WatchedItemEndingSoon » Watcheditem http://watcheditemendingsoon.com The democratization of e-commerce Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:38:11 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 snapcasa.com vs thumbshots.org http://watcheditemendingsoon.com/2009/09/28/snapcasa-com/ http://watcheditemendingsoon.com/2009/09/28/snapcasa-com/#comments Tue, 29 Sep 2009 02:14:45 +0000 estreet http://watcheditemendingsoon.com/?p=1011 Snapcasa.com and Thumbshots.org are free services that take snapshots of websites and host the images for your use. You can see snapshots in action on the bing.com search engine.

I love website previews because it saves me time. I don’t have to click on links that take me to deadends. The preview shows you exactly where you will end up.

Unfortunately Snapcasa has some serious delays in their website snapshot capture and image hosting. Maybe I just caught them at a bad time. The site is completely unresponsive now.

Thumbshots.org is much faster but the thumbnails are smaller. You have to credit Thumbshots in order to use their free service. The paid service removes the attribution requirement.

Snapcasa thumbnails:

——————

thumbshots.org

I will use these thumbnails on Watched Item – most watched eBay items and Smiling Shopper – discount gift cards.

Here’s another service called Shrinktheweb.com. The resolution on the 120 px by 90 px thumbnail is better than thumbshots’ but the tradeoff is file size. Thumbshots’ images are around 4KB but shrinktheweb’s files are ~14KB. Shrinktheweb’s images are a few weeks old. I requested an image refresh.

Thumbnails powered by Thumbshots

Website Thumbnail Provider

]]> http://watcheditemendingsoon.com/2009/09/28/snapcasa-com/feed/ 2 The Etsy API and CraftCult App are Sweet! http://watcheditemendingsoon.com/2009/08/01/the-etsy-api-and-craftcult-app-are-sweet/ http://watcheditemendingsoon.com/2009/08/01/the-etsy-api-and-craftcult-app-are-sweet/#comments Sat, 01 Aug 2009 15:01:01 +0000 estreet http://watcheditemendingsoon.com/?p=983 I just used the Etsy API to run some product searches. It was very, very easy.

The Etsy Developers need to add a few more sort parameters to the keyword and tag search, like number bought and number of favorers (yes, that’s a word). But I like it. I really like it!

Here’s a nice looking Etsy application called Craft Cult.

Heart-o-matic

Etsy offers a nice community feature that is missing on eBay. Etsy shows sellers who is has marked their shop as a favorite. CraftCult.com runs a cron to show the history of new favorers. Cool!

whosfavsshop

Etsy also shows the Etsy user names who “heart” an item for sale. Love it! I don’t know why eBay doesn’t utilize their watch list to build their community like Etsy.

itemheart

My eBay app, WatchedItem, shows the number of watchers of an eBay item. Watchers are anonymous on eBay.

screenshotsearch

Watched Item shows the top 500 most popular items on eBay. It’s a good way to find the most attention grabbing items on eBay.

WIhalloffame

]]> http://watcheditemendingsoon.com/2009/08/01/the-etsy-api-and-craftcult-app-are-sweet/feed/ 0 WatchedItem.com blog is live! http://watcheditemendingsoon.com/2009/07/10/watcheditem-com-blog-is-live/ http://watcheditemendingsoon.com/2009/07/10/watcheditem-com-blog-is-live/#comments Sat, 11 Jul 2009 01:59:09 +0000 estreet http://watcheditemendingsoon.com/?p=893 My Watched Item blog is now live!

I did tons of customization on the theme, then I noticed that it looks bad in Internet Explorer. The round corners are square in IE. I almost always use FireFox.

But I’m satisfied that it matches the main site and he first couple of posts look pretty good. I just need to automate the link generation a bit. I’m doing too much by hand.

BTW – It’s blueberry season here in Illinois. We got 12 pounds of big ones. My belly is full.

Blueberries

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