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....!
There's a history to the evil tweet... It all comes down to the *potential for evil* that large companies have through collecting and aggregating large amounts of personal data.
ReplyDeleteNow if you managed to persuade dunnhumby to allow me to access my own Clubcard profile through an API, and then maybe leverage their recommendation algorithms so I can better make use of the Tesco API informed by those recommendations, that would be something... ;-)
A couple functions that would allow me to identify cheap offers in my local store would also be interesting:-)
tony
PS btw is there a lat/long file of Tesco store locations anywhere?
Hi Nick
ReplyDeleteWill the tesco API allow me to report things like illegal parking, predatory pricing, bullying of local authorities or below award conditions for workers?
Will we see php access and sample code for accessing your code as thus far I cant work out if you will be supporting it and as Php is a major player I would hope so.
ReplyDelete