Well I’m having a blast playing with the Ebay APIs – nothing too fancy, I’m just trying to put together an affiliate site for music and pro audio gear (my “other” love).  In addition to learning all about the various Ebay APIs, properties, protocols, etc,  and getting to play with PHP (which I always love), the whole exercise has really beefed up my CSS chops! I was getting rusty, you know. Probably the most exciting part is all the research I’m doing on SEO (search engine optimization) and online marketing strategy. The whole business side is extremely interesting.

Although I still have work to do, you can check my progress at http://www.proaudiobargains.com/. Plan on me mentioning this URL a bit in the coming weeks

Terry and I are almost done with the majority of our scorecard application prototype. It’s actually a bit more than a prototype as it has a fully functional database and iPhone application almost complete (although not optimized). We’re also sketching up a Flash-based website and (AIR-based) desktop application along with a “widget” version that could be used on social networks or any widget/gadget-friendly place.

This is what I love about web technology: We have a single data store and server-side application that can be accessed by any interface application in any form (as long as you know the APIs). Once you build a solid, scalable solution to store and access your data, you can go nuts with all the various portable interface options: website, desktop app, widgets, mobile, ad banner, in-store kiosk or digital display, etc. And don’t forget the mash-ups. Assuming everyone it building their tools with this in mind, any interface can tap into any data service and relate it to it’s data. In the end, it’s all about the content (the data); so create a simple and reliable solution for providing that data, and then create compelling, accessible (and simple) interfaces for the user to get to that data. Wow, it sounds so easy.

The iPhone app is what we spent the most time on. As most all of the data is dynamic, it was important to carefully plan out how the app would be built. Lot’s of AJAX fun, we used JSON to exchange data with the back-end (done in PHP/MySQL). I can’t talk too much more about it until it’s done…but I will post more soon!