ICEcat is an open product catalog for free distribution of over 2 million product data-sheets of 5000+ brands in 32 different languages.

What’s new since previous release:

* Implemented scheduler for scheduling daily updates

* Many properties are externalized in property file

* Implemented convertor database output for both H2 and MySql database

* Much better source code after refactoring

* Better logging of application events

Logo and business card design is delivered by a dutch graphic design agency Fraai Zaken and our website redesign is done by an in-house specialist.

Pentaho Data Integration delivers powerful Extraction, Transformation and Loading (ETL) capabilities using an innovative, metadata-driven approach. With an intuitive, graphical, drag and drop design environment, and a proven, scalable, standards-based architecture, Pentaho Data Integration is increasingly the choice for organizations over traditional, proprietary ETL or data integration tools. Kettle is our preferred integration solution, but if needed other integration tools can be used.

The first project MindSteps did with Kettle was to transfer a XML feed located on an external server in Spain to a server located in the UK, translating the headers, transform this into MS Excel and store the new file on a specific folder location on the ‘local’ server. A task that was completed within 5 minutes.

With Pentaho Data Integration it is now possible to extract data from virtually any source, such as databases and csv and also to combine data from different datasources and translate this to any output format as well. This provides a very wide scope of advantages for iSelect customers as there are virtually no limits to integrate datasources anymore.

See also our Integration page.

A lot of terms are used for faceted navigation. For example visual search, guided navigation, browse & discovery or faceted browsing. It’s all about finding your own path to information.

It provides users with filtering options to explore a website. Users can select criteria that are of interest to them and by this create their own routes to information. Within e-commerce websites users can compare products by specific features,  for instance when looking for a TV you can specify to see only TV’s that are 1080p and that are 46 inches. When good implemented there are no dead-ends.

Bottom line it’s user facing navigation with multiple filters within categories.

(Photo from Peter Morville’s A List Apart article).

The combination of website search (with auto-complete) and faceted search is very powerful when there is large quantity of content or there are many possible ways to organize the content. This search and browse (discover) combination is most often used when users don’t know where to search. When fill in a keyword and returning browsing categories in the search results is very effective to guide the user to a single category.

Examples of faceted navigation can be found in a wide range of domains. Most familiar are e-commerce and price compare websites, but also within configuration or visualization solutions, Frequent Asked Questions (FAQ) and index solutions faceted navigation is used.

Below some links to faceted navigation example.

e-Commerce

Price compare

Configurator

Visualizer

FAQ

Index solution

The new MindShop template is specially made for retail. As it is just a demonstration, it can of course be adjusted to suit your individual needs and branding. It contains very advanced functionalities. Of course there is an online demonstration of it.

This template features an automated product group landing page, automatically created for you and of course easily published by a click on the Publish all button.

You can have a preview right here.