five star just added that title. if a store's title does not match up exactly with the title in our database we have to manually associate them. we do this manual association a few times a day, but with all the stores and all the titles it takes us some time.

i just associated kelly 3 - so you should see it from five star when you price search it.

i hope that explains things.
happy shopping!

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I didn't even know that maintaining this site is that much work. Thanks for that.

Is there no possibility of syncing the data automatically by some crawler which checks all the DVDs of every store at least once a day ? This way the data was more current, and you could have some kind of... well... private life :)

Oh, btw: Just took a look at NorthPole #7. DVDExtreme didn't seem to know anything about the bargain for $14.95. The lowest I could find was $17.50 at dvdadvantage.

Edited by - spesedy on Dec 2 2000

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The problem comes in that each store has their own stock numbers; ADT has their own SKU numbers, and the computers can only do so much matching based on title and distributor.

If I get a title in called "Kelly the Coed 3" but it is in my database as "Kelly the Coed 3: Capus Life" the computer may not pick that up as a match, so that vendor's item won't be added to the DB until I go thru and manually link their ProductID to my SKU.

It's easy for me to see that the two movies are the same; but the computer, with its text based matching algorhythms, ain't that smart. (yet)

I'm sure ADT gets their info on as timely basis as is possible -- it's the things that fall thru the cracks that take the time to maintain.

At least for me.

jeff

http://www.rame.net
http://www.iafd.com

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AdultMovieFAQ is correct. To answer your question about the auto-syncing of data. We have various ways that we update data from each store. With most of the stores we have an automated import that occurs four times per day. A couple of the stores send us price updates via email.

In the case of DVD Xtreme we have written a custom crawler for their site. The crawler currently takes about 4 hours to pull down the prices from their site. We can't run the crawler every day. We run it whenever we get an email from Xtreme telling us that they have updated prices or added new titles. If we don't get that heads-up email then some of their prices may me inaccurate.

Between Steph and I there is about 2 - 3 hours per day of price search data maintenance work. If we can't get to it for a few days then the work really piles up.

Edited by - Drew Black on Dec 2 2000

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Sometimes I wish I had a Steph to help out (as I stare at 17,000+ more records that need to be linked...) :-)

The time (at least for me) is in the getting it all synched the first time.

http://www.rame.net
http://www.iafd.com

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Adult DVD Talk
-Talk before you shop

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My site makes me money off graft, kickbacks and payola!

(OK, I kid, it's true...)

~ Jeff.

Webmaster for:
http://www.rame.net
http://www.iafd.com

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(Meaning how I set up the plug; not show I set up your kickbak program which I have nothing to do with other than being a fan of its ingenuity.)

~ Jeff.

Edited by - adult movie faq on Dec 4 2000

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