From Google: Shopper recognizes books, CDs, DVDs, and video games by their cover art, and also offers barcode scanning and voice search. You can view prices, reviews, and specs, and star your favorites for later. Shopper also saves your history for use offline and lets you share products with friends. Currently U.S. prices only.

Download it and let us know what you think. Does ShopSavvy have a real competitor now?

Update: Speaking of ShopSavvy, we contacted the founder of Big in Japan to get his response.

“From our perspective it is more of the same. Google has always had a barcode scanner – i.e. ‘Barcode Scanner’. It was available the first day just like ShopSavvy was. It uses Google’s shopping data which is good (we include it in ShopSavvy), but we also have direct relationships with 20,000+ retailers. Google and Amazon are and have always been our biggest competitors.”Alexander MuseBig in Japan

Features of Google Shopper include:

• Detailed product information: Find prices, reviews, specs, and more. Shopper is powered by Google Product Search.
• Barcode scanning: Scan the barcode of almost any product to quickly learn more about it.
• Save your history and favorites: Shopper saves your history and lets you star your favorites for later.
• Scan the covers of books and media: Find a product by simply pointing your camera phone at the cover art of a book, CD, DVD, or video game.
• Voice search: Say the name of a product and find it easily in Shopper.
• Share your finds with friends: Find something you want to share? Click on the share link to post to Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Instant Messaging, etc..

Are you a developer running your own contest? Contact us and we will be happy to share it with our readers. We are also looking for developers to help sponsor a major phone giveaway promo next month. Drop me a line if you are interested in an exciting advertising opportunity.

Update (11/24): Big in Japan has uploaded a video from the event.

The Three Sources

One of the main data sources that Skyhook Wireless uses is, of course, the GPS system. When signals are available, the GPS system provides positioning accuracy of between 10 and 15 meters. Other than the line of sight requirement for GPS systems, GPS can also be slow to start due to satellite acquisition times.

The second common positioning component of Skyhook Wireless is cell tower triangulation. It is less accurate, with accuracy ranging from 200 to 1000 meters. Its advantage is speed. It takes a few seconds for most devices to calculate location based on cellular tower triangulation.

The third, and by far most unique, component of the Skyhook Wireless system is their Wi-Fi positioning system. Skyhook maintains a database of global Wi-Fi locations. When a Skyhook Wireless enabled app tries to determine location in deep urban environments and can’t acquire adequate GPS signals, it scans for nearby Wi-Fi networks. By triangulating Wi-Fi networks based on a larger location triangulated from cell towers, a much more accurate location can be determined.

By combining all three of these data sources, Skyhook enabled apps are able to calculate far more accurate position estimates in a wider variety of conditions than simple GPS or cell tower triangulation.

Skyhook Enabled G1 Apps

There are two apps currently available in the Android Market that use Skyhook’s technology. The first is a handy app called Locale. The second is ShopSavvy.

Locale

Getting a location fix in Locale.

Locale allows you to change aspects of your G1 based on location. Do you often turn off your phone during meetings at a particular location? Locale can pinpoint your location and turn off the features that are most invasive during the meeting. Were you expecting a call from a particular person during the meeting, but wanting to send all other calls to voicemail? Locale can accomplish that by a prioritized list of rules. Placing the address book entry for the expected caller above the block all callers rule will allow that call, and only that call, to come through.

Do you want particular people to know where you are? Through the use of plug-ins, your location can be automatically sent to specified numbers via SMS or Twitter.

ShopSavvy

Product detail page in ShopSavvy

ShopSavvy is one of those applications retailers love to hate, especially retailers whose prices are higher than the rest of the market. Using ShopSavvy, you can scan a barcode. The app will then show you a list of internet retailers and local retailers with the product. It will display the best price available locally and via the internet. The product can then be added to a wish list, or a price alert can be set to notify you when it drops below a pre-defined price. ShopSavvy allows for product scans to be automatically publicized via Twitter and shows available product reviews.

ShopSavvy uses Skyhook Wireless technology to see if there is a shop nearby that carries the product that you’ve scanned. At this point, there aren’t a lot of retailers signed up for the system, but more and more are coming on board.

Conclusion

Skyhook Wireless has a good solution to the inherent weaknesses of all three positioning technologies. By using a hybrid system of all three and frequently updated Wi-Fi and cell tower databases, it provides one of the best and most accurate systems for positioning in situations where GPS is partially or completely ineffective.

Skyhook Wireless offers three location components.

Sign in screen

Everyone knows that if you give the customer more options for purchase, they are likely to convert and take advantage of it.  This is exactly why we will see this feature coming soon to a phone near you.  The technology already exists; we are just waiting for someone to type up the code and get legal to approve it.  Allow me to demonstrate what is already available on the T-Mobile G1.

ShopSavvy is an application that allows you to scan any UPC and check online for better prices and local availability.  In the latest version, you can even make the purchase right on your phone using Paypal.  Amazon also allows 1-click purchases of physical goods and MP3s while browsing their site from a mobile device.

No Torrent clients have been developed for Android and I’m not really sure you would actually want that.  If you were downloading torrent files directly to your phone this would use up a lot of CPU and battery power as well as eat a lot of bandwidth.  The ideal solution would be to remotely control a torrent client from your mobile phone.

Downloading a torrent

To great joy I found remote control of torrents is currently possible on Google Android devices with the utorrent client available for PC and Mac.  The default installation of uTorrent comes with a remote web user interface.  All you need to do is turn on the WebUI feature, install the miniUI for mobile phones, forward the correct ports, and go to the login page your Android device.

Once you are logged in with the miniUI you have full control over your desktop client.  You can browse all your torrent files, view active downloads, and add new torrents for download.  Adding a torrent file is easily performed with Android’s built in copy and paste functions.  You can also upload torrent files saved on your phone by using Opera mini.

The search options

So right now it is possible to:

• Go to a retail store
• Find a DVD you want to watch
• Locate the torrent file
• Start the download on your home PC

The only thing that is missing is the ease of use for the end user and the legal ability for purchase and download to other devices.  The real question: who will put this feature in the customers hand first?  Will it be a company like Big in Japan who develops Android software or will it be some hacker from The Pirate Bay?