Forum Moderators: buckworks
However the implementation of that concept is very poor. The architecture of that API was flawed from the get-go (I know, I was an early beta tester)... it's embarassing that they would release a product like that to the public. The data is in there, it's fantastic, but the interface to get it is clumsily designed, almost like it's a deliberate obstacle.
They fixed a bunch of problems in v2, and now it's useable. To use it effectively you need to do all sorts of contortions to interpret their wacky XML schema, and store a bunch of hard-coded value tables to fill in obvious data they *don't* provide. For instance to display "Wal-mart sells this ipod", you need to do two API calls; one to get iPod details and the Merchant ID of vendors that sell it, and another separate API call to ask who Merchant "12345678" is.
v3 of their API was released... I forget when. It has been billed as "new" for a really long time. It's more broken than v2 ever was. Some methods (like query refinement) just don't work at all.
Now I notice that the developer group is closed.
Anyone know what happened to that product?
And what about the people who build + maintain it? Did they all go home?
