You've probably noticed some dramatic changes on our website today. The availability numbers for Mouser and Digikey are dimmed out, many images are gone, and Allied's purchasing information has been taken off the site entirely.

Here is the situation: since launching we have been in touch with several distributors. Newark, Mouser and Avnet have told us they want to give us data feeds and Newark has already started doing so.

Today we got a phone call from Allied Electronics and they seem to be having a different reaction. On Allied's request, we immediately took down their inventory information and images from the site.

While it is unfortunate that we have to temporarily take down many of the images, it is not entirely a bad thing in the long run. We have been trying to contact the distributors for a while. At least we have their attention now and can start to show them what we can do with their data. Ultimately we are going to help them sell their parts, and hopefully we can tell them that in person. We are three guys programming out of my bedrooom in Berkeley so it was impossible for us to take pictures of all the parts. Eventually we will produce the images ourselves, but we don't have them yet.

The most important thing is to convince Allied, Digikey, and all the other electronics distributors that Octopart is really useful. If they hear from you that you want them to be on our site, then they will do it. Our goal is to organize all the electronic parts sold so that you can find them easily. Call your favorite distributors and tell them about Octopart. The time is ripe for "Electronic Activism"!

Allied Electronics - (866) 443-5722

Digikey - (800) 344-4539

email me your favorite distributor!

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I'm sure you've noticed that the inventory numbers which we display are usually outdated.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.

Yesterday Octopart's launch was featured on TechCrunch and the emails started pouring in. We made a note of each one on the whiteboard under the heading, "Customer Service". But whenever I looked up at the board I thought about telephone menus, getting transferred between billing departments, and elevator music.

Writing responses sure didn't feel like typical customer service. Andres must have felt the same way because he blurted out, "Hey, we're not doing customer service, we're doing fan support!". So we've changed the name of our customer service department to "Fan Support". The guys from the stenciling company are coming this afternoon to change the inscription on the door.

The state of search for technical products has not changed since the inception of the internet and it is about time somebody did something about it. While there are great websites for choosing a digital camera or a USB toaster, try to find a red LED and you'll see that technical search has gone completely ignored. As grad students we spent 20% of our time searching for the right parts in phone book sized catalogs and now we are trying to change that. Our ultimate goal is to redefine technical product search, for now though, hopefully we've at least made finding a red LED a little simpler.

With that, let's make it official- Octopart is launched!