Our QR code program with Walmart is just starting to rollout on a national basis, but I wanted to tell you about a New York City only QR code scavenger hunt that begins next week. We are pretty excited that Neatorama and Mental Floss are sponsoring a QR Code-based scavenger hunt in New York City that leverages an important feature of ShopSavvy – QR scanning.
The grand prize is a new Ford Fiesta and will be awarded to the first person to scan all four QR Codes spread throughout the city. The event starts at 11AM on Tuesday 12/21 at four different locations – the Upper East Side, Upper West Side and in the East and West Villages. The starting locations will be announced via twitter @neatorama and @mental_floss at 10:30 that day.
When participants arrive at the first location, they will need to scan the QR code with ShopSavvy to get the clue for the next location. Including the starting point, there will be four stopping destinations altogether. Monitors will stand by each of the codes to make sure they are not defaced, so that the next people to come along can continue the hunt. Although only one person will win the Fiesta, prizes will be given out by monitors throughout the event. Have fun and let us know if you win!
ShopSavvy 4 was released early this morning and the first user generated images started coming it – the first was of a bottle of Coke from Saudi Arabia (ironically, the label is written in Hebrew – could world peace be near?):
Last week I received the following email from a police detective (I removed his name for privacy reasons) from Maine:
Date: May 28, 2010 1:28:44 PM CDT
To: <sales@biggu.com>
Subject: Thanks
I wanted to let you know that I was able to use ShopSavvy to aide me in an investigation yesterday. I was looking into what may have been the theft of a large amount of copper that was later sold to a scrapyard. While looking over the copper tubing my partner noticed a barcode on one of the tubes. He asked if I could scan it with my phone. I said it wouldn’t work, especially since the sticker was ripped, but I would try it anyway. Much to my surprise ShopSavvy immediately recognized the barcode and identified the product as Wilson Supply #01081 1×10’ copper tubing.
The tubing turned out not to be stolen, but had it been ShopSavvy would have played a big role in identifying the copper.
Here are pics of the barcode and copper.
http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f95/supaphuzz/IMAG0047.jpg
http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f95/supaphuzz/IMAG0046.jpg
Thanks for a great app. The workers at the scrapyard thought they were watching something out of CSI when I pulled out my Droid and scanned the barcode.
We get emails like this from moms, dads, students, schools, libraries, but this is the first we ever received from the police.
Architel is the 2010 sponsor of the monthly Startup Happy Hour. The regular get together of between 20-80 entrepreneurs began in 2008 when Alexander Muse, my business partner sent an email to a few of his friends suggesting they invite a few entrepreneurs to the High Tech Bar in our building for a get together. Over the past couple of years more than 2,500 entrepreneurs have shared a beer (or two) with us. As part of their 2010 community engagement effort Architel is becoming the official sponsor of the event.
Are you an entrepreneur? Do you work for a startup or small business? Looking for a job? Looking for a partner? Looking for angel investment? Come on by for a drink and some fellowship with like-minded folks from North Texas. The event is in the Building (1950 Stemmons Freeway) at the corner of Oak Lawn and I-35. We get started around 5PM, hope to see you there. Just RSVP here.
UPDATE: even though market is showing 1.1 is available some users are still getting 1.0 when they download. We assume this is a iTunes market issue. We have heard that it takes upto 24 hours for their CDN to sync up. Anyway, we have reported this to Apple. Check the ‘more’ tab under credits to see if you still have 1.0 or 1.1. If you have aiming bars on the scanning page you have 1.1, if not you still have 1.1. Our advice, wait until tomorrow (we are going to delay our press release until then as well).
Okay iPod Touch users – you now can download ShopSavvy! We received scores of requests from Touch users, we heard you and we have complied. Enjoy…
Join us for a regular (i.e. monthly) startup happy hour (5-8PM) and then come upstairs to our offices for the Mobile Monday event.
The Dallas Startup Happy Hour is the talk of the startup community in Dallas. Check out the coverage in the Dallas Morning News: <a rel=”nofollow” href=”http://tinyurl.com/sshhdfw”>http://tinyurl.com/sshhdfw</a> As a result of the events, several startups have found a) employees, b) co-founders, c) angel investors and d) had a few free drinks.
Are you interested in connecting with the local startup community? We are working to build a vibrant startup community here in Dallas every bit as interesting and dynamic as San Francisco, Boulder, Boston or Austin. The first step is engagement.
Sponsored by SpringStage – you are invited to attend. Please <a href=”http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/3081373/”>RSVP</a>.
We get emails every week asking us when ShopSavvy is coming to the Palm Pre. The Pre was released last month but all 3rd party application development has been on-hold because developers have not had the access to the SDK required to build apps. We finally got the word this week that the SDK was ready for prime time.
From the email we received it sounded like they were making sure that everything was going to be rock solid for the developers. Here’s part of the email we received from Palm:
I want to thank you for your patience while we allowed a few developers to kick the tires on our APIs, tools and docs before we released them to the rest of the world. We’re working hard to ensure that Palm webOS becomes a world-class platform for application development, but we need to do so in a measured and focused way so we can be sure we’re providing a great development experience and attentive developer support.
Palm may be playing catch-up but making it easy for developers to create is always a good thing. I know that our team is ready to get their hands on this.
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:
This shocking news is delivered by John Paczkowski in a post titled, “The Pre is DOA.” Could it be true or is John simply trying to get links? Read it for yourself and let me know.
