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Microsoft teams up with shopping search engine for HTML5 digital catalogs
Dead tree product catalogs -- dated. Fortunate, then, at least for Mother Earth, that Microsoft's unveiled the results of its team-up with retail-focused search engine TheFind, several web-based Glimpse catalogs, offering the visual pizazz of a retail magazine without the carbon hangover. Injecting Redmond's HTML5 know-how into the shopping hub's catalog and social apps, it distills those functions into the single site. Stores including Brooks Brothers and Lands' End have already offered up their collections in the web store, but Techcrunch reckons the venture needs a little more work. The images appear to be little too compressed and blurred in the new format, while the detail view directs users to social network sharing rather than a product's description. But with Microsoft already offering the HTML5 juice that powers the online app for free, someone else might improve on the company's groundwork.
Catalog Spree and Catalogue for iPad: Shopping at your fingertips
It's no surprise, as the iPad is gradually subbing in for print media such as books, magazines and newspapers, to see it filling another paper-centric role: the mail bin full of glossy catalogs from mail-order retail operations. Shoppers who love the experience of viewing products page by page will be happy with both Catalog Spree and The Find's app Catalogue. These iPad apps may fulfill one of my lifelong desires -- to open my mailbox and not find a stack of printed catalogs in it that are bound for the recycling pile. Catalogue (the app) is an attractive and easy to use compendium of many major mail order catalogs in digital form. If you're on the mailing list for Williams-Sonoma, Crate & Barrel, Sephora, Sur La Table, Gander Mountain, Sierra Trading Post, Saks Fifth Avenue, eBags, Urban Outfitters, and about 25 more stores, you're going to love Catalogue. Catalog Spree has a smaller selection of retailers (Nordstrom is the big kahuna, with Artful Home, NapaStyle, SeaBear, Made in Washington & several others lined up), but it has some features that Catalogue doesn't offer yet (Facebook/email sharing, per-catalog favorites, catalog subscriptions); from a UI perspective, it hews more closely to the style of the source catalogs (including the copy and page layouts) vs. Catalogue's Flipboard-esque product scroll. It is missing one big feature of Catalogue, which I'll get to in a moment. Let's hope that these retailers offer a way to stop getting their printed catalogs and save a few trees in the process. Read on for more details and check out the galleries below for some images of Catalogue and Catalog Spree in action. %Gallery-124390% %Gallery-124437%
