XML from Amazon: Easy! Free!
Imagine this scenario: You're out shopping, looking for, say, a wok or a DVD and you finally enter a store where you see the object of desire. Would you, at this point, whip out your mobile phone, log on to Amazon, locate the item, compare the shop price with the online price and then click through to order the item over the web because it's better value?
Way too nerdy, some will say. Might do, if it could be done, say others. But the thing is, it can be done. For over a year now, Amazon has been making data feeds available in XML (Extensible Markup Language) to developers and some 27,000 of them are now using the service to create cool tools.
Read all about the online retailer's web services strategy in the current Business Week. The article is called "How Amazon Opens Up and Cleans Up" and it's excellently written. Indeed, of late, Business Week coverage of the tech sector has been notable for the quality of the writing and the freshness of the story angles. But back to Amazon. What's in it for the retailer? More business, of course:
"And by opening up its servers, Amazon has created a fast-growing ecosystem. This includes software companies such as SellerEngine, in Portland, Ore., which builds a desktop application that uses Amazon's XML feed to allow companies selling on Amazon to compare their prices to those of other Amazon suppliers — and to price their products accordingly. Other software companies, such as The AssociatesShop, have built free programs that allow Webmasters to easily pour Amazon content and product information into their sites."
Developers are just getting into this act and some of the hacks they've written are really clever. Would you like a ticker on your site that shows how book-sales rankings are changing at Amazon in real time? Paul Bausch, author of the soon-to-be-released Amazon Hacks, will show you how to write the program. Would it be fun to link Amazon's music catalogue to the top songs being played by the major US radio stations? It's doable now. As is a lot more:
"Entrepreneurial Amazon hackers make money by providing software for merchants who sell on Amazon and taking a cut of each sale. Still others have customized hardware. Take scanner company iPilot, which makes a pocket-size barcode scanner that can upload universal product codes (UPCs) onto a computer. With a simple software script, anyone can upload those UPCs into Amazon and get product information on those specific items. Online store builders can compile whole inventories by walking the aisles of, say, Crate & Barrel, checking if the items are available on Amazon, and using the codes to construct their shop offering."
Want to get in on the act? Visit the Amazon web services page where participation is heralded by those magic words "Easy and Free". Meanwhile, Amazon's share price is looking very handsome, indeed, having climbed from a low of $12.26 on 24 July last year to $37.24 on 18 June this year. Overall, the company grossed $3.93 billion in 2002. That once-popular debate about whether Amazon was another Wal-Mart or a hybrid UPS bookshop seems so 20th century now. At core, Amazon is a technology business, always was, always will be, and web services will power its expansion.
Diarist of the day: Jimmy Boyle, 26 June 1976"[Barlinnie Prison] I've had a bellyful of pussyfooting with you stinking shits, and your cowardly ways. I want to destroy your system. I want to live. I want to walk for a spell without having some great fucking wall stopping me taking another step. I just want to be free. I want to see the stars without seeing bars. I want to be caught in a busy shopping crowd. I want to see children playing nonsense games. I want to see a dog pissing against a lamp post. I want to take my girlfriend for a walk. I want to sleep a whole night with her. I want to see all of your suffer less. I want away from institutions."
