Product Recalls public beta

[Dafydd Vaughan]

Hi Everyone,

As some of you already know, we've been busy working on our first
project for the last few months. Today we're pleased to be able to
launch the Product Recalls website into public beta. You can access
the new site at http://recalls.consumerfocuslabs.org.

The website is still a beta - so any suggestions or comments you have
are welcome. Just drop us an email at te...@consumerfocuslabs.org.

For anyone who has recently joined the mailing list or missed the
private beta - the Product Recalls site collects UK and European
product recall notices from the European Commission and publishes them
via RSS and email.

The issue of product recalls is a tricky one. Some companies publish
notices in the national newspapers or display a poster in their shop
window. Some of these notices are published on the Trading Standards
Institute website; others are published on the European Commission
Consumer Affairs site. However, without checking these sources
regularly, there is no easy way of discovering if something you have
bought has been recalled.

Our site aims to solve this problem. You can sign up for weekly or
monthly email alerts, search the database of recalls for keywords
(such as product or brand name), and subscribe to them through your
RSS reader. We’ve also tried to build the site so that recalled
products can easily be found in existing search engines - an issue not
considered by some of the other solutions.

There have been a few changes since the private beta. Firstly, and
most importantly, we are now sourcing the product recalls data from
the European Commission (EC). This is due to licensing restrictions
imposed by the Trading Standards Institute. The new source of data
provides us with more detailed description of the recalls, including
details of the product, the danger and the actions taken. We're
looking into providing email and RSS subscription by category in the
future.

You may have noticed that we've removed the option to have daily email
alerts - this is because the EC publishes data weekly rather than
daily. Unfortunately, because of this, we've decided not to bring
over subscription data from the private beta. As a result, you will
have to resubscribe on the new public beta website in order to
continue to receive updates.

Regards,

Dafydd