Influx

It might have been going on for months, but I have just heard about Best Buy releasing its entire product catalog as API- meaning “almost” anyone can take the electronics giant’s entire database of products and use it any way they want.

It might not sound like the most exciting thing ever, but it’s great example of a brand opening up and providing utility.

Here are some examples directly from the Best Buy site of how this stuff is being used.

Twitter bot

This is a simple example demo of the
product api, a Twitter bot that  will return terse amount of product
data to requesting user as direct message. (ie: “d <user> [msg]“)
Using the bot:
1. Sign up for Twitter (skip this step if you already have a Twitter account)
2. Follow bbyremix
3. The bbyremix bot will follow you
4. Issue the find command to bbyremix using the syntax “@bbyremix find 1234567″ where 1234567 is the SKU id you’re looking for.

Updates:
[11/23/08]: You can now search for music, movies, games and hardgoods. Examples:

• @bbyremix find music U2
• @bbyremix find movie Batman Begins
• @bbyremix find game Farcry 2
• @bbyremix find hard ipod

SKU lookup gadget
1. go to www.igoogle.com
2. Log in
3. Click on “Add Stuff>>”, on the upper right side of the page
4. Click on “Add Feed or Gadget” on left side bar at bottom
5. Copy this url into the field http://api.remix.bestbuy.com/widgets/lookup_sku.xml
6. Click OK
7. Click OK on popup
8. Click back to igoogle (top left of page)
9. Try it out (it will probably be the iframe on the top left)…plug in a sku like 8842568

Countdown gadget
This widget is a widget that allows users to say that they are waiting
for a product to be released. Example: I am dieing to have a Wii so I
am going to have a gadget that gives me a count down to when the Wii is
going to be available in stores.

Posted by Ed Cotton