Biological supply companies interested in diybio?
Bryan Bishop
I have a proposal for the biological supply companies. What I need is
a way to use APIs, or ways to query from my computer, or any other
diy'ers computer, to order parts in kits that are in a Bill of
Material for different protocols, like the pcr.xml example that I
wrote up the other day. There's the option of using surfraw, which
would allow me to parse HTML forms, but the problem is that websites
too frequently change and it's not scaleable. An alternative is to see
if there are any biological suppliers that would be interested in
maybe getting a large chunk of diybio business. It's not a guarantee
at all- since I can't predict if anyone would buy- but with ~650
members and growing, the diybio.org community represents somewhat of a
force of nature (or the web) by now.
So, what I would like to do is get some suggestions for biological
supply companies that would be interested in collaboration. I am
willing to do any programming work that is necessary, for free, to
help out a supply company that is interested in making their API
public, or for ways to let diybio users order materials and supplies
from their computer, or from a website, without having to use a
browser on 20 different vendor/supply websites just to get one project
rolling.
Does anyone know of some companies that would be interested in
collaboration? Maybe there's a few vendors on this mailing list
waiting for the perfect opportunity? Does anyone have some contacts
with suppliers, and I can maybe get a more formal presentation of what
it is that we're doing ready?
Aaron Hicks
Give 'em a call, say howdy. See what happens.
-AJ
William Heath
-Tim
Stacy
It seems to me that there are two different issues here. The first is
that you would like Biological supply companies to sell to DIY folks.
In my experience, some will, some won't. If a company sells any
restricted items (chemicals, cultures, whatever), they are likely to
never ship anything to a residence, even if all you want are some
plastic tube racks. In some cases (cough, VWR, cough), any attempt
for a hobbyist to even set up an account results in a visit from law
enforcement with a seach warrant. Same with Invitrogen. My advice is
to ask what the company's policy is before you even give them your
name. If they say no, drop it and move on.
The second issue is that you would like to order specific reagents in
the absence of the rest of the kit. Again, in my personal experience,
this is a little rough to do just like it would be for any company
that sells kits of anything. Imagine trying to call LEGO, asking to
buy one piece from a kit. The person answering the phone simply has
no mechanism to place your order, and with larger companies the kits
are usually assembled offsite. You might have some luck with smaller
companies who assemble their own kits, but understand it would mean
that someone would have to pull a reagent out of the normal process
just for you and repackage it separately, just to make less money than
they would if the hobbyist had ordered the whole kit. The last thing
we want, really, is to have these companies thinking that hobbyists
are pains in the neck to deal with. The DIY community is such a tiny
larket, if it were me, I wouldn't waste the time or spend the money to
fill an order like that. Please note that this has nothing whatsoever
to do with a lack of an API. If the company wanted to offer certain
reagents outside of the kit, they would simply list them that way.
If I misunderstood your email, and all you wanted was to search for
reagents across companies, try biosupplynet.com.
Having said all of this, I have found a few small companies that are
happy to ship to hobbyists, offer great customer service, and are
generally pleasant about DIY. If you tell me what you're looking for
I'll be happy to share the information that I have.
Best regards,
Stacy
> 1 512 203 0507
Bryan Bishop
> Carolina Biological comes to mind.
>
> Give 'em a call, say howdy. See what happens.
I think I will (and then get back to Juliana and Stacy's emails). Are
there any other suppliers that come to mind that I should hit up while
making some calls?
http://www.carolina.com/category/customer+service/contact+us.do
"Product Information: Call if you have questions about any of our
products or need help selecting or using them for specific
applications. Operating hours are 8 am to 5 pm, ET, Monday–Friday.
Phone: 800.334.5551"
Bryan Bishop
> It seems to me that there are two different issues here. The first is
> that you would like Biological supply companies to sell to DIY folks.
While true I would like that, I'm not actually looking for that. In
particular my original email was specifically about APIs for accessing
product information and the ordering subsystems. There are ways around
this, such as making up a company, or going to some shady supplier
from around the globe, but whatever- hopefully businesses would be
interested in business.
> If I misunderstood your email, and all you wanted was to search for
> reagents across companies, try biosupplynet.com.
Well, yes, but unfortunately the payment gateway is not integrated-
it's a lot like octopart.com, which searches for electronics parts
across catalogs, but you have to go to each individual site and go
through some retarded click-form just to give *them* money.
> Having said all of this, I have found a few small companies that are
> happy to ship to hobbyists, offer great customer service, and are
> generally pleasant about DIY. If you tell me what you're looking for
> I'll be happy to share the information that I have.
I suppose it's possible that small companies might be able to provide
something. This is what UBL, ebXML and other standards were developed
for, so that anybody at any scale could theoretically satisfy job
orders and requests, but unfortunately it's just not as widly
implemented as it could be- and thus why I offered to freely implement
such features (because I'd like to use it!).
- Bryan
Bryan Bishop
> On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 12:28 PM, Aaron Hicks wrote:
>> Carolina Biological comes to mind.
>>
>> Give 'em a call, say howdy. See what happens.
>
> I think I will (and then get back to Juliana and Stacy's emails). Are
> there any other suppliers that come to mind that I should hit up while
> making some calls?
Hm. Looks like Invitrogen has its head on straight.
http://www.invitrogen.com/site/us/en/home/Products-and-Services/eProcurement.html
"Invitrogen supports a wide variety of business-to-consumer (B2C),
business-to-business (B2B), and Supply Center Management solutions and
has established integrations with hundreds of its customers and
suppliers."
"""
Minimizes requisition times
Automates order placement and processing
Facilitates order consolidation—a potential source of cost savings
Speeds turnaround—instantaneous order entry to our fulfillment center
Hosted Catalog
PunchOut to Online Catalog
PunchOut to SCMS
Electronic Purchase Orders
Electronic Acknowledgements
Electronic Advance Ship Notices
Electronic Invoicing
Supply Center Management System (SCMS)
"""
"PunchOut brings Invitrogen's Online Ordering System directly into
procurement systems such as Ariba, SAP, Oracle, SciQuest, and
PeopleSoft."
So I'll see where this leads.
Noah Sachs
using,? Anyone want to make an iphone App, Android or something with
Adobe
Air? Our reagent catalog is relatively narrow, http://www.enzymatics.com
focusing on DNA modifying enzymes. I happen to be in charge of
setting up the online ordering, considering we don't have any online
shopping yet. If this works out we'll hook you up and whoever else on
DIYBio that helps with a handful of whatever reagents you want from
our catalog.
> 1 512 203 0507
Bryan Bishop
> Sweet idea, count Enzymatics Inc. in. What API were you thinking of
> using,? Anyone want to make an iphone App, Android or something with
> Adobe Air?
An iphone appstore app is certainly possible, but first as for what
API to be used, that's completely up in the air at the moment, and in
fact most companies usually have their own API already for their
catalog (even if it's not public/released); so if you want to talk
about that, maybe we can do that over the phone later today?
> Our reagent catalog is relatively narrow, http://www.enzymatics.com
> focusing on DNA modifying enzymes. I happen to be in charge of
> setting up the online ordering, considering we don't have any online
> shopping yet. If this works out we'll hook you up and whoever else on
> DIYBio that helps with a handful of whatever reagents you want from
> our catalog.
Neat. Yeah, I'd like to be able to do online ordering without having
to go through HTTP, or something like that, so we should definitely
talk.
- Bryan
Tom
offering smaller quantities of these enzymes also, it is likely that
small users (such as myself) would want to buy less due to much
smaller budgets than academic/corporate labs. I hope you expand to
restriction enzymes to complete the package. Some of the larger
companies (NEB, Promega et al) will never focus on this niche market.
On Feb 19, 9:42 am, Noah Sachs <noahsa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sweet idea, count Enzymatics Inc. in. What API were you thinking of
> using,? Anyone want to make an iphone App, Android or something with
> Adobe