The Data Feeds are Coming! (Thank you.)

I apologize for not blogging sooner- this has been a crazy week for Octopart (blog coming soon). Let me fill you in on some big developments since our last post.

I'm sure you've noticed that the inventory numbers which we display are usually outdated. This is because we have been aggregating data from different distributors by scraping their websites. This process takes a very long time so it is impossible to have accurate inventory numbers without direct data feeds. Despair not. Shortly after launching, we were contacted by Newark, Mouser and Avnet about getting direct feeds. It takes a while for these things to move down through the chain of command, but I just received a phone call from Newark and it looks like their feed will be coming very soon. Apparently, Newark sped up the process because they have been receiving phone calls from our fans complaining about this problem! That got me thinking... we should engage in some "Electronic Activism" and ask you to contact your favorite distributors about giving us data feeds. I'm going to hold off on making their numbers public for now but please tell your distributors about Octopart the next time you place an order and let us know who you want listed next.

Other than the big news about data feeds, we are working furiously on our next features. The two biggest ones are a project manager which you can use to keep track of parts as you search, and a dictionary which will make spelling suggestions and also help you navigate through the street names of parts (like a "7404" chip which is actually listed as a "hex inverter"). We'll release these features soon!

By the way, we will be talking at Startup School this Saturday so please come by to say hello.