked on the servers for the project.

“I worked mainly on the server side of things,” he said. “There are two clients, one for Android and one for iPhone, and they communicate with a server that is using Google Apps Engine. So I was heading up writing up the code for Google Apps Engine and defining the interface.”

When Shop Social was ready to be launched, it was stealthily released on the Android to get some data and to see how people would respond to the app. In November, Shop Social was released on the iPhone and was refreshed on the Android.

Alejo Montoya, who was chosen to work with the MASL due to his experience working with the iPhone, said he has heard positive reactions so far.

“So far I haven’t heard of any comments from any users other than from my friends that are using the applications, and they like it,” he said. “We keep track of the total number of scans and the total number of users and we are getting more and more users.”

Shop Social is just one example of what smart phones are going to be able to do in the future, Engelsma said.

“When we go into stores today, we usually don’t go online when we’re in the store, but I think we will in the future,” he said. “We’re going to check if there are any coupons for that product that we are going to buy. We are going to check to see if that product is appropriate for me or for whoever I’m buying it for.”

More information about the app and how to download it is available at masl.cis.gvsu.edu/shopsocial.

[email protected]