Matt Buchanan shared this video of the new Android build to coincide with the HTC Hero (new Android handset).  It is incredible.  Check it out:

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If you don’t have access to the Android Market or for some reason you can’t find ShopSavvy in the Android Market we created a direct download for you. Download ShopSavvy Here.

This afternoon the Google Product Search group released a new feature that called the Android barcode intent.  Greg Kumparak over at TechCrunch predicted that they would include the intent a while back and he must have been pyschic.  Google’s product search features have been optimized for use on Android handsets and now Google has just revealed how Android might just be the killer phone operating system.  Websites, like Google Product Search, can offer ‘intents’ that allow for interaction between websites and mobile applications.

While Google doesn’t have their own barcode application, Zxing has Barcode Scanner and we have ShopSavvy.  Both can answer an intent published on a website.  See below:

If you go to Google Product Search on an Android phone you can click ‘Scan Barcode’ and the browser will call Android asking for ‘barcode’ intents like Barcode Scanner and ShopSavvy.  Just click on the one you prefer and presto you have launched a barcode reader.  Barcode Scanner sends you to the Google Product Search page, ShopSavvy provides the same results only in a mobile UI (augmented with additional products not yet included in Google Product Search today).  As Greg noted, “Google indicates that Product Search’s barcode index currently works best with electronics, books, movies and video games, though they promise to expand quickly.”  To see the barcode intent in action watch the following video:

Lots of folks run online stores, but very few of these ‘indy’ sites are in ShopSavvy.  More and more of you have sent in support requests like “I am on CubeCart and I want to get my products into ShopSavvy. Frankly I don’t get Google Base.  What can I do?”

We are trying to convince several shopping cart providers (i.e. the folks that make the software that makes your store go) to add a simple option that will allow user to: a) generate a simple XML feed that is ShopSavvy friendly and b) PING our servers letting us know to start consuming your feed.

It is getting harder and harder for our team to keep up with the requests from retailers to add their XML feeds so that we can include their products in our results.  If we can get a few of the major shopping cart guys to help their users generate a feed and also let us know about it everybody wins.  Store owners get their prices into ShopSavvy, Consumers get more options and we can focus on making the application better.  If you are a shopping cart provider please send me an email amuse (at) biggu.com and I will send you the details.  Thanks to @roy_girassol on Twitter for the idea.

According to TBG the second version of the G1 will be called Bigfoot and replace the existing hardware provided by HTC.  Lots of users like the slideout keyboard of the G1, but they wanted a little sexier hardware – Bigfoot provides that hardware:

If you upgraded to our most recent version of ShopSavvy (Cupcake compatible) you may have noticed that we changed the icon.  The feedback is about 50/50 – half of you like the new icon and half of you hate it.  The number of emails we are getting is significant enough that I thought it was worth a blog post (i.e. so we can link to this instead of trying to reply personally to each email).

When we first built ShopSavvy it was called GoCart.  The original blue icon (check mark with two dots) was meant to look like a ‘cart’ – i.e. it was the ‘GoCart’ icon.  Sometime after that Google released icon design guidelines that our original icon did not conform to.  Our icon was ‘grandfathered’ and was allowed to remain.  Shortly after that T-Mobile hired a company to come up with a ‘better’ name for GoCart.  GoCart was perfect if you were a 20-something developer, but according to their advisers it didn’t work with the G1 target demographic.  They came up with the name ShopSavvy and we agreed to go along with the name change.  Of course, the timing of the launch didn’t give us much time to generate a new icon so we stuck with the old ‘cart’ related image we originally created.

We have never really been happy with the ‘cart’ icon, but it was never a priority until we began to launch in Europe.  Turns out ‘ShopSavvy’ doesn’t mean much to someone living in Austria or Poland.  In fact, not a single person we talked to had any incling as to what it might refer to.  Our carrier partners asked us to change the name.  For a number of reasons this was unacceptable to us, but they did offer an alternative.  They suggested that we change the icon to include a ‘barcode’ giving users a clear understanding that ShopSavvy must be that barcode scanning application.  Working under a tight deadline yet again, we struggled to come up with a clear barcode that works in a 48x48pt form factor and met the Android icon design guidelines.  More than 50 designers provided comps for us to review – I blogged about the competition here.  In the end we settled on the simplest version.  Hopefully those of you who speak English will ‘get it’ that we are still ShopSavvy and those of you who are new to ShopSavvy with ‘get it’ that we are that barcode price comparison application.

The driving force behind Big in Japan is largely due to the success of ShopSavvy (our barcode scanning/price comparison application for Android).  In turn the success of ShopSavvy is due in large part to our relationship with Google.  We hope that we have played a small part in the success of Android – Google’s mobile phone operating system.  I was surprised, and humbled, when I noticed that Sergey Brin wrote about ShopSavvy in the latest Founders Letter published today.  Each year Larry and Sergey take turns writing an annual letter – this is the first time one of our projects has ever been mentioned!  Check out the full letter here.  I just wanted to take a minute to thank Larry, Sergey, Eric and Dan for supporting Android and our development efforts – we really appreciate everything you have done!  Keep up the great work.

Everyday there is another report of yet another Android handset headed to the market.  Today is no different.  Check out the leaked image of the latest Android phone from HTC (via our friends in Singapore):

Wow.  According to Dan Frommer from the Silicon Alley Insider BlackBerry’s Curve outsold the iPhone last quarter.  Wow, again.  Smartphones are now 23% of US phone sales (compared with 17% last year at the same time).  Best selling smartphones:

1. RIM BlackBerry Curve (all 83XX models)
2. Apple iPhone 3G (all models)
3. RIM BlackBerry Storm
4. RIM BlackBerry Pearl (all models, except flip)
5. T-Mobile G1