Ever since Fusion started, we've put a lot of energy into searchable buyer's guides - in-depth databases of vendor specs for a particular class of product.
The problem in this fast-changing field, is that the guides were often out of date the moment we published them - the specs change, products are discontinued, new vendors pop up. Collecting the data was fairly laborious, and typically done by hand, so we never really updated the things. Starting this week, though, that changes:
Our new anti-spam buyer's guide is our first "living" (i.e., constantly updated) guide. Working with mBlast, we've set up a database-driven system that lets vendors update listings (and add new ones) through a Web form at mBlast. mBlast then publishes out its product databases once a night in XML, which we grab via a cron job and feed into our own Java- and Oracle-based database and user-interface system.
Let me know what you think (I'm especially interested in ways to improve the UI or add functionality to it). If you're a vendor who wants to submit data, contact Keith Shaw at kshaw@nww.com for the particulars.
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