Zhephree

Just wanted to give an update on the progress with Wooden Rows.

As you may remember, because of Amazon’s Terms of Service, I could not use their data in a mobile application. As a result, I needed to find new data sources. I’ve managed to find a way to get info for everything.

I’ll be using TheGamesDB for video game data. It’s free to use, has very little restrictions, and covers things from the Amiga to the Wii U. For books, we’ll be using OpenLibrary.org, a great project that also has very little restrictions on its use. For movies, we’ll be using Best Buy’s open platform, and for music we’re using Discogs, with a fallback to BestBuy when no results are returned.

So far, these services have been working out well. 

The next version will require some migration from you though. Upon launching the app, you’ll have to use the Migration Assistant I’m building to move your data from Amazon-sourced data to data from one of the new sources. This will be painless and you can start and stop the process at your leisure, so you don’t have to sit through it for thousands of items if you’ve done that. You’ll be able to do a few at a time.

My goal is to eventually have a Wooden Rows database of products that we search instead, and the first step towards that is coming. In the next version, you’ll be able to manually add an item to your library, including uploading an image for it. Eventually, once the database grows, the app will search out database first.

These changes will launch in webOS first to make sure existing users move to the new data sources. Android and iOS development are coming along nicely, but stalled because of the Amazon issue.

Just wanted to fill you in. I’ll be scarce until about Tuesday on account of the peak of Mardi Gras is happening, pretty much now.