Baywatch 1.0beta

Are you tired of checking your "My eBay" account for soon ending auctions or getting unreliable reminder mails? Take a closer look at Baywatch.
It catches the actual auction opened in your frontmost browser window and sticks it right into iCal.
You can specify the reminder alarm in the preferences and if you wish to add another auction the "Refresh button" is your friend.
Adding an auction to iCal is as simple as reopening the auction by clicking the URL in the event information.
So you can easily organize your eBay auctions and never bother about any missed opportunities.

German:
Baywatch übernimmt ebay Auktionen in iCal und setzt einen entsprechenden Erinnerungsalarm für das Auktionsende.
Wenn man Baywatch öffnet, wird geprüft ob die aktuelle Seite im Browser (Safari oder Firefox) eine eBay Auktion ist. Ist dies der Fall, wird der Name der Auktion im Baywatchfenster angezeigt und man kann mit einem Klick auf Yes die Auktion in iCal übernehmen. Dort wird einmalig ein neuer Kalender mit dem Namen "Baywatch" angelegt und die Auktion (sowie alle zukünftigen) als Termin eingetragen. Zusätzlich erhält der Termin einen Erinnerungsalarm. Die eBay Auktion kann man nun direkt über die URL der Termininformation erreichen.
Anregungen und Kritik bitte gerne per Mail oder in die Komentare.

Download Baywatch 1.0beta2 (1,2MB)

Comments

[Jonno]

It would be really nice if I could use fractions of an hour in "time diference". I am sure that there must be plenty of people there with the same problem.

[zuzu]

Great idea, nicely done, thanks a lot!

[Darkside]

Excellent start, great functionality!

I love that you can refresh with the Space bar (since the button has focus by default) and still hit Yes with Enter; perfect! Don't ever change this! :-)

Few suggestions, many of which are probably already on your to-do list:
- The application should remember its window position between launches.
- Should remember if the preferences drawer was open or not.
- Preference to set which sound plays for the alarm.
- Clarify the text in the Alarm Type pulldown; right now it's unclear -- e.g., "sound alarm" and "display alarm" are confusing, because iCal can't just make a sound without also displaying a message. I'd suggest using the same text as the alarm types in iCal: "Message" instead of "display alarm", "Message with sound" instead of "sound alarm", etc.
- If you open the preference drawer with the arrow, then use Command-D to close it, the arrow is out of sync with the drawer position (points down when closed, would point to the side when used to open the drawer).

I know this is a beta but this program is already incredibly useful; the rest is icing on the cake. :-)

[nils]

@ Jonno: I will try to bring support for partial hours into the final Version 1.0.

@ zuzu: thank you

@ Darkside: Many thanks for your pile of suggestions! They seem all very useful to me and as you expected nearly all of them are already on my to-do list.
Let´s see how much of them I can put into the final version 1.0.
And thanks for your commendation...

[Wuddel]

Hum, nice one. It actually worked fine until I deleted Firefox from my system. Now it constantly asks me for to location of Firefox.app, and denies to work with Safari.

[nils]

@Wuddel: That´s a known problem in the beta. The program checks if firefox is running and when it doesn´t find it, it asks to locate it manually. I will adapt the browser support in the final version.

[jhwoods]

Love your app, but find that it insists on "looking" for Firefox each time it opens. I then have to instruct it to "choose" Safari. Is there or will there ever be a way to make it default to Safari? Thanks.

[jhwoods]

Oooops! Guess I should have read the post above first. Thanks for addressing the issue I raised. The app is delightful and has already saved me on an auction I probably would have missed.

[Phil]

Gut wäre es, wenn man seine eBay-Account-Daten eingeben könnte und Baywatch würde in meinem Konto nachgucken, ob ich neue Auktionen hinzugefügt habe und wie lange sie noch laufen.

[cees]

Since recently, Baywatch does not add auctions to iCal any more.

However, when I try to add the same auction, since it is not visible in iCal on the day it should, Baywatch reports to overwrite an existing auction in iCal.

What do I wrong / what happens actually ?

[nils]

Hi Cees,

1. first of all please make sure you have the newest version of Baywatch (currently 1.0).
Your subject says 1.0b2, so perhaps its an error wich has been fixed in the current version.

2. Another possible explanation could be an inconsistency in the country settings.
The country of the ebay site you visit must suit the country settings in the system preferences.
For example when you live in america and go to ebay.com, then you must set USA as the region.
You can find it here: System Preferences -> Country Settings -> Format -> Region

So if you do a spotlight search on the eBay article you have added, you will most likely stumble across
your auction in ical (but on an absurd date).

If the error still exists please provide me with more details regarding your problem.
(ebay site, country setting, browser...)

kind regards,
nils werkmeister

[Tom]

Hi,
great tool, saves me lots of time and I'll never forget another auction:-)
Only one suggestion: Support for Camino

Regards
Tom

[dino]

I love using Chrome. It has intuitive icons and layout, has a very clean iPod http://rapid4me.com/?q=ipod like feel about it. There are however a number of sites that don’t support it like Hotmail and application driven sites that haven’t been set-up to use Chrome. So for now I surf using 2 browsers.