SingleFeed

Archive for the 'Enhancement' Category

Processing Feeds in the Cloud

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

This summer, SingleFeed’s engineering department migrated our systems from a dedicated hosting provider. Our web application and back-end feed processing is now done on virtual servers running on Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing platform, where we’ve joined companies such as the Washington Post, Harvard Medical School, Virgin Atlantic, and Autodesk in taking advantage of the expandability and flexibility of cloud computing.

What does this mean for our merchants? Most importantly, the ability to instantly add new resources to our system enables us to grow as needed to continue offering prompt feed processing and engine delivery. In fact, since moving to EC2 we’ve already transparently upgraded several of our servers, and in each case it took only a few minutes. Back when we were running on dedicated hardware, that process would have begun by requesting a new server, followed by days to get it installed and configured before we were even able to begin using it.

We’re also able to set up server instances for testing on demand, allowing us to explore new ways of providing better service for our customers. It’s marvelous to be able to create an exact clone of our system whenever we want to try out a new approach, and then just let the instances vanish when we’re done.

As we continue to grow, we’ll take further advantage of this flexibility to provide greater power for parsing, analyzing, and delivering our customers’ data feeds.

More, Larger, Quicker

Friday, August 31st, 2007

SingleFeed is very excited to announce that we have successfully completed the upgrade of our core architecture.  The immediate benefits to you, the merchants of SingleFeed, are the:

  1. noticeable speedup in the website (singlefeed.com),
  2. accelerated processing of your feeds, and
  3. ability to handle much LARGER, CSV formatted, product feeds.

Our great success has been one of our challenges.  We are also proud to announce we can handle much, much (much) more simultaneous processing of product feeds — without impacting your experience at SingleFeed.com!

In addition, our new architecture also perfectly enables us to accelerate the introduction of new features and functionality to the SingleFeed service.  Stay tuned for more very cool details along that front.

Until then, enjoy all of the improvements at SingleFeed.

Jeremy Horn
SingleFeed

Unlimited Uploads @ SingleFeed

Wednesday, June 20th, 2007

SingleFeed places no limits on the size of the product feeds that can be submitted. As a SingleFeed merchant, you can upload a file of unlimited size to us. (please be patient, the big files take a while to upload and process)

That being said, there are some temporary constraints that we have in place. The Excel file format is currently limited to only 5MB in size. For the moment, this is because of the technology constraints imposed on us by the libraries currently used in our development environment.

 

For all non-Excel file formats, there are no size restrictions.

 

To work around the Excel file size limitation, we recommend you save the file format in a CSV (comma delimited) or TSV (tab delimited) file formats — both formats can be generated by selecting ‘Save As’ within Excel (if you are seeking to convert an Excel file, of course). I will be blogging about how to easily create and edit your CSV file in an upcoming post.

Enjoy.

Jeremy Horn

SingleFeed

No Login Required @ SingleFeed (Automatic Downloads)

Thursday, May 17th, 2007

An especially useful feature regarding the ability to submit your feed via HTTP or FTP is the ability to enable recurring Auto-Download of your feed information.

Automatic Downloads at SingleFeed

When Automatic Download is enabled we check your feed at various times throughout the day. If we determine that there have been changes to your feed since you last submitted to us, we then automatically detect, download, process, and submit your latest product information.

Important: After you have enabled auto-download, you MUST complete one successful feed submission via the Product page interface for the Automatic Download feature to be fully enabled for your account.

Very Nice
Every time we process new information from your feed you will receive an email notice with results of our Automatic Download.

Coming Soon…
Today, the Auto-download feature results in Replacing your existing product information on SingleFeed with the new Product information stored within the feed you specified. In the near future, you will be able to enable not just download-and-replace, but to synchronize your feed file with the products you have already configured at SingleFeed, with only the necessary changes / updates being submitted to your Active Engines.

Enjoy!
Jeremy Horn

FTP and HTTP your Latest Product Feed to SingleFeed Today

Tuesday, May 15th, 2007

Newly released feature at SingleFeed allows all of our members to submit their latest product feeds without any need to login to SingleFeed!

 

 

  

 

On the Products page, you can select various methodologies of submitting your feed to SingleFeed…

  • Via My Computer (your normal form-based upload)
  • Via HTTP (just specify a full path to your feed file )
  • Via FTP (just specify your login info and path to your feed file)

Now, you can also ask the page to remember your last input information to make each subsequent upload even easier.

 

Enjoy! 

Jeremy Horn

SingleFeed has submitted Your Data Feed…

Tuesday, May 15th, 2007

A new, quick, and handy feature has been added to your Profile page at SingleFeed. In the Products overview section of the page, we will always display when all of your data were last submitted to all of your Active Engines

Your Feed was Last Submitted on...

Now, you can easily know when each of the Shopping Engines have received your latest updates and, also, rest assured that EVERY DAY, SingleFeed has submitted your latest, freshest product feed information.

 

Jeremy Horn

Upgrade Complete

Thursday, May 3rd, 2007

Performance and architecture improvements released, including…

  • Correction Wizard speed-ups, and
  • Improved interaction with all elements and functions of your Products Page (summary, edit, upload, list_).

Thank you.

Jeremy Horn
SingleFeed

SingleFeed Upgrade in Progress

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007

SingleFeed.com is currently performing another system-wide upgrade. You can expect slow responsiveness from the site for the next 24-48 hours while this upgrade is being occurring.

After this service improvement has been completed, you will directly benefit from significantly improved performance (especially speed) of…

  • the Correction Wizard, and
  • Interaction with all elements and functions of your Products Page (summary, edit, upload, list).

We have also, as part of this release, upgraded our architecture so that no matter how complex an operation another user may be performing at SingleFeed, each member’s activities will have little to no performance impact on any other active member.

Thank you for your patience.
Jeremy Horn

Google Base Custom Attributes - Examples And How To Create

Thursday, March 22nd, 2007

As you probably know, SingleFeed fully supports Google Base Custom Attributes. Now it’s time to get merchants to really start using them.

Google Base has 7 types of custom attributes. Here are examples taken from Base Upload Instructions:

String Type: Any Text String

Example: c:favorite_movie:string

Example Value: Total Recall

Integer Type: Whole Number Value

Example: c:revenue:integer

Example Value: 32000000

Decimal Type: Number with a decimal point.

Example: c:engine_displacement:decimal

Example Value: 3.5

dateTime Type: Date and time, in ISO 8601 format: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss. (Times are based on the 24-hour clock.) You can also create a range of dates by including a start and end date, each in this format, and separating them with a forward slash.

Example: c:birth_time:dateTime

Example Value: 1979-10-12T03:44:26

Example: c:dates_employed:dateTime

Example Value: 2004-03-20T09:00:00/2006-03-10T17:00:00

Location Type: Location value. Addresses should be formatted as: street, city, state, postal code, country. Each location element should be separated by a comma.

Example: c:interview_location:location

Example Value: 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA, 94043, USA

URL Type: HTTP URL.

Example: c:favorite_data_feed_management_company:url

Example Value: http://www.singlefeed.com

Boolean Type: Value may be either yes/no or true/false.

Example: c:promo_offer:Boolean

Example Value: true

Real world examples include:

c:drum_lift_type:string

Example Values: hoist, hydraulic, mechanical

Uses: This could be used for a forklift retailer

c:cutting_depth:decimal

Example Values: 2.5, 2.75, 3

Uses: This could be used for a power saw retailer

c:caliber:decimal

Example Values: .177, .22

Uses: This could be used for an air rifle retailer

c:serving_size:integer

Example Values: 4, 6, 10

Uses: This could be used for a cappuccino machine retailer

c:adjustable_shoulder_straps:Boolean

Example Values: True, False

Uses: This could be used for a lingerie retailer

c:customer_feedback:url

Example Values: http://www.aesecurity.com/cufe.html

Uses: Does your site have a feedback page? How about a shipping information page

c:customers_also_bought:url

Example Values: [insert url]

Uses: Upselling similar products, complimentary products, and more.

So how do you create your own custom attributes?

As you can see from the examples, there are three parts to the custom attribute:

The c: tells Google Base that the attribute is a custom attribute (that’s an educated guess).

The part in between the colons (:) is the attribute name.

The final part is the kind of attribute (string, integer, decimal, dateTime, location, URL, boolean).

Please note that attributes with two words are separated by an underscore ( _ ).

Once you enter these Google Base Custom attributes as headings in your feed, just fill in the corresponding field value in your feed for your product listings. You can leave a field blank if a product should not have a custom attribute associated with it.

As you can see from the examples above, these attributes are not hard to use and with a lot of knowledge about a product and just a bit of creativity, you can come up with a number of custom attributes.

Here are other examples to get you started:

c:hypo_allergenic:boolean (data in the feed can be true or false)

c:down:Boolean (data in the feed can be true or false)

c:thread_count:integer (data in the feed can be 200, 400, 600, etc.)

c:made_in:string (data in the feed can be USA, China, Egypt)

c:bed_size:string (data in the feed can be twin, double, queen, king)

I’m not a ‘beds or sheets’ expert, but I was able to come up with 5 custom attributes fairly easily. Why not start out by adding 2-3 custom attributes and take it from there. Eventually, Google Base will pick up on these attributes and make them into recommended (although not required) fields as they’ve done so for 22 categories. For example, if you sell computers, they recommend adding the following attributes:

battery_life

capacity

color

height

length

model_number

mpn

operating_system

optical_drive

processor_speed

recommended_usage

screen_size

tech_spec_link

upc

weight

width

These optional attributes aren’t custom attributes, so you don’t have to put a c:[insert_header]:[insert attribute type]. However, I’d still recommend taking the time to brainstorm additional attributes. My IBM (it wasn’t Lenovo when it was purchased) T43 could have the following custom attributes:

c:IBM_Active_Protection:Boolean

c:Fingerprint_Reader:Boolean

c:Touchpad:Boolean

c:Trackpoint:Boolean

Please note that you don’t have to turn SingleFeed’s current attributes into custom attributes. If you’re already submitting MPN, for example, SingleFeed is processing it as a custom attribute (since Google Base doesn’t accept MPN as a regular attribute).

Now it’s time to get started. If you come up with really good custom attributes or want to share attributes with others, submit them as comments here. If you have any Google Base Custom Attributes active, you’ll see the link on the Active Products page indicate active.

We’ll soon have a page up and running which will discuss Google Base in depth so stay tuned.

SingleFeed does Google Base Expiration Good!

Friday, March 2nd, 2007

SingleFeed, ahead of the curve (again), has launched full support of all the new Google Base required fields!

You can read more about the new Google Base field requirements here, http://groups.google.com/group/base-help-roadblocks/browse_thread/thread/ac53a9f6edec0f8b/d42e1cd9f9a66a97#d42e1cd9f9a66a97, and here, http://base.google.com/base/products.html.

The most onerous of the new requirements that Google Base has instituted is the required Expiration Date field. If a row in the product feed does not contain the expiration date, the row is INVALID. If a row in the product feed contains an expiration date greater than 31 days, again, INVALID.

SingleFeed to the rescue…

All feeds set up on SingleFeed for transmission to Google Base automatically are guaranteed to have the expiration date column set to 30 days from the time of upload. AND — every day, if you enable the auto-renew option, we will make sure that your expiration date for every one of your products is always updated to 30 days from the moment of the upload! (remember, we publish your feed — upload it — every day)

If you previously uploaded your SingleFeed to us without the Google Base required expiration date, or forget to include the expiration date within your file in the future, DON’T WORRY, we automatically correct your feed through the Correction Wizard and automatically keep your expiration date fresh — 30 days in the future.

More details about how it works…
There are 2 new SingleFeed columns within the SingleFeed file format…

  • GOOGLE EXPIRATION DATE
  • GOOGLE EXPIRATION DATE AUTO RENEW

The format of GOOGLE EXPIRATION DATE is YYYY-MM-DD. (e.g. 2007-03-12)

The format of GOOGLE EXPIRATION DATE AUTO RENEW is Y or N (e.g. Y) If you specify an expiration date, but leave out the auto-renew, we assume that you do not want us to update your expiration date for that product.

If you want us to automatically, daily, every time we submit your products to Google Base, to make sure that your expiration date is 30 days from today (keeping your content, fresh, alive, and valid) just set the Google Base Expiration Date Auto-Renew to ‘y’ (which, btw, stands for “yes, please auto-renew”).

Enjoy! (I know you will.)

Jeremy Horn
SingleFeed