The ShopSavvy team is SUPER pumped about the Iron Man 2 movie for two reasons. First, we can’t wait to see it and second because Tony Stark is a ShopSavvy fan. LG was kind enough to include ShopSavvy inside of Tony’s Iron Man suit (evidently his suit runs Android 2.1.Fe). LG is pre-loading ShopSavvy on their Android phones and as part of their marketing they created an Iron Man 2 branded micro-site that puts you inside of the suit. If you click on the missile attack you can use ShopSavvy from within the suit to scan the barcode on the missile. Of course the bit is tongue in cheek suggesting the villian bought the missile at Devastation, Destruction and Beyond. My favorite feature of the Iron Man version of ShopSavvy is the ‘people interested in this missile were also interested in…’ LOL. Anyway, thanks to our buddies at LG for including us in comic book history!
I spent the last week at CES talking about ShopSavvy and checking out all of the cool new gadgets our users will be scanning. We demo’ed our two new ShopSavvy features including QR Code scanning support and Augmented Reality product and retailer search (we call it ‘product radar’). Everyone thought the augmented reality feature was cool, but I was really surprised by the number of meaningful conversations focused around QR Codes. Publishers, retailers and manufacturers all wanted to talk about how we could help them leverage QR Codes.
While at the event I carried my Nexus One and almost everyone had to check it out. Hanging out at the LG Booth I was uber-impressed by the 6.9mm thick (or thin) LED television (picture below), but the LG rep just wanted to play with the active wallpaper on my phone. Of course, this was just part of the story. The biggest ‘buzz’ after you tried out four or five of the 3D televisions was all about Android. Scott Fulton wrote about the ‘android buzz’ suggesting, “Android has emerged from CES 2010 as the software platform story of the year.“ Android was at the heart of so many of the coolest new gadgets I lost count. Some of the more exciting Android-based gadgets included Motorola’s Backflip and the Alex e-reader. The Android-based gadgets spanned segments including automotive, home theater and games. Android was the ‘Intel inside’ of LOTS of devices.
The newest member of our team was showing off some of his coding chops the other day and showed off a new feature called “ShopSavvy Product Radar“. Simply put, ShopSavvy Product Radar is a ‘third’ way to view local products in ShopSavvy. Today if you scan a barcode of an item we show you local results in a list or map view. With the list view you see a list of retailers who sell the item in question ordered by price. With the map view you see a map of retailers ordered by distance from you. In the new Radar view the user can hold his camera in space and see the various stores selling his product in augmented reality. The following video and screenshots feature Best Buy (any retailer can include their icon in the view – email sales@biggu.com).
