Woot-Off Alert! (or, a great use for RSS/Atom)
Update (04/13/2006): Good luck you woot fanatics!
For the past couple of days, one of my former co-workers has had her IM name set as “Will you be my woot-off alert?” I didn’t understand what it meant; I know woot is a site that sells overstocked “stuff” every day at very very interesting prices. I also know that a woot-off is a 24 hour period where they sell a new item everytime the last item runs out of stock, normally they only post one item a day… so a woot-off is quite a special day.
What is a woot-off alert though?
Aparently, this co-worker has been hitting “Refresh” on the main woot page trying to figure out what the newest woot item is. Not that this is a bad way to figure out that there is a new item, but it’s just not the laziest way you could possibly do it. And people that know me, know I’m lazy.
What Would Wes Do? (wwwd?)
- Download an RSS reader like Feedreader.
- Install that shizzle and then remove all the default feeds from the list. These are good feeds but a dedicated woot fan must not be distracted by things like “news and current events.” Alternatively, you can poke around in the program and figure out how to only have it check one feed… But, I’m lazy and not interested in learning how to use Feedreader.
- Add this feed to the Feedreader list: http://www.woot.com/blog/rss.aspx
- Turn on the desktop notification feature and set the check feeds setting to as often as you’d like to get torn away from your work.
If you follow those steps you’ll get distracted by a balloon pop up every time a new woot-off item comes up.
w00t!