To music fans, "Big In Japan" might evoke unusual
international popularity, a late 1970s
punk band or songs by
Alphaville and
Tom Waits. Now, it's the new company co-founded by the creator of
TuneWiki, Jason Hudgins, who along with Alexander Muse and Ryland Barnes has launched Big In Japan Inc., a developer of mobile applications based on Google Inc.'s hotly anticipated [
GOOG] Android platform.
Dallas-based Big In Japan was awarded $275,000 in Google's Android Developer Challenge last month, and it has now
raised its first institutional round. Dallas-based information technology infrastructure company Architel LP invested $700,000 in seed money in the startup, intended to fund continued development of applications for both Android platform and Apple Inc.'s [
AAPL] iPhone.
The Android Developer Challenge prize was awarded specifically for Barnes' development of comparison-shopping assistant application GoCart, which Big In Japan has since
rebranded as ShopSavvy. Using the application, in-store shoppers can scan a product's bar code using their Android-enabled phones, then receive competitive prices from other retailers. A demo can be viewed
here, while this
report suggests that most of the new money is earmarked for business development surrounding ShopSavvy.
TuneWiki's music player
includes scrolling lyrics in time with songs, among other features, and was also among the ADC winners.
-- Paul BonanosSee press release from Big In JapanFor more see
VentureBeat
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Ryland developed Savvy the personal shopper helper that goes in the phones camera utilizing GPS. Is there a comparable product for Blackberry use?