Tesco.com to create its own iPhone Grocery application

I thought we should let you know that our leadership team have asked us to look into creating an iPhone application of our own. Since TJAM, they have been really excited by the ideas and opportunities that have arisen and feel that we should also give our internal developers the opportunity to learn how to program for the iPhone.

We haven't taken this decision lightly now that we are fostering a developer community and we would still welcome some healthy competition from you - we're aiming to create a simple application that can do the basics of grocery shopping well, so there will still be plenty of opportunities for other third party iPhone applications to use the Tesco API to explore grocery shopping in a more fun and imaginative way.

There is some good news for third-party developers though - we have been given the go ahead to invest in a 'deep link' secure checkout web page designed for mobile use that will enable customers to checkout with confidence. All third party developers will have access to this checkout page.

We haven't agreed the scope yet, but we're expecting that the Tesco-owned grocery application will allow the customer to search for products from categories, and by text searching. It will also access the customer's favourites list and manage their basket. The software will use the forthcoming beta API and has no secret privileged access to our service so will not present an 'unfair advantage' over third party apps.

We have never said 'never' when it comes to writing applications ourselves but we don't want to discourage anyone from writing their own. However, occasionally we will want to reserve the right to step into a marketplace ourselves with a 'basic' application.

We have only just made this decision and we wanted to let Tesco API developers know immediately so they know where they stand. All I ask is that developers rise to the challenge and take on our application, now I've described it, with something better.

Tesco.com TJAM - The Video

Here is a 4-minute YouTube-hosted music video of what happened at our recent TJAM event.

A ''draft' version of this video was shown to the developers at the start of the evening event. Time and a spot of decent re-editing has made the video smoother and more interesting (I hope...).

You can either watch the video here, or (better) click on the video image to watch it in a bigger window on YouTube (press the 'HQ 'buttton for better quality playback if watching on YouTube).



My music choice for this video is an edited version of a Utah Saints track - they have remixed Kate Bush's lyric "I just know that something good is going to happen". See what I did there?

So my music collection is over-influenced by the Gaydar Radio playlist. Whatever!

TJAM Daytime Event

You probably have a fair idea of what is happening at TJAM's evening developer's event.

However I've sorely underplayed the importance of the daytime event which will host Tesco.com grocery customers, plus 'creatives': people who can visualise a future idea, concept or even fully formed application in their minds.

It's the output from the daytime event - plus excellent insight from some recent ethnographic research we commissioned about customer grocery home shopping behaviour - that will feed into the evening. So if you've only heard about TJAM Evening until now, don't worry - you'll miss nothing. We won't have people coming to both events. In any case there is a maximum of about 70 people for the daytime event, all carefully vetted to ensure they match the customer mix who use our website.

EMC Consulting's Paul Dawson is working with our marketing team and a great creative innovation agency called Happen to make the daytime ... well... happen. Paul describes the TJAM daytime in this blog entry so have a read and see the source 'energy' that will create the materials that evening developers will absorb from 7pm.

I'll be there in the daytime helping to present, and spend time practising my live coding demo ready for the evening. Trying to write compilable C#/Java and make it work first time as 150 of my peer-group watch? Yes that's pressure. Think I'll stay off the provided free beer until 9pm.

Tesco API TJAM Event Now Full

Just a quick message to say that the T-JAM developers event on the 5th August is now full and registration has closed.

A big thank you to all the developers who registered to come along. You will all have received your confirmation (or apology for not being selected) email by now.

Do have a play with the community technical preview of the API if you haven't tried it yet. The developer access page is http://www.lansleytech.com/tescoapiweb

A Bit More Evil: Tesco API news goes down well with bloggers and twitterers

I'm delighted that taking the Tesco API to the 'next stage' and make it more public has gone down well with the media, bloggers and Twitterers alike, just as we announced the T-JAM event.

It was sheer coincidence in timing with our T-JAM announcement that ProgrammableWeb had spotted the community technical preview edition of the API, documented it on their site, and announced is part of their 'new APIs' news.

The next thing we know is that The Guardian had spotted it and their journalist Charles Arthur wrote a blog post called 'Tesco offers an API for its shopping. Now start thinking what to use it for'.

The news was swiftly picked up by The Mirror and Retail Week, then New Media Age (NMA) gave me a call to ask for more info for their article. Indeed Will Cooper, one of NMA's journalists, had witnessed the Tesco@Home application being demonstrated at Microsoft PDC2008 conference and has been following our journey to offer better ways of online grocery shopping.

Lots of blogs have picked up the news, and authors have felt positive about the outcome. Of course I am am bound to have as my favourite the aldissandmore.com posting titled "History in the making: Tesco offers an API for it’s online shopping". Goodness, I can now join fellow colleague and Tesco.com IT Director Jon Higgins who was once described as a "legend in his own lunchtime" in a Computer Weekly article tracing the origins of Tesco.com.

There are numerous positive Twitter posts but in the name of balance a couple of wonderfully negative ones too. amongst my favourites:

• @repetej: An app for Tesco API: for any item, for location L, tell me nearest alternative retailer, so I can do my bit to put them out of business.
• @psychemedia: ****The Tesco API release just means Tesco can get a bit more evil.. don't do it...don't.. just leave it alone..nasty...dirty.. LEAVE IT****

Oh well you can't please everyone....

The T-JAM event delegate count has just gone over the 2/3rds-full mark, so if you haven't registered yet don't leave it too long. Places are limited because health & safety rules prevent us shoe-horning too many people into the auditorium. http://www.techfortesco.com/tjam

Right, I'm off to be nasty, dirty and a bit more evil. Yes it's greasy fry-up day in the Tesco.com canteen....!