Last week, I began working on a program to retrieve prices from marketplace items and store the results for easy trend lookups. This gives everyone a chance to tell me exactly what they are looking for in a website that stores information on the marketplace. Also, as soon as I can get a beta up, all code will be open sourced. If you have an apache server and java you too could have your own marketplace program built off of a convienent backbone. If you dont, you could still program up a few things and if I like the idea, I will be glad to add it to my version.
Currently, the program takes in a list of items and searches for the lowest price for each item. A main html page is then generated which shows each item, the date my program last checked the item, and the lowest price on the marketplace for the given item. Each item will then have a link to its own page that will list times and dates that each item has been checked, in reverse chronological order. The reverse chronological order is designed to allow you to more easilly spot trends. Wouldn't you prefer to start from the beggining of the items existance and then work your way down to its current price today?
So give me suggestions or comments on what you would like to see in a marketplace bot!
If you would like to gain some java programming experiance working in a team on a small project thats relatively easy to jump into, then this is a perfect oppertunity! There are tons and tons of improvements that could be made whose only limiting factor is really the time it takes me to build them.
Once I have the beta code distributed (Hopefully before next weekend) if you would like to join my development time (currently consisting only of me) simply talk to me about your programming experiance and what you would like to see in a marketplace bot.
Not interested in programming yourself but would love to see some specific things done? Post here and tell me about them! If I like the idea and I will gladly work on it. I just can't promise you instant results.
smile *EDIT*
Here is the beta release!
Check it out here!