Tag Archives: Whiskey Militia

Deal Daemon: Open Beta

HTC Inspire 4G notification pane with a real
live alert from Deal Daemon.

That’s right folks; as of about 5 minutes ago this thing finally does something moderately useful.  I think I’m about ready for an open beta test.  Any volunteers?  If you actually help me with this, I’ll hook you up with a free copy of the software and updates for as long as I continue to update it.

Yes, there’s a bug in the screen shot: I printed the word twice for no good reason (apart from it being a Saturday night and I’m mid way through a pint of brew), but such is the nature of software – it’s not perfect.  Rest assured, it’ll get close.

For those unfamiliar with the project, check out the project landing page.

People seriously interested in helping me beta test this sucker should drop a comment with their email or other contact info in this post.  More info will be forthcoming…

Thanks!

Screen Caps: A Brief Teaser

Turns out holiday weekends along with a touch of insomnia go a long way toward side projects. The Deal Daemon UI is starting to shape up (although there are still plenty of bugs) and the back-end is way more of a known quantity after some serious research. Now hopefully I can pull this off before these guys…

The home screen gets an overhaul.  This is
it on my HTC Inspire 4G.  From here you
can simply save the terms and let it run, or
you can search the selected sites
immediately to refine your query. 

Searches running in parallel (platform
dependent).

Potential matches begin to fill in.

The icons show which site the product was
pulled from.

Press and hold for product details.  From
here you navigate straight to the product
page for more information, or reset your
search terms to poll specifically for this item.

And your newly defined product search
is shown in the list of defined searches, with
the most recent at the top.  Again, icons
indicate where these searches will be run.

And because I know everyone was curious to see how this all gets done…

Constructive feedback is most welcome!  This thing has to be good or else ‘the competition’ will bury me, especially given their household-name strength of brand…

The Moment We’ve All Been Waiting For…

If you read this blog, chances are this one applies directly to you.  My undying quest to never pay full price for anything I don’t have to naturally led me to Backcountry.com along with Steep and Cheap and Tramdock.  Of course, really taking advantage of these sites requires near obsessive compulsive attention to them at all hours of the day – mildly problematic.  Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just be alerted when the items you really wanted went on sale?  Now for the prestige; we’re pretty darn close:

Main screen – austere but you won’t be looking at the app very
often or for very long.  That’s the whole point…

Define new searches (just like googling something) and save them.
You’ll be alerted when hits turn up.

Choose which sites to monitor to narrow down your search.

Too good to be true?  Not really.  In fact I can’t for the life of me figure out why no one has done this already, and I’ve looked.  There are numerous inferior tools available, but I really want this to be a hands off process where I am simply alerted only when the items I really am interested in become available.

Now then, if anyone goes and swipes my idea now that I’ve disclosed it, I’ll mercilessly hunt them down and run them through with the business end of my ice ax…  Check back here for updates and beta releases!

My ice ax.  Note that it has three business ends.  I’m serious about this.