Big in Japan

Amazon’s Iron Fist

admin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:16:44 +0000

According to a research report issued by RBC Capital, Amazon controls over 33% of the e-commerce market in the United States. They are clearly on the top of their game, but are losing their heart? Recent actions by the monolithic e-commerce Juggernaut that is Amazon are causing more and more users to question the company’s competitive practices.

For example, Joshua Odmark learned the hardway that Amazon has stopped paying affilliates their commission when the affiliate uses a URL shortener like tinyurl or bitly. Last week Amazon cut off four different affiliate partners that supplied ShopSavvy with product data. The reason? Amazon doesn’t have the resources to support mobile applications. Nobody including people like John Gruber can understand why Amazon would seek to limit the distribution of their data and ultimately their ability to sell their goods. Finally, earlier today Wil Shipley, internet rockstar, had to remove his uber-popular application Delicious Library today after receiving notice from Amazon he would be cut off. Ouch. Dan Moren from Macworld responded, “this blanket ban on mobile apps is bizarre and, to put it bluntly, stupid.”

We love Amazon. What they have done for online commerce has been truly remarkable. In many ways, they set the stage for apps like ShopSavvy.

Unfortunately, we have had difficulty incorporating Amazon products among the more than 20,000 retailers and 2 million products that are part of ShopSavvy. It’s not a technical issue; with access to Amazon’s product API, we could include all Amazon products in the ShopSavvy database immediately. But for reasons that are unclear to us, Amazon has not yet given us this access.

For a while, we have been able to work around this problem, because a number of our partners had access to Amazon’s API, and we were able to display Amazon results through them. But now Amazon has essentially cut this option off, meaning that only a small percentage of Amazon products now display in ShopSavvy results.

We’re not sure why Amazon is reluctant to be part of ShopSavvy, but we know that our 1+ million users would benefit from having access to Amazon’s prices as they comparison shop for books, movies, music, games, electronics and many other types of products.

We intend to plead our case directly to Amazon again soon — and we will need your help. Let Amazon know that you want their product results to be part of ShopSavvy. Tell Amazon they should join Best Buy, Wal-Mart and the 20,000 other retailers who allow their products to be accessed by ShopSavvy users.

Nokia building Android phones?

admin — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 02:58:13 +0000

If you had asked me which major manufacturer of mobile phones would NEVER build an Android phone I would have said, “Nokia”. Turns out I would have been wrong. The owner of Symbian, the most prolific mobile phone operating system, is building an Android based phone. Wow. Read more here.

UPDATE: Nokia, evidently, wasn’t ready for the proverbial cat to get out of the bag. Nokia said today, “Absolutely no truth to this whatsoever [to the rumor].”

Happy Birthday Barcode!

amuse — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:52:15 +0000

Has it really been 35 years? The barcode turns 35 today! I can recall my mom showing me my first barcode when I was two years old and I thought, “Wow, that is going to be big.”

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

We are hiring! iPhone Developer Wanted!

amuse — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:02:30 +0000

We are hiring a senior iPhone Developer (Dallas area applicants only, please).

Since 2005 Big in Japan has built web and mobile applications for great brands including MTV, LEGO, FOX and The Federal Reserve. In 2008 we decided to STOP building applications for other companies and START building applications for ourselves. By the summer of 2008 we decided to focus exclusive on mobile application development and our first application was ShopSavvy (barcode scanning price comparison on Android).

We are nearing launch of an iPhone version of ShopSavvy and we need to grow the team to deal with the workload that adding a second platform has added.

Do you live in the Dallas area? Are you interested in joining a nimble, but profitable startup on the verge of something huge? Do you have experience with Objective C development? Maybe a little java? We want to talk to you ASAP.

The position is fulltime and pays between $75,000 and $90,000 base plus bonus and stock options. We cover 100% of your health insurance premiums (health and dental).

Email the following information: - your availability (two weeks or immediate) - your salary requirements - your twitter ID - your LinkedIn Profile - your resume - brief explanation of your development experience to support@biggu.com

Help us launch ShopSavvy for iPhone!

amuse — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:16:46 +0000

Got an iPhone and want ShopSavvy? We are VERY close to being ready to submit ShopSavvy to the iTunes market, but we really need your help. We want to test our image recognition across a large number of actual iPhone cameras and barcodes. Our goal is to test on at least 1,000 iPhones and at least that many barcodes. You can help us - i.e. the faster we get this testing completed the faster we will submit ShopSavvy (oh and it will be free). Here is what we need:

Use your iPhone (tell us which version you have) to take a photo of a barcode.
Make sure you hold the camera about 3 inches from the barcode (not any farther please).
Title the file the number of the barcode i.e. 062338796823.jpg (this is important)
Email the file (with correct title) to support@biggu.com

If you can send one barcode we will be appreciative. If you can send ten we will forever be in your debt. Anyway, thanks for your help (in advanced). Please tell your friends to do the same.

ShopSavvy for iPhone Update

amuse — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:39:33 +0000

We know there is a huge demand for the ShopSavvy experience on the iPhone and we have been working on an iPhone release for some time. Our biggest hurdle has been to perfect barcode scanning using a fixed focal length camera. We are very close to finalizing our solution called Meatloaf. We looked at various ’server-side’ options - i.e. taking a photo, sending it to our servers here in Dallas and then sending the results back to the phone - but we determined that the ‘live’ scanning that our Android users are accustom to was the right direction. We had to come up with a solution that was 100% accurate and FAST - we call the project Meatloaf.

Many of you have surmized (via email and even on TechCrunch) that we will be able to launch on the iPhone 3Gs since it has a variable focal length camera (10cm). While our current solution would work fine on all of the new iPhones it would leave the 40,000,000 existing devices (Apple’s number, not mine) without a solution. Meatloaf; however, will work on both fixed and variable focus cameras - 100% coverage on all current and legacy devices.

Meatloaf will be even more important on Android because, as some of you likely noted, more and more Android handsets will ship with fixed focal length cameras. For example, AT&T is launching an Android phone called the HTC Lancaster which sports a ‘2 mega-pixel fixed focus camera’. Ouch. Any Android application that relies on the ‘traditional’ camera we have come to know and love on the G1 and Magic will be DOA on the AT&T devices. AT&T is the second-largest mobile provider in the US and the largest smartphone provider - your Android app needs to work on their phones, period.

Along with an updated solution for barcode scanning, the iPhone version of ShopSavvy will get a complete UI makeover. Smartphones are not equal and they each have strengths and weaknesses. Porting ShopSavvy over from Android would leave a lot to be desired so we spent a LOT of time making sure that ShopSavvy took advantage of all of the iPhone features and UI users have come to know and love. ShopSavvy is still ShopSavvy, but it is optimized for iPhone. Make sense? Here is a screenshot to give you an idea:

ShopSavvy on TechCrunch

amuse — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:19:55 +0000

MG Siegler over at TechCrunch wrote a nice post on ShopSavvy titled, “The New ShopSavvy: Faster, Bigger, Stronger!“ Thanks MG.

Recruiting Country Managers!

amuse — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 19:50:40 +0000

We are looking for local (i.e. local to their country) country managers to help us add online and local retailers to ShopSavvy. Our mobile price comparison application is one of the most popular on Android in the US and UK, but we need help everywhere else. It was easy to add retailers in the US since we live here, figuring out which to add in Australia is a lot harder for us. That is where you come in. Watch this short video and if you are still interested fill out our short application.

Interested? Fill out this short application.

Call for Android Presentors!

admin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:32:54 +0000

Several of you have asked that we host another AndroidDevCamp here in Dallas. How about we host a MobileDevCamp (iPhone/Android/Palm) on a Saturday sometime this summer? Maybe July or August?

My thought is that we host a three track event:

Keynote: 10AM

Track 1: iPhone

11:00-11:30AM Session One iPhone
11:30-12:00AM Session Two iPhone
12:00-1:00PM Lunch/Break (Together)
1:00-2:00PM Workshop (Together)
2:00-3:30PM Session Three iPhone
3:30-4:00PM Session Four iPhone
4:00-5:00PM Networking/Drinks (Together)

Track 2: Android

11:00-11:30AM Session One Android
11:30-12:00AM Session Two Android
12:00-1:00PM Lunch/Break (Together)
1:00-2:00PM Workshop (Together)
2:00-3:30PM Session Three Android
3:30-4:00PM Session Four Android
4:00-5:00PM Networking/Drinks (Together)

Track 3: Palm Pre

11:00-11:30AM Session One Pre
11:30-12:00AM Session Two Pre
12:00-1:00PM Lunch/Break (Together)
1:00-2:00PM Workshop (Together)
2:00-3:30PM Session Three Pre
3:30-4:00PM Session Four Pre
4:00-5:00PM Networking/Drinks (Together)

If you are interested in hosting one of the sessions please ping me ASAP. Just explain what you plan to discuss and tell me a little about yourself (a short bio would be nice). Email: amuse@biggu.com

Problems with Android Market?

admin — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:13:45 +0000

We need your help! We get one or two emails each day from users who can’t find ShopSavvy in the Android Market. There are mentions of this problem in the Android Market support forums, but our contacts at Google can’t replicate the issue (we were able to replicate it once very early on, but not recently). This is worrisome, because most users won’t even realize that ShopSavvy is missing because they aren’t looking for it. How many downloads are we missing? No one knows.

We get lots of emails - positive and negative - and we have learned to take many of them with a grain of salt. But yesterday, our friends at Amazon reported the ‘missing Android app issue’ and they were adamant that ShopSavvy was missing from their Android Market application.

How can you help? Please visit the market right now. Look under All Applications and sort by popularity. Take a picture of that screen (screen grab or just a plain photo) and email it to support@biggu.com - let us know if ShopSavvy was missing. Your help is much appreciated. If we can replicate the problem on a large scale a) we will know there is a real problem and b) our friends at Google might be able to figure out what is going on. In the meantime if you don’t have ShopSavvy and can’t find it in the market just Download ShopSavvy Here.

Update: lots of you have reported the problem since this post. Thanks for your help. Here is an example of ShopSavvy missing from the Android Market: