Last week Best Buy contacted us to tell us we had exceeded their API capacity (we get prices from their API) and as a result they would have to increase the capacity of the product feed we use for ShopSavvy. They even tweeted the news here. Yesterday they received more than 5.3 million calls to the API. Best Buy is a great partner and to repay their support we thought it might be fun to arrange for a bunch of ShopSavvy users to show up at Best Buy for a ‘Scan Mob’ this evening. Sort of like a Flash Mob, Scan Mob participants were asked to show up at a predetermined time and location and begin scanning the barcode of everything in sight.
The Scan Mob participants scanned hundreds of items finding opportunities for savings (Best Buy prices matches online retailer prices such as Amazon) as well as finding that Best Buy had great deals on lots of the products they wanted to buy. My parents even showed up and saved quite a bit on Jawbone Bluetooth headsets. Buy the end of the ‘Scan Mob’ a manager finally came up to us and asked what we were doing. Rylan showed him ShopSavvy and the manager explained there was NO video allowed. Rylan explained that ShopSavvy was not using video. The manager then explained to him that there were no pictures allowed. Rylan explained that ShopSavvy was not taking a photo. I mentioned that ShopSavvy was a partner of Best Buy and he let us continue wrecking havoc on the store (just kidding). I wanted to thank the Best Buy team at store #58 as well as the API team – you guys are awesome partners and a big reason ShopSavvy is such a success. Thanks a lot! Here is a video from this evening:
First, last week I jumped on a plane and headed to Mountainview (Microsoft Campus) to present at the Under the Radar Mobility Conference. ShopSavvy was head-to-head with very cool iPhone applications from around the country. Guess what? With a perfect score from the judges ShopSavvy came out on top. As the winner of the ‘best app iPhone award’ from Under the Radar I won an HTC Tilt running Windows Mobile (slightly ironic). Anyway, we are using it to test our Windows Mobile version of ShopSavvy. I wanted to thank Debbie Landa for the invitation and the judges.
Second, we were notified by Best Buy that we exceeded the cap for their product API. ShopSavvy is the FIRST remix partner to exceed the usage caps (despite the fact that we have tried to filter and cache queries to reduce load). When we got the call from Best Buy we were a little concerned they were going cut us off. Instead they increased our cap. ShopSavvy users can feel free to keep shopping. Oh and while we are on the subject, you guys are going nuts – our server traffic is up 4X. We brought in two additional 4 core servers this week to take care of the additional traffic.
Finally, in celebration of our great relationship with Best Buy we have decided to hold a ‘Scan Mob’ at the Park Lane (store 58) on Monday night. Show up with your iPhone or Android phone and start scanning at 5:45 and get a Best Buy Gift card. Here are the details: Best Buy Scan Mob.
The Windows Mobile version of ShopSavvy is on hold indefinitely. I wouldn’t expect a Windows Mobile version of ShopSavvy until sometime next year. Here is the story:
Late this summer we put EVERYTHING on hold and worked to build a Windows Mobile version of ShopSavvy for the Windows Mobile 6.5 and Windows Marketplace launch. Our friends at Microsoft offered us a slot as the feature app for the major launch event – many of which never ended up occurring. We completed ShopSavvy, but at the 11th hour we learned of a requirement that was never documented or explained to us – the need for SQL Server CE to be included in ShopSavvy. It is a long technical story, but basically we needed to compile an installer for our installer. In other platforms such as Android and iPhone all applications share a database – each application using it as necessary. On Windows Mobile each application must include its own database SERVER (not just a client) requiring 2MB of space. Nightmare. This will be resolve in a future release of Windows Mobile. In the meantime the coding effort required to add this functionality to ShopSavvy would have delayed our iPhone release even further and we decided we had to release prior to Black Friday.
More and more of you are buying the Palm Pre (IMHO pretty cool phone) and you want to know if we are going to port ShopSavvy for the Pre and the Pixi. We get the question enough I thought a blog post and FAQ link was called for.
Currently we believe there is no way to access the camera in a way necessary to scan a barcode. If you know of a way we can access it at a frame rate of more than 5 frames per second please comment on this post ASAP.
That being said we assume that Palm will eventually create an API that will allow developers to access the camera allowing for Augmented Reality AND Barcode Scanning. When they do we WILL port ShopSavvy to the platform. Until then we will wait patiently. Again, if you learn of a way we can access the camera please comment.
The most compelling feature about ShopSavvy is NOT the ability to scan a barcode, instead it is the ability to expose inventory and pricing information from local retailers. In the Android version of ShopSavvy our standard screen had a Web tab and a Local tab that exposed the number of results for each. If the user scans an item that we don’t have a local result for we show “0″ as the number of results. Over the past year we have regretted this decision as users will email us letting us know they aren’t pleased we don’t have local results. In our iPhone version we fixed this issue.
In the iPhone version of ShopSavvy if you scan an item WITHOUT local prices we simply show a tab that says “Prices”. If we have local prices we show the two tabs, i.e. Web and Local price. By not calling attention to the fact that we don’t have a local price for an item we don’t get many emails from annoyed users relative to local results. Of course, in our world, not many is hundreds so I thought I would explain how to get local results on ShopSavvy.
Most new users (i.e. the vast majority of support emails) download ShopSavvy at their house and begin scanning items they already to own. Many of these items are grocery related and we don’t cover groceries very well (read more here). The rest are old books and DVDs – many of these are still available online, but they are no longer in local stores. These ‘DEMO’ scans often yield poor results, a) the items are no longer sold in local stores, b) they are of groceries and c) the barcodes are hard to read. We have received hundreds of negative ratings from these users even though they have never actually tried to use ShopSavvy to shop. My advice? Use ShopSavvy when you shop – you will be surprised how helpful ShopSavvy can be.
The reason ShopSavvy performs well in retail stores is fairly obvious. First, the items sold in one retail store are likely sold in other retail stores – meaning we will have local inventory and price. Major local retailers carry between 10,000 and 100,000 items – this is out of millions of items. Second, the lighting in retail stores is often far better than the lighting in your house – this means scanning will be faster. Third, the barcodes are almost always printed on flat surfaces – this means scanning will be faster. Trying to scan items in your house means you are scanning items that might not be currently sold, might have hard to read barcodes and scanning in low light. Before you give us a poor review or rating, please actually use ShopSavvy when you are shopping for Christmas.
Reuters reported that Gameloft was “cutting back investment in developing games” for the Android platform. Alexandre de Rochefort said, “We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like … many others”. Really Alexandre? Is that the issue? How many titles did Gameloft distribute via Android? I would contend they built very few. Gameloft suggested they were selling 400 times the number of games on iPhone than on Android, but they fail to mention they have more than 400% more titles on iPhone than Android. I have no idea if Gameloft should build Android games, but they aren’t telling the whole truth here. Ironically, this is the EXACT moment when developers should be focusing on Android development. Why? Because Android is no longer just a T-Mobile platform – Verizon, Sprint, A&TT and EVERY major European carrier have or are about to launch one or more Android phones. Android is going to be huge – there is no getting around that fact. Tell the truth Gameloft. Take a look at Gameloft’s website. Where are the Android games? I don’t see any…
Got an iPhone or Android phone and live in Dallas? We need your help. We are planning to host what we are calling a Scan Mob (sort of like a Flash Mob) on Monday. Here are the details:
At lunch today we were trying to think of what might make a cool promotional video for ShopSavvy. Someone thought it might be fun to have a bunch of ShopSavvy users (or potential ShopSavvy users) show up at an unsuspecting Best Buy store at a particular time and have every start scanning items. We would then run around and film everyone scanning items. Here is the idea:
Everyone shows up at 5:30PM at Best Buy
At 5:40 everyone picks up an item and scans it (with audible beep)
Filmers (using iPhone video in landscape mode) will run around an ask ‘what are you doing’ to each scanner
You should answer saying something like ‘Saving with ShopSavvy’ or something snarky
Everyone who gets on film scanning will get a Best Buy gift card from me (i.e. make sure we film you)
My objective would be to get 20 people or so (maybe more if we can promote this). I don’t want to do this too far in advance (i.e. someone might get mad or try to stop us). So if you can make it let us know by RSVP’ing on the Upcoming Page we will keep you in the loop on any changes.
If you DON’T live in Dallas you can STILL participate. Just install ShopSavvy, show up at a Best Buy and get someone to film you. Just a short 10 second video. Have someone ask you, “What are you doing?” You should answer, “Saving money with ShopSavvy!”. Email your video to sales@biggu.com. FYI – you don’t have to wait until Monday – you can do it today.
I was playing the Bing’s visual search of iPhone apps and noticed that ShopSavvy, on just its second day, was ranked #183 out of all free applications for iPhone. I am not sure if this is good or bad – we had hoped to get our second release out before pushing too hard on promotion. Don’t get me wrong, we want lots of downloads now – the feedback is amazing (but the ratings aren’t that great). We have uncovered several bugs and received hundreds of ideas from users to make ShopSavvy even better. Our goal is to break the top 50 free applications before black Friday with our second release (here’s hoping Apple gets it approved in time). I have been talking to a bunch of folks who suggest this all but impossible – we like to aim high.
When we first released ShopSavvy on Android we had lots of users complain that when they scanned the barcode on their Snickers Bar or Diet Coke they didn’t get a result. Our answer? Why are you scanning Snickers and Coke? The answer was fairly straightforward – scanning is fun. At the end of the day ShopSavvy was designed as a FREE application to enable a user to scan the barcode of high value items that tend to be sold at very different prices in a local area and online. What are we good at?
Books, DVDs and Video Games (represent 25% of our scans)
Consumer electronics (represent 50% of our scans)
Soft goods, groceries, health and beauty items ((25% of our scans)
Why do we ‘suck’ at groceries? First, it is difficult to get grocery stores to share pricing and inventory data. Primarily because most grocery retailers don’t have the technology to support a live feed, but also because they are concerned about price transparency (go into a major chain and look at pricing for milk and eggs in urban areas and compare it suburban areas, you will be surprised). The second reason we ‘suck’ is simply because barcodes on food items are HARD to read. They are often on flexible plastic packages or curved bottles and our current version struggles scanning these items.
The WORST thing is that most people try out ShopSavvy by scanning a bottle of water or a candy bar. If that is all you try you miss out on the real power of ShopSavvy. Being able to determine online and local price and inventory for millions of items from thousands of retailers is what is great about ShopSavvy. Of course, despite this post (and others like it) users will judge us on food items and as a result we are working on a) improving our coverage of groceries and b) improving our ability to scan hard to reach barcodes.
The easiest way to install ShopSavvy on Android is to visit the Android Market and download ShopSavvy right there. Just select search and type: ShopSavvy.
If you don’t have access to the Android Market you can download the app directly from our servers HERE. This should be the latest version.
If you are visiting this page from your Android phone you can simply click HERE and install the app from the market. This link WON’T work from a normal web browser so don’t complain when it doesn’t work.
Finally, if you have an iPhone you can click HERE.
First, last week I jumped on a plane and headed to Mountainview (Microsoft Campus) to present at the Under the Radar Mobility Conference. ShopSavvy was head-to-head with very cool iPhone applications from around the country. Guess what? With a perfect score from the judges ShopSavvy came out on top. As the winner of the ‘best app iPhone award’ from Under the Radar I won an HTC Tilt running Windows Mobile (slightly ironic). Anyway, we are using it to test our 
Second, we were 
The most compelling feature about ShopSavvy is NOT the ability to scan a barcode, instead it is the ability to expose inventory and pricing information from local retailers. In the Android version of ShopSavvy our standard screen had a Web tab and a Local tab that exposed the number of results for each. If the user scans an item that we don’t have a local result for we show “0″ as the number of results. Over the past year we have regretted this decision as users will email us letting us know they aren’t pleased we don’t have local results. In our iPhone version we fixed this issue.
In the iPhone version of ShopSavvy if you scan an item WITHOUT local prices we simply show a tab that says “Prices”. If we have local prices we show the two tabs, i.e. Web and Local price. By not calling attention to the fact that we don’t have a local price for an item we don’t get many emails from annoyed users relative to local results. Of course, in our world, not many is hundreds so I thought I would explain how to get local results on ShopSavvy.
Got an iPhone or Android phone and live in Dallas? We need your help. We are planning to host what we are calling a Scan Mob (sort of like a Flash Mob) on Monday. Here are the details:
When we first released ShopSavvy on Android we had lots of users complain that when they scanned the barcode on their Snickers Bar or Diet Coke they didn’t get a result. Our answer? Why are you scanning Snickers and Coke? The answer was fairly straightforward – scanning is fun. At the end of the day ShopSavvy was designed as a FREE application to enable a user to scan the barcode of high value items that tend to be sold at very different prices in a local area and online. What are we good at?
The easiest way to install ShopSavvy on Android is to visit the Android Market and download ShopSavvy right there. Just select search and type: