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....!

Tesco.com T-JAM Innovation Day - Registration Open!

I'm delighted to inform you that registration has opened for all IT developers who would like to join us at our first Tesco.com T-JAM Innovation Day.

This event is where we invite you to come along to get some insight on what customers are asking for in terms of great new applications and better ways of online grocery shopping - and you can earn affiliate fees for each new customer and each order you place through the application(s) you develop using our API.

The developers' T-JAM event is on 5th August 2009 between 7pm and 9pm at Cardinal Place, Victoria, London (100m from Victoria Rail Interchange Station).

For complete details of this free event, and to register, go to:
http://www.techfortesco.com/tjam

See you there!

Tesco.com Grocery API - Important Developer News

Tonight I have written to our 150-strong community of developers who have registered to use the Tesco.com Grocery API. These developers can use this interface to write amazing grocery applications for Tesco.com customers.

Since the email I sent is in the public domain now, I reproduce it here for your information.

The developer access portal for the current version of the Tesco.com Grocery API (Community Technical Preview) is http://www.lansleytech.com/tescoapiweb and the new API portal will be running on the high performance servers of the techfortesco.com site by end of July 2009.

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Dear Tesco.com API Developer

The Tesco.com Grocery API has been 'on air' since just before Christmas 2008 and your feedback has been outstanding. So over the next few weeks you will start to see a major upgrade to the API taking place which will:

1) Take on-board your feedback,
2) Offer new functionality and interfaces,
3) Release some constraints imposed by the current set of terms and conditions, and
4) Starting now - completely release the 'count' limits imposed on the current service.

The API is currently being re-developed to take on the functionality of our new forthcoming 'Martini' grocery platform which offers a powerful step-change in what we can bring to the customers in a great new grocery application.

The current API will continue to function but the new service will run alongside it. As 'Martini' rolls out then the old API will start being closed down - probably around Sept 2009. I'll give precise dates of when this happen as soon as I have them.

In your feedback:

You wanted: To use the API for applications you wish to release to customers.
We will: Release conditions stopping you from doing this currently. A new set of terms will be published which you will need to agree to before you start to use the new API. You'll be pleasantly surprised about what we will be letting you do! Price comparison? Selling your apps? Getting your users to rely on your apps? Yes yes yes do whatever you like. All we won't let you do is portray Tesco in a bad way politically, nor store private info without customers permission, nor sell insight on to competitors from customers using your applications, nor use Tesco branded images other than those that will be provided to you, nor attempt any form of denial of service. Apart from that you can do what you like using our API.

You wanted: To access customer product favourites.
We will: give you full access to favourites and previous ordered products through the new API. Great if you fancy trying out some 'prediction' ideas.

You wanted: Extended product info (e.g. nutrition, fat content etc).
You will: Have access to all data we can provide through extended calls.

You wanted: To checkout customers so they don't have to checkout through our web site.
We will: Provide limited checkout facilities although this may not be on 'day 1' of the new API. The challenge we have is allowing third parties between us and customers when taking payment. Customers need to trust that your application won't take their card details and store them or act nefariously with this info. We'll be looking at the 'using stored card' facility on our web site going forward but we have to be careful and I hope you understand this. Thoughts on how to improve on this will be gratefully received. We operate within strict Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance and there is nothing we must do even slightly risk that compliance.

You wanted: A RESTful web service interface.
We will: Aim to provide this on or very soon after Day 1 although it is unlikely to be a 'pure' REST interface because of the need to login and authenticate customers, and offer different product ranges dependent on the Tesco branch from which we deliver to them. If you can accept the need for POST data and/or cookies then REST will be a nice simple way of accessing the API. RESTful purists beware you may feel a degree of dissatisfaction!

You wanted: A simpler and quicker way of accessing categories.
We will: Provide a cached category interface that's fast to download.

You wanted: Vastly speeded-up product searching when including ratings.
We will: Rewrite this ratings facility to be available in a different call to product search (using an array of product objects).

You wanted: Unlimited calling of the API, including full product counts on returned searches rather than any limit.
We will: Release these limits tonight (7 July 2009).

You wanted: To access our customers to get some ideas about what they would like from a Tesco grocery application.
We will: Be providing a Tesco.com Innovation Day called 'T-JAM' to be held in central London on the evening of 5th August 2009. Follow my blog which will soon provide a link for you to register if you fancy joining us.

You wanted: to help us help you make money from your application.
We will: Give you access to our affiliates scheme where customers using your application will make you money. After all, we want to incentivise developers to create best-of-breed applications!

So to summarise: A great new Tesco.com Grocery API is coming which will offer extended facilities and faster performance, enable you to obtain an affiliate income from the customers who use your application, and find out what customers are asking for at our T-JAM event coming soon.

Thanks for reading and I hope to meet you at T-Jam in London on 5th August.


Best regards
Nick Lansley
Head of R&D

Tesco.com

Anyone for a Martini?

It's always good to get excited about being on the verge of delivering a major new software platform. And the mood at Tesco HQ is decidedly upbeat.

The re-write of our grocery e-commerce platform, or "Project Martini" is about to be implemented in the live environment over the coming weeks.

We've been delivering groceries online since 1995 so we've built up a fair wealth of experience in this field. In 1999, I helped launch the "BOB" project - "Best Of Breed" - where we were given the budget to design a best-of-breed grocery service ready for launch in 2000 when Tesco.com Ltd was formed as a separate company under the Tesco PLC umbrella.

BOB had a wealth of great grocery functions and facilities both for the customer and our picking and delivery staff. There really was nothing like it.

The (not the right word) "issue" was that the good ideas kept flowing, so every 9 months a new version of BOB would launch. Sometimes very complex elements of functionality would have a sub-BOB-release of their own - so BOB 3.5 and BOB 6.5 would implemented shortly after their 'integer' versions.

All good stuff but by the time we reached 2007, BOB was creaking a lot from all the new ideas that had extended its abilities way beyond its original design.

Now, I am a friend of the theory of evolution and an enemy of the religious pseudo-science that is 'intelligent design' in the real world - but in our IT world, BOB's evolution from its original design was undermining its performance and an intelligent design was definitely the best way forward.

So between then and now, Project Martini's elegant and high performance blueprint has been developed using IT expertise from the middle floor of our Welwyn Garden City HQ to our IT centre in Bangalore.

The Martini platform is living today on our integration test servers and is about to migrate to the final operational test platform, whereupon a control group of us will be able to place orders and try out all the new functionality.

The "Tesco Community" of customers has been invited to apply to have their accounts switched from Bob to Martini to try out the new service, and if everything goes to plan we'll be moving more and more live customers to the new service throughout August.

Project Martini promises a lot - "Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere!" and I'll reveal more of just what that means and what it can do soon.

I must put on record the massive effort that has been given by everyone across the business to bring Martini to life. If you visit Tesco.com HQ you can sense in the air the buzz that we are "nearly there".

Follow TechForTesco on Twitter

This blog now has an associated Twitter account which you are welcome to follow. The account will give more frequent (and short!) updates as I pursue innovation and technology for Tesco.com

http://twitter.com/techfortesco

Today’s Freeview boxes won’t pick up HD

“No, sorry, today’s Freeview boxes won’t pick up HD”. I gave this rather unhelpful comment to a Tesco colleague who is responsible for buying various electronic gadgets such as Freeview set-top boxes.

Our conversation had come about because he wanted to understand more about the forthcoming HD channels that will soon be available through a TV aerial - no doubt called ‘Freeview HD’ when it starts.

The trouble is, I understand that not one Freeview box from any brand sold today, nor any HD TV screen with a built-in Freeview tuner, will be capable of picking up the HD channels.

The buyer was (quite rightly) annoyed because ‘Freeview HD’ will definitely be on air by this next next year, and their marketing will no doubt wish to announce the ability to watch the 2010 Football World Cup in HD through the aerial - an attractive proposition. However customers are buying HD TVs with Freeview built-in right now from Tesco (and all other TV dealers) which won’t be able to pick up any HD signals unaided despite being less than a year old when the World Cup starts.

So why won’t Freeview receivers pick up the new HD signals when they start broadcasting? The answer goes back to 2007 when the BBC ran an HD experiment from London’s Crystal Palace transmitter. They quickly concluded that existing digital transmission standard (a European-agreed format called “Digital Video Broadcasting - Terrestrial” or “DVB-T”) only had the bandwidth to transmit one HD TV channel. Those same DVB-T signals today can carry between 6 and 10 standard definition TV channels each.

So the BBC experiment changed the format to a new transmission standard that allows greater throughput capacity called DVB-T2, and changed the video compression standard from MPEG-2 (also used to compress movies onto the space on a DVD video disc) to a new format called H.264. H.264 is an excellent new compression standard that offers much more profound video compression before picture quality is compromised, and the BBC’s experiment found that combining DVB-T2 and H.264 meant it could carry 4 HD channels with excellent picture and sound quality.

The trouble is, I understand that no consumer Freeview receivers today in Tesco or other mainstream electronics retailers understands DVB-T2 transmissions, and even if they could, would not know how to de-compress the H.264 video in order to display it on the screen.

‘Freeview HD’ boxes will be on the market in the months to come, but we still have to cope with customers whose fairly new HD TVs will be incapable of picking up HD signals unaided when HD broadcasts start. I should point out that all Freeview boxes and Freeview-equipped TVs will still pick up all the standard definition channels now and in the future without problem - it’s only the new HD channels they won’t see.

If you are in the market for a new HD TV but don’t want to pay a subscription yet do want HD channels, you can get this today. You can do as I have, and buy a ‘Freesat’ receiver which picks up the BBC HD and ITV HD channels today as well as most of the Freeview channels (and a few extra ones). TV brand Panasonic has built a Freesat tuner right into its latest TV sets. You will need a satellite dish although an old Sky dish works just fine. Of course if you are happy with paying a subscription for your TV, Sky has an excellent HD offer in Tesco now, and cable customers can get their HD from providers such as Virgin Media.

We’re just left with the ‘irony’ of selling HD TV sets today which are incapable of picking up HD without help. It may not be our fault, but treating customers this way goes against the grain, no matter the great technological reasons why it has had to happen.

This is a salient example of how the rate of technological change is accelerating; after all, TVs built from 1967 can still pick up the analogue signals today unaided until those broadcasts end by 2012. We’ve only had TVs with built-in Freeview for the last 4 years!

3G Mobile Broadband could cure rural internet woes

I am typing and publishing this entry in the heart of the Cornish countryside about 8 miles inland from Newquay.

The country cottage that myself and husband Brin rented is miles from anywhere - and that's just how we like it. We're here to enjoy a rural break from our urban home in north London and, being mountain bike fans, hurl ourselves around the hills, lakes and woodlands. The fuzzy analogue TV pictures (and non-existent digital terrestrial TV at least until Cornwall experiences the 'digital switchover' in August 2009) allows us just to view enough picture to see that the excellent weather here will continue. 

Still, the occasional blast of technology is good, so I connect an O2 USB data modem 'dongle' to my trusty Macbook Pro and here I am sat in the garden of this remote cottage, surrounded by lambs, cows, and an ancient hill fort -  yet connected to the internet world.

Except....

I'd forgotten what 'narrow-band' internet connection actually was. The data dongle is currently reporting that the best connection I have is 42Kbps. In London O2 deals me up to 7 Mbps from the same dongle and at home my router happily reports over 11000Kbps (11Mbps). Quite a difference.

My iPhone experiences similar speeds - mostly standard narrowband (GPRS) in Cornwall outside the towns. In the Cornish towns of Newquay and Wadebridge I do get the '3G' symbol appearing.

I hear of rural communities deploring the fact that they don't get access to broadband, and that the government thinking of solving this by digging up the roads to install fibre cable, seeing as how ADSL doesn't work because the phone connections are too far from the exchange.

Surely the best way would be for the government and cellular phone companies working together to upgrade rural cellular transmitter towers to support 3G (HSDPA - High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) and the problem would be solved simply and wirelessly. No roads dug up, far less physical infrastructure to go wrong, and people in transit or on holiday with no access to any wired connection could enjoy broadband speeds as well.

I know that in London (and in Tesco.com HQ in Welwyn Garden City) I get blazing 3G speeds from my same O2 dongle - indeed comparing favourably with my home broadband connection. 

If O2 were given the government incentive to upgrade the cellular transmitter tower I'm connected to right now to 3G, that tower could serve many villages with great broadband internet. Indeed I've looked up on the OFCOM Cellular Tower SiteFinder to discover that the O2 tower I am using is three miles away, north of St.Columb Major, and I'm getting a 4-out-of-5 bar signal sat here. That tower could probably serve a workable 3G/HSDPA 7Mbps signal out to a good 6-to-8 mile radius - that's a lot of rural communities in its zone. If customers helped the signal with a rooftop cellular antenna (my 3G dongle has an antenna socket) it could serve wirelessly out much further.

I talk about O2 for two reasons - firstly I have an O2 3G 'dongle' as I say, and secondly because if O2 did something about this, then magically Tesco Mobile would be able to offer their customers something too... 

It just so happens that I have an unrelated meeting with O2 next week. I think I'll add a subject to the agenda!