I'm trying to finish the variation code this week or next.

I found one issue with finding prices on Amazon is that the best price of a shoe/clothing/etc can be hidden under the different variation of size and colors. For example, if you're interested in a given pair of pants, you first pick your size, then have to click around the various colors to see the pricing on each. Its time consuming, especially for variations on an item that can number in the dozens (think cell phone case designs).

I'm going to group items and allow at a glance all the pricing for variations of an item. No need to repeatedly click around.

This is going to be implemented into search results and other areas too. That way if a shoe that comes in 15 sizes and 8 colors only shows up in the search once. You won't need to scroll through repeating results for the same item.

PS: Variations will be available across all stores, not just Amazon. Amazon was used as the example since that is where the issue is most prominent.

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We've upgraded our image server to 16 TB of disk space this weekend.

Also revamped the watchlist emails we send out to include more information. The price tracker email now includes a link for the PDF screenshot (printable) for inclusion with your price drop paperwork.

We're going to schedule some downtime - around 15 mins at 7 - 8am on Wed for hard disk upgrade on the main database server; we will move the log files to different disks for performance increase.

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Ugh. Our SMTP host has throttled us. Apparently we sent out too many email notifications (watchlists, registrations, etc).

I've configured the system for a new host, but it's going to take 24 hours for the new host to approve the account.

All we can do now is wait. :(

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Makeuseof.com published an amazing article about Pricezombie last week!

Sometimes I wonder if I am doing a good job presenting all of the features we have here at PriceZombie. Do people find the site easy to use, can you find what you're looking for? Ben put all of my doubts to rest. He didn't rush through, he took the time to do an in depth examination of PZ and brought out all of our best features.

He got it, and that gives me hope that you will too.

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We just completed the Safari browser extension. You can download it from our extension page.

There has been a number of minor improvements in the chart code and logic, plus screenshots have been optimized further.

Let us know if you spot any issues on the Safari extension.

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Made a bunch of cleanup changes on the site:

- Screenshots fit inside the dialog box without scrollbars.
- Product view page has one shared dialog box for all screenshots, and they are downloaded in real time.
- In the browser extensions, the 'Other stores' tab now lists new and 3rd party prices individually.
- Store view page lists last parsed date as well as support info for extensions.
- Automatic image resizing for chrome to cut down on image filesizes.

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We found a logic bug in the lowest ever price page. It was technically working "correctly", showing products at their lowest price, sorted by last updated timestamp. However, if a product hasn't had a price change in 10 months, and was still at it's lowest price, that made it eligible for display on the page. Not exactly what most people would expect to see!

It's been updated to only show products with recent price changes at their lowest price points.

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Overstock.com has been added! 1.5 million products... phew!

We've also been approved to allow all of the stores in the browser extensions (had to go through a lengthy approval process), so most of the stores should now be viewable in the extension.

I've gotten approval for eBay, but that is currently on the back burner till we finish the Safari extension.

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The PriceZombie watchlist has been functional, but runs into problems because users cannot choose which condition of products they want (new, used, 3rd party, etc), or pick which stores they want to be notified on.

Today part 1 of the watchlist enhancement went live. You can now pick which condition you want. There is also an edit button on the watchlist page, allowing you to change target price and condition.

Part 2 will go out in about 24 hours. It will add the store selection functionality.

Finally, the extension will likely need to be updated for the new features to be available in its watchlist. Stay tuned for more updates!

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New version of the chrome extension has been released. In the old version, I found that sometimes the PZ icon stops rendering. It was an intermittent problem that seemed to happen randomly. That issue has been resolved.

There is also now 2 permissions instead of one permission for every store... the reason for this change is to prevent disabling of the extension:

In Chrome, when extension permissions are modified, the extension is automatically disabled until the user accepts the permission change. This is why the Firefox extension is still on version 0.7, while we've had to publish 5 new chrome versions. The reason for the 5 versions, is that we added more stores, and each was explicitly named in the manifest.

In order to avoid this in the future, the chrome extension now has the same permissions as the firefox version, where it can read all product pages.

In case you didn't know, the extensions are just javascript. You can inspect the javascript by enabling developer mode on the extension page.

If anyone wants the previous permissions, you can use the beta version of the extension, which explicitly lists each store. The beta and standard extension are identical in every way except in the beta, the manifest file lists each store individually. This also means anytime I add a store, you'll need to approve the extension manually as the permission change will auto disable the extension in your browser.

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