Patience, grasshopper.

Waitablize v2.

I just finished writing the new version of Waitablize, the bookmarklet that lets you add items to your Waitable list while you’re browsing around the web.  Now you can add items to your Waitable list from any web page!

Just like the first version, to install it, just drag the link below to your Bookmarks Bar in your browser of choice, and next time you’re browsing and are on the product page of something you’d like to add to your Waitable list (no matter where it is online), click the bookmarklet and it will be added to your list.  If you already have Waitablize in your Bookmarks Bar, it might be a good idea to delete the existing version before adding the new one, to minimize confusion.

Waitablize

Movies, Netflix integration!

You may have noticed recently that there are 2 new items in the Waitable navigation… Movies and Movie List.  Waitable already helps you to wait for products to drop in price, why not let it help to notify you when a movie you’d like to see has reached theatres?  

During the course of a month, you’ll see quite a few trailers, movie posters and other movie promotional items.  It’s hard to keep track of what you want to watch, and usually a few movies slip through the cracks.  Eventually you see them at a store, while browsing around on Amazon, or somewhere else and kick yourself for not seeing them in the theatre.  That’s where Waitable Movies comes in.

The movie section features trailers from upcoming movies (it updates all the time) and links to their trailers/descriptions so you can see what they are all about.  If you decide that you’d like to see a movie, all it takes is one click to add it to your Movie List. Once a movie is there, you’ll be notified a few days before the movie comes out via email / text message so you can make plans to see it.  You can see which movies are on your list at any time by clicking Movie List.  

Now what makes this really cool is that Waitable Movies is connected, of course to one of the best price drop notification sites, Waitable.com!  When you’re viewing details of a particular movie on Waitable Movies, you might decide that it is something you’d like to see, but not necessarily in the theatre, or you might watch the movie in a theatre and decide that you’d really like to own it.  On the same page where you set up the movie reminders, you can also add the movie to your main Waitable list, set a price you want to pay for the DVD or Blu-ray, and Waitable will let you know when the movie hits store shelves and has dropped to the price you want to pay.  

One more thing… from that same movie details view, you can also link your Waitable and Netflix accounts, so if there’s a movie that you’d like to rent when it’s out on DVD or Blu-ray, you can add it to your Netflix queue with one click.  Amazing!

What are you waiting for?  Go check out Waitable Movies!

Text Messaging is go!

Just wrote a quick new feature for Waitable: now you can text message items straight to your list! This one requires a Waitable account, because we’ve got to be able to figure out who is sending the text message.

Make sure that your cell phone number is in your Waitable account at http://waitable.com/account and then whenever you see a product that you’d like to add, just send a text message to 41411 with the UPC (barcode number of the product), @ and the price you want to pay.

For example, the barcode for the Short Circuit DVD is 014381006124, so to add it to your list and specify that you want to pay $5 for it, you send a message to 41411 with these contents (minus the quotes, of course):
“waitable 014381006124 @5”.

Presto! Next time you log into Waitable, Short Circuit will be on your list. Hope this makes adding your items to Waitable even easier!

Preordering 2.0!

Waitable is built around the idea that you can set your price for something and then pretty much forget about it and be notified when it drops to the price you want to pay.

But what if that product isn’t available yet? You preorder and you’re notified when it’s ready for purchase. But what if the initial price isn’t what you want to pay?

Enter Waitable. Now you can add any item from Amazon to your list whether it is available or not. Waitable will wait until that item is ready to buy and has dropped to the price you want to pay. Then, and only then will you be notified. Awesome!

Wishlists!

My birthday was just a few days ago, and somewhere around the big day, my brother asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and if I had a wishlist somewhere. I didn’t at the time, but I thought, a lot of the things I want right now are on my Waitable list… why not turn it into a public wishlist?  It’s been on my list of features to write, but that question was the catalyst that got me to write it in a weekend.

So now I present to you Waitable wishlists.  Here’s how they work.  Log in to Waitable, go to your product list and look for the checkboxes on the right hand side of the page.  Checking off an item adds it to your list immediately, and unchecking it removes it from your list.  It’s that easy!  There’s also a new link in the navigation: “View Wishlist”.  This will give you a current preview of your list, its web address, and code for buttons, in case you’d like to link to your list using them.

Here’s my list: 

Looking even better on iPhone…

Since I first developed Waitable, I’ve not been totally pleased with the way the front page loads on iPhone.  By default, the front page uses a Flash object that lets you flip through/click on the latest 10 items to be added to Waitable.  Of course, since iPhone does not support Flash, all you used to see was an empty space where the pictures should have been.  No more.  Now, if you visit the site using a desktop browser, you’ll get the full Flash experience, but if you visit on iPhone or any other device without Flash installed, you should see the latest 6 items in a row in place of the Flash object.  You can still click on them and be taken to their respective pages in whatever online store they’ve been added from.

It looks like this:

Also, once Waitable has loaded on iPhone, the address bar will disappear, giving you a little more space to use before you have to start scrolling. Enjoy!  I know I am… It’s my birthday!

80,000+ stores, 35 million+ products, comparison shopping.

The new Waitable is here!  This weekend, I finished coding/uploading a major Waitable update that adds support for so many more stores than before (it only used to support Amazon, but now it’ll bring in results from across the internet).

Now it is even more than just a smart wishlist… Waitable lets you do comparison shopping on items right from your internet enabled cell phone or your computer.

If you enter a UPC code, Waitable shows you a list of the lowest prices that it can find, with links to buy the products immediately or add them to your list if they’re not low enough.   Give it a shot next time you’re out at Best Buy and want to see if that item really IS the best buy possible. :)

There have been some visual tweaks as well… a rounded corner there, a revamped front page, a newly coded/restyled list of your products (now it displays the product vendor in the list, since Amazon isn’t the only one), much better use of space on the Add/View Products page (there are only 2 sections for adding products now, and they are side by side. I combined the Amazon ASIN and URL fields, so you can just type in an ASIN or paste in an Amazon.com URL and Waitable will figure it out) and more!

I even sat down and wrote a real help section this time.  Awesome.

I’m really proud of this upgrade. Give it a shot next time you want to buy a product that is just a little too expensive, and let me know what you think!

Waitable update on its way!

I’ve been busy working on a major update to Waitable that will support tens of thousands of online stores, instead of just Amazon. There’s some other major stuff coming up in the next update… I’m excited! 

Public service for Ruby on Rails programmers:

If you come across an error that looks like this: NoMethodError (undefined method `-@’ for “”:String), and you can’t figure out why your code isn’t working, make sure you don’t have any uncommented lines of non-code in your source.  I feel like an idiot now.  Hopefully this will help someone who happens to have the same problem and googles it.

Bookmarklet.

The Waitablize bookmarklet is now here: link