At Commission Junction University (CJU) in Santa Barbara today, CJ announced the launch of their new web services initiative. Web Services is CJ's availability of APIs that will enable publishers and advertisers to access product catalog information and create web applications. As part of the rollout they have announced a contest for the best application developed with Adobe Dreamweaver, the winner will get Adobe Studio 8. Also with the launch comes a developers forum where the community can interact and discuss applications.

The API availability is a great step in the right direction, but falls short by stopping at product catalog and link searching. Publishers looking to automate their businesses will be disappointed in the lack of access to financial and sales data. Hopefully this will come in 2007.

For more information about CJ Webservices, visit http://webservices.cj.com