“Demi’s video provides a great illustration of how millions of consumers around the world are using ShopSavvy every day – in many cases, changing the way they shop forever,” said Alexander Muse, co-founder of Big in Japan.

Said Adejuyigbe: “As a college student, I’m forced to be frugal everywhere and anywhere I can be. I’ve saved well over $1,000 with this application — including about $200 on the video camera I used to shoot this video. I take it with me whenever I shop.”

You can view Adejuyigbe’s winning video at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK6HykLLcxE

To enter the second ShopSavvy fan video contest, interested users should:

* record a short video (two minutes or less) describing how they used ShopSavvy to save money while shopping;
* provide details such as store name, location, product name, and amount saved;
* star in the video themselves (no actors);
* be sure to show their phone running ShopSavvy;
* upload the video to YouTube, including the title “ShopSavvy Fan Video from (name)” and the tags “shopsavvy, shop savvy, barcode, barcode scanner, upc, ean”;
* focus on your savings from ShopSavvy – do not mention the contest itself;
* e-mail your name, mailing address and a link to your video to sales@biggu.com.

The Droid winner will be selected from the first 100 entries received, so users are encouraged to submit their videos promptly, and no later than May 15. Only one entry per user will be accepted.

Ok folks, there you have it. Get creative come up with something interesting and you could be the next lucky winner. Good luck!!

Compounding the problem is the fact that the Android Market won’t allow more than one version of an app, which means developers aren’t able to simply create a new, 1.5-friendly update and leave the existing version in place for those without Cupcake.  Instead, Big in Japan face creating a new build that’s also backward compatible with earlier versions of Android, something they conservatively estimate should normally take around two to three weeks of development.

However according to some reports, Cupcake will be pushed as an over-the-air to Android device owners in just two days, and it’s already live in Spain.  That means three weeks of development needs to be squashed into two days, never-mind any time for testing:

“The good news is that we will release our new version whenever Cupcake is pushed OTA to users.  The bad news it will be untested.  It will have bugs, bugs that we will fix.  Please bear with us and realize that we don’t have much choice in the matter” Alexander Muse, Big in Japan

As Alexander notes, the Big in Japan team are likely more prepared for the coding challenge ahead than many others, particularly those part-time developers who have been cooking up Android apps in their spare time.  The public perception of Android as a platform depends in no small part on the success and stability of its third-party software; have Google shot themselves in the foot by allowing carriers to rush out Cupcake 1.5?

[Image via]

The promotion is to push for Android to be embedded into devices. The corporate body (Open Embedded Software Foundation (OESF]) has been formed to foundation look set to develop the market and expand their business. The OESF currently has 23 member companies and expects about 100 more companies to join it within 2009, just a few displayed in the image above. Google said, “We give our all-out support to the aim of the OESF.”

IP Vision Inc’s Director Masataka Miura will serve as representative director of the corporate aggregate, “Open Embedded Software Foundation (OESF),” which was launched Feb 12, 2009. Miura said that “Open-source Android can significantly cut development costs of embedded devices and bring about new business opportunities for device manufacturers. However, it is hard work for a single company to port and maintain this software platform, which consists of as many as 23 million lines of source code. The OESF members can significantly improve development efficiency by sharing technical information with other member companies and conducting joint developments.

[via TechOn]

If you wouldn’t mind taking a trip over to the Crunchies Awards page and casting a vote for them it would be fantastic. They really have a shot at winning this award and we feel they deserve it more than anything. The developers over at Big In Japan have put countless hours of support into making sure Shopsavvy is as up to date as possible.

All it takes is 5 seconds of your time and two clicks of a button to cast the vote. On a side note tell us what you think of the application. Where does it exceed expectations and where can it use a bit of improvement. Your input helps this application get better every day.

aTrackDog though has a “MAJOR” design flaw, if a beta tester is also an aTrackDog users then all users of aTrackDog will get a notification that there is an update when in reality the application is up to date.  The guys over at Big In Japan learned this first hand when they received plenty of email stating that users could not download the newest version of ShopSavvy.

“Starting on Friday we began getting emails from aTrackDog users who complained that they could not download the latest release of our software.  Our current version is 3.0.0, but aTrackDog showed that our most recent version was 3.0.5 (an internal alpha version).  We DO have a public beta running at 3.0.4, but the most recent public/stable release (i.e. the one in the Market) is 3.0.0.  aTrackDog is listing 3.0.5 as our latest release so each aTrackDog user receives an alert that they need to update their version of ShopSavvy.  Our users are becoming more and more frustrated as their emails reveal.”

aTrackDog’s only suggestion to developers at Big In Japan was to suggest users to select ‘Not Track this version’ in the aTrackDog settings. aTrackDog needs to really step it up a notch here because developers should not have disclaimers and notes for each conflicting application that is later released. Developers do not have any control over what their beta testers use on their phones. Rylan went on to say in an email to aTrackDog developers:

“I think your method of version tracking is very clever.  You managed to let your users’ phones do the difficult data-collection for you.  Unfortunately your strategy is not 100%, it’s not sustainable.  When there are 10,000 applications in the Market and half of them are releasing private versions how will you handle the flood of support emails and admin emails coming your way? I recommend that you change your model such that it includes some sort of review process first.  When a new version is submitted to your database, before you notify the world, you should go verify its existence first.  This would include either finding it in the Market or updating the URL for manual download.”

Big In Japan believes the real purpose of this application is for gaining data market intelligence. With this application they are able to see how many people are using which applications. Data such as this is “VERY valuable” and should compensate those giving the data in some way rather than give false information to users about current versions. Big In Japan, as do I suggest that you uninstall this application as it isn’t useful and will likely cause confusion.

[Via BigInJapan]

This issue was first reported when A Phoenix user phoned ShopSavvy developers, Big In Japan, reporting that the application was not in the Android market.  Turns out the user did not have a compatible SIM card in their G1; this creates a problem with the application being “internalized” for each market.

By not having a SIM card your location cannot be found resulting in the application not showing up. Developers say that if more users go the unlocked route they may adapt accordingly to fit the overall needs of customers, but until then users with an unlocked G1 are simply out of look.

Jason Hudgins, developer that worked on Tunewiki (and that is now a part of ShopSavvy), along with Rylan Barnes, the original developer of GoCart (now known as ShopSavvy) will be demonstrating their applications and sharing development experience on Google’s Android platform. Basic points that will be covered during the camp are: How to get started on Android, Google’s Android Developers I and II, lessons learned in the development of ShopSavvy and understanding Android fundamentals.

The event will include breakout sessions where developers can share ideas and form working groups to begin building Android apps. AndroidDevCamp 1 in Dalas is being sponsored by SpringStage and hosted in the Big in Japan/Architel offices located in the Dallas INFOMART. They can support around 75 ‘campers’ for the day.

AndroidDevCamp is organized by Anuj Bhatia, Alexander Muse, Rylan Barnes and Jason Hudgins. If you are interested in sponsoring, helping, organizing or hosting an event please email Alexander Muse at amuse ‘at’ m-ven.com.

Event location:
Infomart
1950 Stemmons Fwy
Suite 2022
Dallas, TX 75207

Photo courtesy of Android Community member heyitsnan.

[Via Upcoming - Yahoo]

The G1 phone was quick and responsive as when we played with it at the launch event last week. We were able to get hands on time with the full version of ShopSavvy. We scanned a barcode (for demonstration purposes, a Logitech webcam) and were able to compare prices online as well as at many stores in the area.

No word on when the application will be released, or if it will be a free application or one in which you must purchase. We can imagine it would be particularly useful for all the Christmas shopping coming up over the next few months.  One particularly useful feature is price alert, allowing you to save products to a wish-list that updates you when the product is discounted into your pre-set price range. Check out the video interview we did with Big In Japan here.

“Finally people are going to think of their phones as something more than a way to talk to their friends” Rylan Barnes, Big in Japan

GoCart is a mobile shopping comparison app, that uses the camera on an Android device to scan a product’s barcode. Once recognized, the app checks pricing for the product in online stores; however, it also uses GPS to find local stores and query their inventory, offering alternative places to shop if you’re not willing to wait for delivery. Alternatively, users can set a price band they’d be willing to pay, and choose to be alerted when the product drops to that price.

“The Android platform, being open, really creates a lot of opportunities for us, where you can decide what you want the phone to look like: is it a phone or an internet device? Really that line becomes blurred with the Android platform. With the iPhone platform, it’s a really closed environment that’s really neat – it’s a phone, and it does really neat things – but you have to play by Apple’s rules, and Apple’s rules say “right now, you can’t touch the camera”, the SDK doesn’t let you manipulate that. There’re all sorts of things that you can’t necessarily do with the iPhone platform” Alexander Muse, Big in Japan

In the interview, Ewdi and the Big in Japan team discuss Android versus Apple SDKs, how they see the platform benefiting from having Google behind it, and the problems an open-source, multi-device OS faces in trying to stand up to a more managed environment like the iPhone. They also touch on the possibility of carriers and device manufacturers creating their own custom Android builds, and what impact that could have on code development.

Our thanks again to the Big in Japan team for the invite.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWngmkwXaAM[/youtube]