Yesterday Time Magazine selected ShopSavvy as one of the 50 best iPhone apps for 2011 two years after its original release. In fact at MacWorld this week, ShopSavvy was selected for a 2010 Best App Ever Award in the ‘Best Use of iOS Hardware’ category. In the event we were honored alongside Angry Birds, Word Lens (my fav), Instagram and Camera+.

After all of these years we are STILL working hard to make ShopSavvy even more relevant than it was back in 2008. First and foremost we are constantly adding new retailers. This week alone we added more than 15 retailers previously missing from our system. But we are also working on payments (NFC and integrated wallets) and social integration. Our mission is to be THE app for mobile shopping. Thanks for all your support.

Recently we launched QuickPay, our integrated wallet, into ShopSavvy. QuickPay 1.0 only supports payments using your PayPal account today, but QuickPay 2.0 will allow you to use PayPal AND any credit card you wish (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover). Our goal is to allow you to buy products from retailers with a single tap on your touch screen – add a PIN – and you are able to purchase the product and have it shipped to your house without pulling out your wallet. Think of it as iTunes for everything else. While QuickPay can support ‘pick up in store’ it is really a tool for offline to online purchase conversion, but that is all about to change with NFC support.

QuickPay 2.0 will support local point of sale purchases through the support of NFC or near field communication. NFC is a short-range (4 inches) wireless connection that is compatible with existing ‘contactless’ infrastructure already in use for payments. ShopSavvy users who have set up their QuickPay wallet (with one or more credit cards or bank accounts) will be able to use their phone to purchase products (and even services) from retailers who have NFC readers integrated int heir point of sale systems. Users who leverage ShopSavvy’s integrated wallet will benefit from special offers such as coupons, instant rebates as well as a 1% cash back rewards for purchases. Our objective with QuickPay is to create a very flexible wallet that enables augmented payments using any payment method (credit card, debit card, ACH or online payment) in any setting (online or local).

Most ShopSavvy users in Egypt (yes, there are Egyptian ShopSavvy users – mostly on Android) will NOT be able to use ShopSavvy. As you may have read, the Egyptian government has ordered ISPs to shut down international connections to the Internet. We are still getting some traffic through one ISP (Noor), but 99% of the normal traffic from this country of 80,000,000 people is MIA. Hopefully connections will be restored, but in the meantime our Egyptian friends on their own – our prayers are with them.

We are pleased to officially announce the release of ShopSavvy 4 on Android is released. ShopSavvy was original smartphone shopping application and one of the first 10 apps available in the Android market. The original version of ShopSavvy was built BEFORE Apple launched the iPhone App store and was the winner of Google’s Android Developer Challenge. Today, the application is one of the most downloaded apps on Android with over 10 million users. While ShopSavvy is popular on the iPhone (top 100 overall app), for every iPhone user we have 4 Android users. ShopSavvy 4 is a complete overhaul of the original application – almost one year in the making. (Oh and before you ask, we renamed the old app GoCart and you can download it here or get it from the market to keep using the original version of ShopSavvy). Writing a story and need pictures or video? Download our presskit for pictures or visit our digital newsroom for video.

Major Look & Feel Overhaul. ShopSavvy 4 on Android offers users a completely revamped design leveraging all of the latest Android elements and features. The new updated look is clean and crisp offering Android users an arguably better user interface than their iPhone counterparts. The Springboard, seen to the right, is modeled on the Android Market and has been a huge hit with beta testers who rave about the ‘scans happening right now’ feature which allows them a glimpse into the shopping activity of other users.

Deals, Live and Local. While users rave about the new Live Deals constant stream of product deals found by other users, they are also enjoying Local deals from our various partners including Groupon. Today there are deals offering users a chance to win everything from laptops to iPads simply for scanning everyday products. (European users will be glad to note that you can disable live deals in settings to save bandwidth – metered data is expensive)

New Scanner Technology. ShopSavvy 4 offers Android users the same scanning technology we originally implemented in our iPhone version (the SDK is available to any Android or iPhone developer for free). The new SDK is almost twice as fast as our original implementation. Approximately 20% of Android users have phones with fixed focal length cameras that render almost all scanner apps useless. Our latest technology supports BOTH fixed focal length and variable focal length cameras – scanning all 1D and 2D barcodes. Our secret is a combination of on the phone scanning AND server side scanning – the combination allows us to double the speed of each scan while supporting all camera types. Users can now scan barcodes upside down, sideways or right side up – 360 degree scanning.

Enhanced Product Coverage. ShopSavvy 4 on Android allows users to leverage the latest version of our product/retailer catalog called PriceNark 4 (an upgraded version from 3.2 the previous version of ShopSavvy used). Product coverage is now 50% greater and includes local inventory from hundreds of local retailers in the US and Europe. PriceNark 4, while much like local search engines like Milo or Krillion, also leverages product and price data from other users – each minute more than five prices from local retailers are entered by users making PriceNark the most complete local search engine. Users are notified of local inventory through the use of the ‘blue dot’. Whenever users see the blue dot next to a retailer you know they have it in stock (stocking status provided by retailer).

More Complete Social Integration. ShopSavvy 4 now includes product and list sharing options for Facebook, Twitter and email allowing users to pass along deals to their friends.

Battery Life Improvements. Android users who monitor battery usage will note that ShopSavvy 4 uses just a fraction of the battery life that the original version consumed. (Of course this means we might not get your location as quickly, but we let you add your ZIP – US only – and we will assume you are there until we get your actual location)

App to SD Card. The second most requested feature from Android users was the option to run the app from the SD card. ShopSavvy 4 gives the user the option of running the app from the device or the SD card.

Search Widget. Many Android users leverage app ‘widgets’ to keep app functionality at their fingertips on the home screen. The new version of ShopSavvy allows users to install a keyword search widget on the home screen. Just type in a product or upc and ShopSavvy will let you know which local and online stores carry the item. (For those of you who have been asking, we turned on the hardware search button found on many newer phones – it now turns on keyword search)

Enhanced Retailer Information. ShopSavvy 4 delivers LOTS of information about the retailers who carry the products user scan. Users can call the store, get driving directions, visit the website or find out the price matching policy of the retailer. See a product cheaper somewhere else? Save gas and just check to see if the store you are standing in will match the lower price you found elsewhere.

User Generated Content. The MOST requested feature from users was the ability to add/edit products. From the picture to the title users wanted to be able to ‘fix’ or customize products. Now any user can edit the product image and title of any product. We have more than 22,000,000 product photos in the system and users are adding more than five a minute. Just click the ‘edit’ button in the top right corner of the product screen. You can also add retailers and prices if you wish – paying it forward to another user who might be shopping for that item in the future.

AdOns. Enhanced product experiences and information is available via our HTML5 sAdOn framework. AdOns leverage video content, Facebook integration and gaming modalities to help users learn about the products they scan. From health tips, allergy alerts, movie/game trailers to reviews – AdOns help create a more complete picture of a particular product.

Writing a story about ShopSavvy on Android (or iPhone)? Here is our presskit. If you want some b-roll video of people using ShopSavvy check out our digital newsroom.

Several beta testers commented that they thought we must have ‘bloated’ the code base to be able to deliver such a rich experience on Android. They couldn’t believe we could make an Android app as visually appealing as an iPhone app without really screwing it up. This is the farthest thing from the truth. The 4.0 code base is 98% new and is MUCH more stable than the old version. We use a stat tracking tool called Flurry to help us understand how users are interacting with ShopSavvy and I am please to be able share with you that the team has delivered a VERY low crash rate. Here is the latest chart from Flurry:

98% of the sessions didn’t include a single error or crash and 2% of sessions had only 1-2 errors or crashes. Our old rate wasn’t great and we didn’t spend much time publicizing it, suffice to say this very is relatively error/crash free. Of course our goal is to get to 100% error free. Our iPhone 4.0 version is STILL not this stable. Of course the best part about Android is the ability to be able to release as often as necessary – we released our beta on Sunday and then today we saw the errors detailed above and were able to resolve ALL of them in a quick update earlier today. I have no doubt we will uncover new bugs as users begin to explore new features and settings inside of the app – but I have give a shout out to Brian and the team for doing such a great job with this release STELLAR work!

Just a quick update to our beta testers (i.e. anyone who upgraded to 4.0). We have a new update in the market (posted in the last hour) that provides a quick fix for a couple of issues:

Live Product Feed. Lots of you liked the live product feed, but wanted the ability to turn it off. This is especially true for our European users with metered data plans. Great news, in settings you can select ‘live scan mode’ or ‘history mode’. In live scan mode you will see the scrolling ‘scans happen now’ screen. In history mode you will see the products you have scanned. Hopefully this solves the issue for everyone.

Localization. Now that we removed background processes – most specifically pre-fetch – we don’t know where you are until your phone has obtained a GPS fix. You guys didn’t like pre-fetch because it left ShopSavvy on in the background. We confirmed it didn’t harm battery life, but the battery meter showed it as a big battery waster (it wasn’t accurate). Anyway, we don’t want to fight this battle and decided to turn off the feature. Now we look at your phone’s country of origin and set the currency and such to it (i.e. help for UK and Germany users). Next in the settings menu we allow US users to add their postal code (this is coming for Europe too, but we didn’t have enough time to set it up for this release). Hopefully these two changes will mitigate this issue. UPDATE go ahead and enter your European postal code, while we can’t get lat lon – we can get close so add it and when we can get better resolution we will add it server side.

Hopefully you guys see that we are trying to build the best possible experience for users and when you have issues we will do our best to solve them. Take a minute and update the app market if you gave us a negative review related to either of these issues. Cool?

When Rylan entered ShopSavvy in Google’s Android Developer Challenge it was called GoCart. After ShopSavvy won the Challenge, T-Mobile told us they hated the name and hired a branding company to come up with something better. ShopSavvy was their choice and despite the fact that we liked the GoCart name, we decided getting millions of dollars in free advertising was worth making the change. Now that we are updating ShopSavvy on Android and the update is a complete departure from the old version of the app we decided to release the 3.6 version of ShopSavvy as GoCart in honor of the original name. So if you are a HUGE ShopSavvy fan and like the ‘classic’ version of the app – GoCart is for you. We are pretty sure you would prefer the new version if you gave it a chance, but instead of arguing with you we decided to give you exactly what you are asking for – both versions. Enjoy!

> GoCart (just like ShopSavvy 3.6)
> ShopSavvy 4 (similar to ShopSavvy 4 on iPhone)

In November we released ShopSavvy 4 on the iPhone and it was well received primarily because our older iPhone version sucked left a lot to be desired. Lots of our Android users were frustrated they weren’t getting the 4.0 update on their phones. To be honest we were VERY scared to update ShopSavvy on Android because it was, perhaps, one of the best known and most loved Android apps. ANYTHING we did would tend to piss off our loyal and numerous Android users. Back in 2009 we updated the icon and received hundreds of complaints (the original icon was for our old name – GoCart and didn’t make sense when we changed the app name to ShopSavvy). We knew ShopSavvy 4 was going to be hard for our Android users to swallow and we didn’t want to do anything to interrupt the holiday season. Now that the holiday season is over we decided to start rolling ShopSavvy on Android as a beta.

The response was overwhelming. People hate the new version.  They don’t hate it because it is faster, uses less battery, has more data and supports more phones – they hate it because it is different. I received LOTS of calls and emails over the weekend from really distraught people. Interestingly, every phone conversation I had ultimately turned out pretty good. I explained why we made the changes we made and how we thought it would improve the app. Almost every user I talked to calmed down and was pretty intrigued by the update. The emails were less successful. Most users were stuck on one issue or another and could not be convinced that the new version was better. Users in the support forums were even more frustrated.

One important thing to remember is that when your app is popular (ShopSavvy has more than 10 million users) frustration voiced by a small number of users – in our case if only 1% of users voiced a concern via email or in the market you are hearing from 100,000 people. 100,000 negative comments can make you doubt yourself and your decision – I know we were burning up the phone lines this weekend. The truth of the matter is that 99% of users may actually like the update.

We will be officially launching ShopSavvy 4 on Android tomorrow and we are already working on giving users some options. The easiest option is to allow them to keep the old version of the app. We decided it would be fun to revert back to the original app name and icon – GoCart – so that our most ardent fans could keep the old version. It doesn’t work as well, it doesn’t scan blurry codes, it doesn’t follow current Android conventions and eventually it won’t work at all.

So, if you are a current Android user I apologize in advance for the change, but we really believe this change is for the best. We hope you will give the new app a chance.

Developers with qualified applications can use the fourth row AdOns to promote their applications. Sold on a pay-per-download model we only present your app to users who would actually be interested in downloading your application. Displayed as an option in the ‘fourth row’ of ShopSavvy our program is available on iPhone and Android. We can’t guarantee millions of downloads, but we can guarantee your app will only be presented to users when it is relevant to their current activity. In the past we have experimented with paid download programs with limited success. Even the best program only yielded one actual user per 16 downloads. We believe our targeting will result in REAL users who actually want and need your application.

• If you are a brand whose products have UPCs and want to promote your app this program is for you.

• If you are a retailer who sells products with UPCs and want to promote your app this program is for you.

• If your app has information about products with UPCs this program is for you.

• If your app is related to a brand with UPCs this program is for you.

How much? If your app is free we charge a $1.00 per download; for paid apps we can give you a quote – just let us know. Please complete this form (or email sales@biggu.com):