Tesco Grocery App for Nokia phones submitted to OVI store

Last night we submitted our most ambitious mobile application yet to Nokia's OVI app store.

It's a simple but complete grocery home application which allows you to search for products and add them to your online basket. It has full access to your favourites and all special offers so you can shop for groceries on the move. You can even amend an order that is checked-out awaiting delivery in order to add to (or alter) the basket or delivery slot.

The app is synchronised with your Tesco.com grocery account so everything you do on the phone is applied to the web version of your basket (and vice versa) when an internet connection is available. It uses the Tesco Grocery API for all its back-end services.

The Tesco Grocery app will work on the following Nokia handsets - the S60 series: 5800, N97, N97 mini, X6, 5230 and 5530.

The app was developed for us by a small and specialist mobile development company, Ribot, who I think have done an amazing job of delivering such a rich application to the small Nokia screens.

The app should be available from the Nokia OVI store in the next few days once Nokia's OVI quality assurance team have given it the once-over.

I'll talk more about our thinking behind the app, give you a complete walkthrough, and introduce you to some of the people at Ribot (explaining why we chose them) over the next couple of days here on this blog.

If I were to be quoted, I'd say: The Tesco Grocery app is so easy to use. Simply sign in, book a delivery slot, build or amend a shopping list and check out. Tesco groceries to your door, from your mobile phone.


Updated: (link) Nice article on the app and our thinking from Ronan Shields at Marketing Week and (same text) at New Media Age.

The Fourth Screen

Regular readers will know of my quest to bring Tesco grocery home shopping to every screen the customer owns (if they want us there) and our mission to engage a developer community to write applications for their favourite devices.

What has intrigued me over the last year is the adoption by many customers of what we geeks are calling the fourth screen.

Before I go any further I better count up the other three screens:

1. The first screen has been around since the late 1930s - it is of course the television set, evolved from a flickering display of the John Logie Baird mechanical device through to the high definition multi-input flat-screen of today - and soon a 3D immersive experience.
2. The second screen belongs to the computer, which came about in the 1970s when someone thought it might be a good idea to save printer paper by displaying the output on a TV instead. This screen is now your view of the connected world revealed through your desktop or laptop, and is probably your work tool too.
3. The third screen is the mobile phone, which has evolved from the dot matrix display on devices (literally) the size of bricks, into the iPhone’s internet-connected immersive touch-sensitive presentation.

So to the fourth screen: Specialist internet-connected devices such as photo frames that display digital images from your memory card or Flickr account through to the Chumby and O2 Joggler. They’re new on the market and tend to do a few specialist tasks really well.

Fourth screen devices intrigue me mostly because they tend to be installed at a single, static location in the home. They are small yet offer a point of focus. I own a Joggler and have placed it in the hallway where it spends most of the time displaying photos and occasionally sounding background music when I play audio around the house from a UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) server. It also offers me live traffic info - very useful just before leaving the house.

I’m also fascinated by the Wayve device - these are designed as instant media messaging focal points, where two or more Wayves can be joined up as a group using the internet as the backbone, and anything written on one Wayve can be sent to one - or all - the others, adding a ‘connected family’ feel. Importantly I see such a device as being located in the kitchen - for many the family ‘hub’.

Ah yes, the kitchen: As these fourth screen devices become common, I can see a great place for Tesco.com grocery ordering if the experience was right.

Getting the experience right is important - it’s probably too easy to take a potentially great device and develop a horridly labourious grocery shopping application. A good application for the fourth screen will be one that ‘lives the value’ of such a device: quick, easy, simple touch, ‘little and often’ usage, operating almost while walking by it rather than sitting down for a session in front of it.

I’ll certainly be encouraging ‘fourth screen thinking’ at TJAM and beyond.

N.B. Although I have mentioned specific products as examples of 'fourth screen' devices, this is for illustration only and should not be considered an endorsement of any such product either by myself or Tesco. However, if I mention any actual product I believe that it is fair to provide a link to that product's website.

Tesco API now live and documented

UPDATED: lansleytech.com is now techfortesco.com
UPDATED: API support documentation now at this link.

Well I may be dying from this terrible cold but 'the show must go on' and the Tesco.com Grocery API is now live.

Head to the support web site at http://www.techfortesco.com/tescoapiweb where you can register and get access not only to the service location but also a complete reference guide, and a coded example using a Windows Form application compatible with Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (any edition including the free 'express' version).

In Hitchhiker's Guide, Arthur Dent says "I feel like a military academy, bits of me keep passing out!". Arthur's excuse was having just been beamed on board a Vogon ship by a matter transfer beam. My cold's making me feel the exactly same way, so Party On! during this festive Yuletide weekend while I lay in bed moaning randomly and demanding that a lorry load of flu relief be sent to me immediately...

Tesco.com API Support Web Live!

As we head towards Friday and the launch of the Community Technical Preview edition of the Tesco.com grocery API, it's time to sign up now as a developer.

Head to: https://www.lansleytech.com/tescoapiweb

Register, check through the terms and conditions (I particularly like condition 20), then login and set up an Application Key so you are ready to make a start from 19th December.

Now don't go criticising the support web's look and feel - I've rustled it up using Visual Studio 2008 and C# and I am an engineer rather than a designer. The site has been checked (actually, tortured) by our security team to make sure it is secure and survives being hacked by them. So I say let's get it up and running and I can make it beautiful later.

If you have any questions or issues specifically with any part of the API Support Site, or you have a problem with one or more of the terms, conditions that you are being asked to agree to, email me at the API support email address of tescoapisupport@lansley.com

During Friday, all registered developers will receive an email with instructions to get started, and I'll announce it here too.