Siri Can Help You Shop At Best Buy, Lets You Access The Entire Product Catalog

As noted by TUAW (via RazorianFly), Best Buy has made a new deal with Wolfram Alpha, the major source of information used by Apple’s digital voice assistant Siri, giving them access to its entire product catalog. Wolfram Alpha has officially announced on their blog that  the addition has been made using Best Buy’s own public APIs, meaning you can now find pricing information, specifications, product images and model numbers for any product you wish, using just your voice. As a result, users can now browse more than 35,000 appliances and consumer products sold by Best Buy.

Citing from the blog entry:

Just in time for the holidays, we’re introducing a new functionality that provides consumers with a unique approach to shopping. By leveraging data from Best Buy’s public APIs, Wolfram|Alpha users will now be able to browse more than 35,000 appliances and consumer electronics products. Wolfram|Alpha’s intuitive natural-language interface helps you hone in on the precise products you need, while its powerful data visualization capabilities give you an innovative overview of any shopping category.

We’ve taken the strengths we’ve developed in math, science, and socioeconomic data and created something equally unique and useful for online shoppers. Type in the name of a product category—”dishwashers” or “tablet computers,” for example—and Wolfram|Alpha generates a comprehensive, custom analysis. What are the typical dimensions and other physical characteristics of other products in this class? How common is a given product feature?

Wolfram|Alpha helps you to answer these questions.

This sure is a pretty cool addition to the things Siri can help us with. Would you like other mainstream retailers following suit? If yes, tell us which ones will be the most useful for you!

P.S. - Like our news? Support the site with a coffee/beer. Or shop with our Amazon link. We use affiliate links when possible--thank you for supporting independent media.