Wooden Rows saw a really nice launch! In about 8 hours from the time it was launched, over 53,000 items were added to users’ libraries, averaging about 547 items per user. This is a great response!
However, I may have jumped the gun and launched a day early.
Apparently, Amazon’s Terms of Service for their API state that their API cannot be used with applications intended to be used on mobile or handheld devices. That means Wooden Rows.
This means that I must abandon Amazon as my data provider as soon as possible. This sucks a lot as Amazon provided the best user experience. So, what are the alternatives?
Surprisingly, eBay has a nice and less restrictive API for getting product information. Unfortunately, it has less data about each item. As Amazon gives you track listings and aspect ratios for your items, eBay does not (well, not consistently). However, it’s the best, most legal method for obtaining data.
I did some thinking and honestly, the main thing you want in your library are the titles, the format, the image, year, and the creator (artist, author, etc). This is the most important info. And eBay gives me this much.
What I’m in the process of doing is moving the app over to using eBay instead of Amazon for data. However, what I’m doing is, the app will query my server first. My server will then search the libraries of every existing Wooden Rows user and see if they have the item. If so, we’ll reference that data and save an API call to eBay. If there are no results for that item in the Wooden Rows database, we’ll then query eBay and return results from there.
The cool thing is, all of that is handled on the Wooden Rows server. This means that, in the future, I can change the data provider, add more data providers, etc. and you guys will never know the difference. It won’t take me issuing an app update. And, as Wooden Rows is poised to go cross-platform, this is a big deal.
There is one downside for you early adopters — once I make the change to support eBay, you’ll have to run a little migration tool built into the next version of the app to convert your Amazon data to eBay data.
In addition, because eBay may not have the item you want, I will be adding in the ability to manually add items, including uploading a photo for it, and the ability to edit items in your library. This well help alleviate any weird info eBay gives you, or if the photo sucks, or the meta data is incomplete.
I’m doing everything I can to make this as painless as possible.
So, keep a watch here and on my Twitter to find out more info. I need to get this done ASAP, so, hopefully Thursday or Friday I’ll have this completed.
I thank you for buying Wooden Rows and thank you for understanding. The alternative is to pull the app and give up, but screw that!
