Open ICEcat
Encyclopedia
Open ICEcat is an Open Content
project under the Open Content License
in which a worldwide open catalogue
is created for product information. Editors are participating manufacturers. The users of the product content are distributors, resellers, retailers, comparison websites or online shopping directories, enterprise resource planning
systems or the manufacturers themselves.
Open ICEcat began formally in December 2005 with 20 participating IT
manufacturers. Among the earliest contributors are Hewlett-Packard
, Toshiba
, IBM
and Lenovo. As of March 2007, this number has grown to more than 90 manufacturers, including participants from consumer electronics
like Sony, Philips and Kodak, and the telecom industry. On the user side, similar growth has been seen.
In January 2011 Open ICEcat has grown to some 250 manufacturers and supports 33 languages. Including English (UK & US), Russian, Spanish, Finnish, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, German, French, Dutch, and many others. The Open Catalogue is used by over 11.800 e-business partners. Catalogues cover IT, CE, Telecom and Office. This fast growth and worldwide coverage makes Open ICEcat by far the most successful Open Catalog.
Open ICEcat is as an open catalog, not to be confused with commercial catalogs like offered by ICEcat Inc (Full ICEcat), Gfk/Etilize and Cnet.
Open ICEcat is interesting because it demonstrates that the Open Content
concept is not only relevant for non-commercial projects like Wikipedia
, but also for commerce-related projects. This is analogous to the move of open source
applications like Apache, Linux and MySQL
into the world of commerce, which marked an increased professional acceptance level.
& MySQL based osCommerce
- provides an ICEcat contribution. Also with regard to other open source webshops, like Batavi, PrestaShop, Zen Cart
and Magento
, integration efforts are noted. Further, a number of integrations are made by proprietary ASP solution providers like Lynx Internet, Emini, Web2Biz, MyCOP/adfontes, QuoteWerks
, bInTime, RightClick, Wicecat and xtCommerce.
IceCART is a freeware plugin to connect Zencart to Icecat. With this tool you can easily associate the Icecat description to your Zencart products in the shop.
Wicecat is a plugging that connects Prestashop with Icecat, it can be adapted to any shopping cart to update the technical information directly from Icecat.
Open content
Open content or OpenContent is a neologism coined by David Wiley in 1998 which describes a creative work that others can copy or modify. The term evokes open source, which is a related concept in software....
project under the Open Content License
Open Content License
The Open Content License is a copyleft license designed for distribution of open content material. This license is not compatible with the any other license in that it requires derivative works to be licensed under the Open Content License....
in which a worldwide open catalogue
Open catalogue
Open catalogue is an open content catalogue or free content catalogue, i.e., a structured database with information about products or other stored items in a standardized format...
is created for product information. Editors are participating manufacturers. The users of the product content are distributors, resellers, retailers, comparison websites or online shopping directories, enterprise resource planning
Enterprise resource planning
Enterprise resource planning systems integrate internal and external management information across an entire organization, embracing finance/accounting, manufacturing, sales and service, customer relationship management, etc. ERP systems automate this activity with an integrated software application...
systems or the manufacturers themselves.
Open ICEcat began formally in December 2005 with 20 participating IT
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
manufacturers. Among the earliest contributors are Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
, Toshiba
Toshiba
is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...
, IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
and Lenovo. As of March 2007, this number has grown to more than 90 manufacturers, including participants from consumer electronics
Consumer electronics
Consumer electronics are electronic equipment intended for everyday use, most often in entertainment, communications and office productivity. Radio broadcasting in the early 20th century brought the first major consumer product, the broadcast receiver...
like Sony, Philips and Kodak, and the telecom industry. On the user side, similar growth has been seen.
In January 2011 Open ICEcat has grown to some 250 manufacturers and supports 33 languages. Including English (UK & US), Russian, Spanish, Finnish, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, German, French, Dutch, and many others. The Open Catalogue is used by over 11.800 e-business partners. Catalogues cover IT, CE, Telecom and Office. This fast growth and worldwide coverage makes Open ICEcat by far the most successful Open Catalog.
Open ICEcat is as an open catalog, not to be confused with commercial catalogs like offered by ICEcat Inc (Full ICEcat), Gfk/Etilize and Cnet.
Open ICEcat is interesting because it demonstrates that the Open Content
Open content
Open content or OpenContent is a neologism coined by David Wiley in 1998 which describes a creative work that others can copy or modify. The term evokes open source, which is a related concept in software....
concept is not only relevant for non-commercial projects like Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
, but also for commerce-related projects. This is analogous to the move of open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
applications like Apache, Linux and MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
into the world of commerce, which marked an increased professional acceptance level.
Integrations
The most downloaded open source webshop - PHPPHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
& MySQL based osCommerce
OsCommerce
osCommerce is an e-commerce and online store-management software program. It can be used on any web server that has PHP and MySQL installed. It is available as free software under the GNU General Public License.-History:...
- provides an ICEcat contribution. Also with regard to other open source webshops, like Batavi, PrestaShop, Zen Cart
Zen Cart
Zen Cart is an online store management system. It is PHP-based, using a MySQL database and HTML components. Support is provided for numerous languages and currencies, and it is freely available under the GNU General Public License....
and Magento
Magento
Magento is an open source based ecommerce web application that was launched on March 31, 2008. It was developed by Varien with help from the programmers within the open source community but is owned solely by . Magento was built using the Zend Framework...
, integration efforts are noted. Further, a number of integrations are made by proprietary ASP solution providers like Lynx Internet, Emini, Web2Biz, MyCOP/adfontes, QuoteWerks
Quotewerks
QuoteWerks is an industry non-specific quoting/ordering software with integration to CRM, SFA, and accounting software in the small, medium, and enterprise markets. QuoteWerks is developed by Aspire Technologies, Inc.in Orlando, FL...
, bInTime, RightClick, Wicecat and xtCommerce.
IceCART is a freeware plugin to connect Zencart to Icecat. With this tool you can easily associate the Icecat description to your Zencart products in the shop.
Wicecat is a plugging that connects Prestashop with Icecat, it can be adapted to any shopping cart to update the technical information directly from Icecat.
Supported standards
- GTIN, including former European Article NumberEuropean Article NumberAn EAN-13 barcode is a 13 digit barcoding standard which is a superset of the original 12-digit Universal Product Code system developed in the United States...
and Universal Product CodeUniversal Product CodeThe Universal Product Code is a barcode symbology , that is widely used in North America, and in countries including the UK, Australia, and New Zealand for tracking trade items in stores. Its most common form, the UPC-A, consists of 12 numerical digits, which are uniquely assigned to each trade item... - UNSPSCUNSPSCThe United Nations Standard Products and Services Code is a taxonomy of products and services for use in eCommerce. It is a five-level hierarchy coded as an 8-digit number.-Governance:...
for categorization - XMLXMLExtensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
, including an open catalogue DTD and XSD - HTMLHTMLHyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
for the ASP/URL variant of the catalogue - UTF-8UTF-8UTF-8 is a multibyte character encoding for Unicode. Like UTF-16 and UTF-32, UTF-8 can represent every character in the Unicode character set. Unlike them, it is backward-compatible with ASCII and avoids the complications of endianness and byte order marks...
- ISO 3166-1 alpha-2ISO 3166-1 alpha-2ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes are two-letter country codes defined in ISO 3166-1, part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization , to represent countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest...
country codes - ISO 639-1ISO 639-1ISO 639-1:2002, Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 1: Alpha-2 code, is the first part of the ISO 639 series of international standards for language codes. Part 1 covers the registration of two-letter codes. There are 136 two-letter codes registered...
language codes