Recent Posts

9526

Developer's Corner / Re: Soon you can code and sell applications for Amazon's Kindle eBook

« Last post by wraith808 on January 21, 2010, 10:11 AM »

Hmmm... I was going to get a Nook.  Now I'm not so sure...

9527

Living Room / Re: Sex Doesn't Sell

« Last post by wraith808 on January 03, 2010, 10:53 PM »

Where does Avatar come into this?  Is there some controversy that I'm not aware of regarding it?

9528

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 - The Event Concludes

« Last post by wraith808 on January 03, 2010, 10:52 PM »

hear hear!  I echo Deozaan's sentiments heartily!

9529

Living Room / Re: Sex Doesn't Sell

« Last post by wraith808 on January 03, 2010, 01:57 PM »

How to Lie with Statistics.  There are quite a few other good ones out there, but this is required reading for post-graduate research students at some universities- to show how *not* to do a study.

9530

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 - Web Badges

« Last post by wraith808 on January 02, 2010, 08:53 PM »

I made use of it... looks nice!

http://wraith808.com...hp?n=Main.MySoftware

9531

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 xmas regifting

« Last post by wraith808 on January 01, 2010, 11:31 PM »

I'd like Black Summer, Red Son, and the Killing Joke if you still have them...

9532

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 FINAL RELEASE: SwoopoSpy

« Last post by wraith808 on January 01, 2010, 04:55 PM »

The final release is posted.  The changes I was able to make were to add the about box, add help (in deference to those who think Swoopo is the most evil thing, I have put a disclaimer and a bit about penny auctions in the help), Create a logo, and changed the dialog to be sizeable vertically.  I'll be adding more... if anyone has any other suggestions, let me know!

9533

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 - Offers of Assistance

« Last post by wraith808 on December 31, 2009, 03:36 PM »

Last minute or what?    SwoopoSpy is the program, and I need an icon.  I will go with my non-artistic version if no one can help at this late date... TIA

9534

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2010 PRE-RELEASE - SwoopoSpy

« Last post by wraith808 on December 31, 2009, 03:22 PM »

He's having some DNS issues   Try http://67.187.5.115/EagleEyeWebsite.  Hopefully the other will be available soon...

9535

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2010 PRE-RELEASE - SwoopoSpy

« Last post by wraith808 on December 31, 2009, 03:05 PM »

That's a matter of the person bidding, not the scheme.  I'm going to put a link to it in the about box, but a friend of mine coded a site http://www.operationeagleeye.com.  It's free- you can give donations- and it's well worth it.  It aggregates the data from completed auctions, and you can see that a *lot* of people make out pretty good, but a lot of people lose money also.  But it's all in why you're bidding, and understanding the process.  Of the sites, Swoopo is best IMO because your bids are a rebate against the item.  So if I spend $75 on bids on an item that's $90 and lose it, I can then purchase it for $15.  The point is when you get to that magical ratio of price/2 spent in bids, you're better off losing it, then paying the extra.  So the other part becomes don't bid on items you can't afford, and bid on items that you'd want, even if you had to spend full price.

A couple of real-life examples to let you see what I'm talking about.

1.  I wanted a printer.  The printer I wanted was $129 on amazon, but I saw it on Swoopo.  The price on the printer was $99.  I bid on it until the amount I spent in bids on the printer was $85.  If I had *won*, I would have had to spend the $85 in bids, plus the $40 that the price was up to- a losing proposition.  But I intentionally lost, and spent the extra $15 to get the printer.  Still cheaper than Amazon, and I had what I wanted.

2. My son wanted the Tony Hawk game.  I spent $45 on bids up front.  I was willing to spend a bit more on bids because I wanted to get it, and the price they were selling for was full retail.  But it ended up I didn't have to, because I got it for 11 bids, and $11 (estimated).  So for $11 + $45, I purchased a $119 game.  And it got even better, because with the bids that I had left over, I also won DJ Hero (which I wanted for myself) for approx $9, and Tekken 6 (which I wanted) for $4.44.  So for $45 + $11 + $9 + $4.44 ($69.44 for those keeping count), I purchased about $280 worth of product.

It's people that go in wanting get rich schemes or not understanding the system or getting caught up in the bidding that lose out IMO...  you have to approach it with a reasoned head, as with anything else.

9536

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / NANY 2010 FINAL RELEASE: SwoopoSpy

« Last post by wraith808 on December 31, 2009, 02:09 PM »

NANY 2010 Entry Information

Application Name	SwoopoSpy
Version	1.00
Short Description	Spy on your Swoopo Auctions
Supported OSes	Windows XP and Vista tested
Web Page	My Software
Download Link	Direct Download
System Requirements	.NET 2.0 Framework Internet Explorer 6+
Version History	0.85 Initial Pre-Release Version 1.00 Final Release Version - Added Help, Ability to vertically resize, and About box.
Author	wraith808
Screencast	https://www.donation...pospy/swoopospy.html YouTube: http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=A50sSav1zXQ

Description
I don't know if anyone else has gotten involved in the penny auction craze, but I have- especially on Swoopo.  I've purchased things for insane prices- even given the price of the bids!  One problem I had was keeping track of several auctions at once.  That's what this program does!

Features
SwoopoSpy lets you add an auction to a spy pane, and keep all of your auctions in front of you in one window.  A pretty simple application once you get down to it.

Planned Features
Because I just started a new job, and just moved interstate, I didn't get to implement all of the features that I had planned- I barely got this done on time!  But there are several other features that I want to implement, including:

• Auction Type (penny, .02, etc)
• Visual notification of time going to less than a minute.
• Visual notification of custom events, i.e. auction becoming closed, price hitting a certain point
• Notification of the number of bids you've used
• Notification of profit margin
• E-mail, text balloon, and/or audio notification when a certain threshold is reached
• The ability to minimize to the tray notification area

Screencast

Screenshots




Usage
Installation
Make sure you have .NET 3.5 and IE installed.  Extract the files to a folder and run it.

Using the Application
Go to Swoopo in your favorite browser.  Find the auction that you want to follow.  Copy the URL and paste it into SwoopoSpy, and click add.  Profit!

Note that auctions take a while to load because of error checking that the program does against the URL.  If you want to speed up loading auctions, you can un-check the "Check URLs" setting in the status bar.  A lot of error checking is done before time, so your results if you enter an incorrect URL may crash the program...

Uninstallation
Delete the folder that you extracted the files to.

Known Issues
Behind proxies (at work for instance) there are sometimes script errors when loading the auction.  You can safely ok these.  I'm not sure why proxies make the page load differently in the WebBrowser control. (If someone has an inkling, I'd appreciate the tip!)

9537

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Digital Game Stores

« Last post by wraith808 on December 29, 2009, 11:38 AM »

nice write-up, wraith808. it is very useful and will definitely come in handy. hopefully you can continue with other distributors when you have the time. btw, GoG.com is run by CD Projekt, known for their recent hit, The Witcher^w.

-lanux128 (December 29, 2009, 06:39 AM)

Thanks for the kind words, everyone!  If someone wants to take on one of these, feel free, and I'll link in the article to the post.  Right now, I just moved interstate, and started a new job, so I have my hands full just getting my NANY entry done!  I didn't know that about CD Projekt- I updated the entry.  Interesting that the Witcher is available on every platform but GoG...

9538

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for list of read-only editors

« Last post by wraith808 on December 26, 2009, 09:37 PM »

Mobipocket (http://www.mobipocket.com) and eReader (http://www.ereader.com/), though I'm not sure if that's what you're trying to get away from...

9539

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: The Steam Holiday Sale

« Last post by wraith808 on December 22, 2009, 10:25 PM »

Anyone interested in Borderlands?  It's $100 for 4 copies... if I can get three other people, it's $25 each... any takers?

9540

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: GOG.com Holiday Surprise

« Last post by wraith808 on December 17, 2009, 11:51 AM »

Not my kind of game, but can still appreciate that they did it

9541

Found Deals and Discounts / GOG.com Holiday Surprise

« Last post by wraith808 on December 17, 2009, 09:31 AM »

Tex Murphy 1+2 for FREE!!! Get it until Dec. 24 and let everyone know about it http://gog.com/mdc

9542

Found Deals and Discounts / Dragon Age: Origins on sale today 12/17 ONLY!

« Last post by wraith808 on December 17, 2009, 09:04 AM »

http://www.stardock....edia/mailers/DAO.htm

Stardock has Dragon Age: Origins on sale for 25% off today only.  It's the non-deluxe version, but if you don't care about that, I've heard it's a great game.

9543

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Space Rangers 2 for 1.99$ over at impulse just for today

« Last post by wraith808 on December 16, 2009, 09:14 AM »

Expired ! 

-MerleOne (December 16, 2009, 08:58 AM)

Yup... it was for December 12, 2009... Impulse is having a lot of one day sales leading up to Christmas- but you have to have Impulse installed to hear about them.  The deal of the day is BF2 Complete Collection for 25% off.  I've seen better deals, but still pretty good on a solid online shooter.

9544

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by wraith808 on December 09, 2009, 04:17 PM »

People in a cube farm that insist on using the speakerphone on calls. 

(posted as I sit here distracted from my coding by someone that shares my cube on the speakerphone with one(!) person... not even a conference call!)

9545

Developer's Corner / Re: Programming Language Adapability

« Last post by wraith808 on December 07, 2009, 01:00 PM »

The problem with your question is that the previous paradigms (Print, Radio, Television) were so completely divorced from each other that pretty much nothing survived from one medium to the other in terms of technology intact.  If we're to take that approach, then the answer would be none.  Because it would be so completely out of left field as to be a different dimension of communication.

Look at print to radio.  How many operators in the field (press operators, etc.. not producers of media) transitioned using their same daily operations.  Zero?  Then from Print to Radio... Zero again, I'd hazard.  From radio to Television?  There might be some technological overlap- but not much...

9546

General Software Discussion / Re: Virtual Drive/Folder on computer that lets you run remote softwares?

« Last post by wraith808 on December 01, 2009, 03:25 PM »

Dropbox doesn't allow remote execution of files, though, and that was the primary question, I think.

9547

General Software Discussion / Re: Virtual Drive/Folder on computer that lets you run remote softwares?

« Last post by wraith808 on December 01, 2009, 09:03 AM »

Probably not, because it's a lot of work and quite complex, is the jist of it.

9548

Living Room / Re: TheGameCrafter: Cool new site to help you make and sell indie board/card games

« Last post by wraith808 on November 30, 2009, 03:30 PM »

I will send a rare DC Games Division mug to the first donationcoder member who creates a fully completed ordereable game on that site -- plus I will order your game and review it

-mouser (November 27, 2009, 03:41 PM)

I might actually take you up on that... I've had an idea for a while...

9549

What's the Best? / Re: What's the best Journal (Diary) software?

« Last post by wraith808 on November 30, 2009, 03:29 PM »

I never had a journal come anywhere close to 2GB in size!  I can't even imagine that...

9550

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: (un)OFFICIAL BLACK FRIDAY Thread

« Last post by wraith808 on November 30, 2009, 10:38 AM »

The digital games sites are all having BF thru CM sales other than GoG.

http://www.gamersgate.com
http://www.steampowered.com
http://www.impulsedriven.com
http://www.direct2drive.com