Our Killer App: The Story of RedLaser in the App Store

"Prior to us, no one had figured out how to do this well without a special lens."

Actually, the guys at Delicious Monster figured out how to do this a while back with the macbook camera, which I believe has the same focus issue as the iPhone's. (A year ago I was looking into making this app for the iPhone as well).

Did you guys use deconvolution with a precomputed blur profile, or something more exotic?

In case there was any confusion, the title 'Our Killer App' was copied from the newsweek story title. I did not to mean to imply I, as OP, was a team member at @occipital. You could ask Jeff Powers (the cofounder of Occipital), here: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jeffpowers

Wil Shipley also tweeted his progress at getting his barcode stuff working on the iPhone - from what I recall he claimed success, but said it probably wasn't good enough for productization.

The 3G camera truly sucks for macro work (though there's a case from Griffin that includes a little lens to attempt to route around the damage).

Great story guys. Glad you guys never gave up!

Already discussed here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=925996