First Post

Remember when Slashdot was cool? Remember how cool it was to get a reasonable insightful first post in just a few lines (which all you could do it in since you had very little time otherwise it wouldn't be the first post). Well this is the first post of the blog for Early Miser and as such I have no rush to push out a witty comment. No one knows about this blog or this site yet really but we have spent a lot of time working on it. Early Miser is a cool web mash up (OK I think it is cool). It's built on top four seperate shopping comparison services and web services. We take the Amazon EWS web service, adding a liberal dose of Shopping.com, a heeping helping of Yahoo Shopping, and add in the ever present Ebay for a blended shopping experience that makes things much easier for the average shopper. We didn't just stop there though. We decided that being a useful meta shopping comparison engine wasn't enough. We decided to add some things to make your life easier.

• RSS Feeds. Every single product has an individual RSS feed. This means you can effectively moniter prices from every shopping channel we have a product. So you don't even need to create an account to take advantage of our service. You can simply add the RSS feed of a product you are interested in monitering into your RSS reader or bloglines. The feed will be updated when the price for that product is updated on any of the sites - Amazon, Shopping.com, Ebay or Yahoo Shopping.
  


• Custom Feeds - Custom feeds allow you to create a group of products you are interested in. For example I have gathered my regular office supplies for my home based office into a feed I have labeled Office Supplies. I have tagged the feed with HP3015, HP1320, toner, cartridge, paper, and refills. Please note to take advantage of custom feeds you need to set up an account
  
  
• Pricing triggers - Pricing triggers allow you to have a feed updated when a specific pricing condition is reached for a any of the products in that custom feed. For example let's say you want to be notified when your product has reached 10% below the trailing seven day average. By setting a pricing trigger in the feed management section of the site the RSS feed associated with your custom feed will be updated when any of the providers you have selected are updated with a price at or below your pricing trigger.
  

There are a ton of great features on the site, I am highlighting just a few of them right now. You can also build a feed and specifically exclude providers or even search results within those providers. In the coming few weeks I am going to be highlighting and explaining how to use various aspects of the site. In the mean time enjoy Early Miser