Grocery lists made easy — seriously.

Yes, look at that headline. Grocery lists. In a tech blog. What's this world coming to.

But yet, if you bear with me for a moment, you'll understand why this is cool.

You see, if you throw an iPhone or iPod Touch into the mix, you'll realize that 'ah, maybe that Brad fellow's on to something'.

So here's the deal, for me the iPhone and iPod touch has not excelled at managing and sharing simple lists, like a grocery list. Which store carries what, and oh, is that what it's really called or did you mean this. Confusion, at least for me, until we picked up (and shared via Apple's iTunes Home Sharing system) GroceryIQ.

Quite simply, GroceryIQ is a list manager with a few cool bells and whistles:

• Auto-suggest: Start typing and Grocery iQ will suggest grocery items you can quickly select.
• Barcode scanning: Take a picture of a barcode with your iPhone camera to add an item to your list.
• Favorites and History: Add frequently- or previously-purchased items to your list with just a few taps.

Behind the scenes, GroceryIQ relies on a local (to the device) product database as well as updates which are hosted on the mothership - coupons.com.

When you're building a list, the app often calls home and tries to match the text you're entering with items it knows about. This is good, because I didn't know there where quite that many variants on Condensed Milk.

1+1=5
Another cool feature, and this is where it's neat to have the app running on two devices in the same household. In this case it really does improve the usability of the app when you share it. List sharing - from the FAQ:

You can share your list with multiple people by sending an invitation to sync with them. If anyone with access to the list makes a change to it, everyone's list will reflect that change. List sharing can be turned off at any time and will not delete or affect existing lists. You can also invite more people to share a list at any time.

So by keeping your lists sync'd up, anyone at the grocery store can easily see what's missing in the fridge.

And, since the GroceryIQ also allows you to tag items as Favourites, it's easy to build the list every week with commonly purchased goods.

I know in our household, since we've started sharing the list, I've had a better success rate at the grocer by having a list that is actually current

Oh, and this lively little app is only .99 at the iTunes App store.

Related posts:

1. 5 favourite iPhone & iPod Touch applications
2. Revisiting my 5 favourite iPhone, iPad & iPod Touch applications
3. ToDo and Do and Do
4. This will surely free more of your valuable time
5. How to view PDF files on your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch with DropBox

Tagged as: Apple, application, Grocery, iPhone, iPod Touch, List, online, Review, sharing, sync