Patience, grasshopper.

Text Messaging is go!

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:25:00 -0500

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!

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 11:05:00 -0500

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!

Thu, 08 May 2008 01:20:00 -0500

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...

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 03:50:00 -0500

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.

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:20:00 -0500

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!

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 23:20:33 -0500

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:

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:15:00 -0500

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.

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 02:40:00 -0500

The Waitablize bookmarklet is done! I just finished coding it up, and you lovely readers get the first crack at it. I’ll put a link to it within Waitable soon.

For now though, just drag the link below to your Bookmarks Bar in your browser of choice and next time you’re browsing through Amazon and are on the product page of something you’d like to make waitable, click the bookmarklet and get it added it to your list without having to copy/paste or find the ASIN/UPC code. Awesome.

Waitablize

Upcoming features.

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 23:32:05 -0600

Here’s what I plan to add to Waitable in terms of features in the near future:

Support for more online stores!
A bookmarklet, so you can add products with one click, directly from your web browser
Statistics about which products are the most popular, most recently added, etc, which products have dropped in price recently
History of product prices (so you can see which products frequently drop in and increase in price, and get in on that action).. can’t take credit for this one, Josh from Webware suggested it

This is going to be fun!

Waitable all over the web!

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 23:26:31 -0600

Waitable was mentioned on Webware yesterday, and since then traffic has been coming in even quicker than usual! People are linking to it from all over the plac e and adding all sorts of items to their lists. I think that’s pretty freaking awesome!

One site in particular that linked to Waitable, which I’ve never heard of before was DemoGirl. Basically, she signs up for and does screencasts of all sorts of cool web apps out there, so you can see what you’re getting before you ever sign up. For Waitable, this isn’t as much of an issue, since you don’t even have to create an account to set up notifications for products, but man, she’s doing something really useful that lets you see “behind the wall” before you end up with yet another account that you won’t use. Here’s the screencast that includes Waitable. The Waitable part starts at about 3:53 or so. I wish there was a screencast that was just about Waitable so I could link it from the home page, but oh well!

Add products wherever you are!

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 16:51:00 -0600

I just added a Waitable update that should help you to add products to your list, even if you’re not at a computer! For all of you users with web browsers on your cell phone, you can now add products to your list by UPC (the number on the bottom of product barcodes)… So now, if you see an item on the shelf at, say Best Buy and want to add it to your list, now you can.

Simply put, I added another field at the bottom of your product addition screen, and now you can just flip over a product in the store and enter the UPC…If it’s on Amazon (and chances are, it is!), it’ll be added to your list.

If you’re an iPhone user, I’ve made it even easier. When you select the UPC field, you’ll get a numeric keypad which will help you to enter the number faster, since UPCs only contain numbers. (Check out the image below to see what I mean.)