Amazon Price Watcher android application | Hacker News Reader

Amazon Price Watcher android application

5 pointsddkrone8 comments

This is my first android application. It interfaces with the Amazon Advertising API to keep track of item prices. I originally had the idea because I thought it was a little ridiculous to pay 69.99 for a game when a few months later it would be 29.99 or less. Keeping track of prices manually was out of the question so I figured I'd use my phone to do it. Here's the link to the android market page: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.daveco.pricewatcher&feature=search_result. In the interest of full disclosure I do get points if you shop using the app and let me know if there are features you'd like to see added.

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I like this - I was thinking of doing something similar a while ago but didn't find much market interest at the time. I see I still have a domain called buyitwhen.com; if you think it might be a fit for you at some stage just drop me a line at gmail.

Thanks for the domain offer. I'll keep it in mind.

I don't have an android phone. Would love it if it were a web app.

Notifications are a bit of a problem with web apps. It's much easier to do everything client side on a mobile device and I haven't figured out how to elegantly implement a notification system on the server side. I could potentially do everything by email but that brings a whole bunch of other headaches with it if I don't want to be blacklisted as a spammer. Currently I'm looking at appcelerator and adobe air to make the app more accessible to a wider audience but that's a little ways away.

I'm not sure if it will help, but have you looked at Notifo? They have an API which might help you with notifications for a web app.

That would be fine if I had a server sitting somewhere constantly checking for prices. Currently I just push all the code that would be processed on the server onto the client. I'm not expecting to get millions of users but I'm also not interested in managing my own server. Making the whole process decentralized and getting the application on the phone to manage itself is a much better solution. There is no equivalent way to do that for a web app. No matter what I will need some kind of central location for people to push and pull their alerts from if I make a web app and there are plenty of services like that already.

That's interesting, so you don't have a server at all? Does that mean you don't collect any usage data? That's key to improving your product and building new ones.

Clickable link: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.daveco.pricewatche...

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