Hello.

Check out my colleague Phil Calver's new site, www.whatsatthetop.com, a Top 10 Retail Mashup built with ASP.Net 2.0 and Web parts. It pulls data from sites like Amazon, CNet, and Booksense. Phil's looking for feedback, so let him know what you think! Share any suggestions or ideas for charts you'd like to see at webmaster@whatsatthetop.com.

UK Amazon Marketplace sellers can now easily link to a searchable, indexed list of their products. Just append your Seller ID (e.g., A30C94ZTNLBKQM) to http://www.kinlan.co.uk/amazon/uk/SellerID. Currently, this only supports up to 20 products and is UK-specific, but US support is coming soon.

My tag directory has a cool new feature: Amazon product integration! It pulls book data from Amazon AWS related to each tag. Right now, it adds links to relevant products, but I'm thinking of adding images soon. This latest addition brings the total number of Web 2.0 APIs used in my mashup to four, including Delicious, Yahoo Search API, and Google Blog Search RSS. Check out the examples for tags like RDF, RSS, and Mashup to see it in action.

I'm working on some exciting new features for this site! First up, I'm improving the Tag Directory (more on that soon, including the source code!). Second, instead of linking directly to Amazon, I'll create landing pages with more specific info about the books I recommend. Third, I'm planning a service to advertise Amazon Marketplace books, hoping to help both you and me sell more books. Finally, I'll be writing about my final year telecoms project. Let me know what you think!

I've given my tag directory a fresh look and made it faster with some caching! Check it out and tell me what you think. I'm considering integrating del.icio.us and Amazon product links, and I'd also like to auto-generate OPML feeds for each tag. Your feedback is much appreciated!

I've started a new blog dedicated to book reviews using WordPress! Check it out at http://books.kinlan.co.uk. I'm quite impressed with WordPress's flexibility and plugin options, a definite upgrade from Blogger. I'm still working on some features, like automatically directing users to the correct Amazon site based on their location, but feedback is welcome!

I've added Amazon affiliate links to relevant books on my blog posts, hoping to provide useful recommendations and earn a small commission. So far, I've had one referral. I'd love to hear your feedback: Do you find these book recommendations helpful? Would you consider purchasing a recommended book? What factors influence your book-buying decisions? Is it clear which links go to the UK Amazon site versus the US site? Recent stats suggest a low conversion rate for affiliate links (around 0.24%), so I'm evaluating whether the effort is worthwhile given the advertising benefit to Amazon.

I was excited about the eBay API becoming free, hoping to build programs around it. However, I'm struggling to find a compelling project idea. Integrating it into my blog isn't feasible due to eBay's dynamic nature, and static integration wouldn't benefit my SEO. A potential idea is an AJAX interface for the Amazon books I feature, but my lack of commission potential is demotivating. My programs usually serve my needs first, like my AJAX Tagger, which helps me provide more info to readers. If I come up with any good eBay API ideas, I'll share them here.

I explored XAML databinding with Amazon's REST API, inspired by a Channel 9 RSS reader example. The XAML code fetches data from Amazon and displays it. A key challenge was handling Amazon's default namespace, requiring a NamespaceManager for correct XPath queries. The provided example demonstrates the basic functionality, and it can be expanded upon.

I'm consistently impressed by Yahoo's web service team and their responsiveness to users. In contrast, Amazon's web service support is practically non-existent. My simple question about UK support for the TextStream parameter in AWS has gone unanswered for ages, and I know I'm not alone. Amazon, please step up your game!

James Manning left a comment on my blog post about compression, pointing to a Microsoft article about built-in decompression support in .NET 2.0 for SOAP replies. While I appreciate the comment, Yahoo APIs don't use SOAP, so it won't be helpful in that context. However, this information could be useful for working with Amazon APIs, which do have a SOAP interface.

I believe retailers need to embrace open APIs to their product catalogs and ordering systems to reach a wider audience. While I agree with Robert Scoble's view on the transformative potential of developer APIs in retail, I'm concerned about the slow pace of change. Costly per-call charges for APIs like eBay's hinder experimentation and development, especially for independent developers like myself. It's also difficult to find retailers who openly offer APIs. Amazon's free access model is a good example of how APIs can drive revenue. Are there any UK retailers offering cool, accessible web services?

This blog post presents the results of my initial experiment with Amazon Web Service. I've compiled a list of various products, including books and a DVD, with links to their respective pages on Amazon.co.uk. This appears to be an early exploration of the possibilities of integrating Amazon's product data.

I'm exploring different web services, particularly for UK retailers like Tesco, Asda, or Virgin. I've tried Amazon's, which is decent, and Yahoo's, which I like. Ebay's looks interesting, but I'd rather not pay. I'm also looking at Alexa's and Google's. It's tough finding good resources on this, especially for UK retailers. I'd love to see APIs from companies like Tescos, Asda, Dixons, and others. If you know of any good web services, especially in the UK retail space, please share!

I've been exploring Amazon's SOAP API and Yahoo's REST API and I'm quite impressed with both. I'm thinking about ways to make these two APIs interact and will share my ideas in a future post. I've also been working on using REST in .Net 1.1, which is a little tricky but possible, thanks to Martin G. Brown's work. The process involves using an XSD of the response, running it through XSD.exe to generate a Dataset object, and then processing the results. It's a similar concept to WSDL, but without the automatic stub generation. I'll post some Yahoo API code examples soon. I plan to look into Google's API as well, even though it's in beta with usage restrictions.