Let TikiWade keep you Alert

Although there have not been many updates to the blog lately, there have been some changes going on under the scenes at TikiWade. The entire UI was re-written to make it much easier for managing changes going forward, and most recently I added alerts.

What are alerts? great question, if you enjoy finding stuff, then I think that you will quickly find a use for them, and wonder what you ever did without them.

You can think of an alert as a way for TikiWade to tell you that it might have found something that you might be looking for. It's kind of like having Tikiwade constantly perform automatic searches for you.

To set up alerts you will need to have a TikiWade account. Once logged in

1. go to the My Account page

2. Select the Alerts tab

3. Select the Create Alert button in the upper left hand corner of the tab
4. In the dialog that appears, type in the phrase that you would normally search for on TikiWade (Hint: you can test out search phrases on TikiWade in a separate tab)

5. Optional: You can refine the search by type, category, location and distance.
6. Save the alert.

Now, while TikiWade is scouring the vast number of classified ad websites on the internet, it will alert you via email whenever it finds something that matches one of your searches. It's that easy. Note that you will not be notified of current matches, only future ones.

Note that from the My Account->Alerts tab you can also edit and delete alerts like you would any listing on TikiWade.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year. We have been working hard on making TikiWade easier to use and believe that we have done a pretty good job. The searches are much faster now and give back much better search results. You will also notice that we have even more listings from even more sources.

New DB Server up and running

We have our new DB server up and running. You should notice that TikiWade is returning results a lot faster, I know I have. That is all for now.

I Wanna go fast.

Sorry for the slowness of the site over the last week. What caused the slowness was a change in how I collect and store keywords from listings. I am also now indexing the listings descriptions too. This caused the number of keywords that the database had to grow exponentially. It turns out that a little SQL optimization can go a long way in speeding things up.

I also started using a technology that I learned about and played with last year called memcached. It is a server that allows me to store database results in memory for a little while so that the database does not need to be re-searched as you page through the results, only when you perform the initial search.

Thank you everyone for your continued support as we grow TikiWade to be a better way to find and sell classifieds online.

List your stuff before you know you want it listed

In an effort to get more classified listing content on TikiWade we have implemented a new technology that ties in with Google (now known as Topika) maps that will look through the satellite image of your home for various merchandise that you no longer want and list it for you on TikiWade.

This technology uses a complex algorithm to determine what to list based on your past and current usage of the objects as well as matching your personality to the items in your home. It will even list that old China that you keep in boxes in the store room of your basement.

Don't worry though, TikiWade will continue to keep your personal information private by pre-selecting buyers for your stuff based on current trends, age, and a number of other shopper profiling techniques.

Please let un know if you like this service as it is in beta.

Wade

No More Dead Ends

Don't you hate it when you find a listing that you are interested in and after you click on it it says that it has been removed? Well we do to. So we are now constantly going through the thousands of listings that we have and verifying that they are still available, so you don't have to.

Enjoy, and please keep on telling us what you like/don't like, etc...

Thanks and have a great day,
Wade

Big News

The big news is that we have been remodeling and have made some exciting changes.

First, we are now gathering and indexing classified listings from several sources and making them searchable through TikiWade. We are currently just getting the listings from TikiWade, but will soon be getting them from other areas as well. We are only holding on to 5 days worth of listings at the moment.

Secondly, as you will notice, the home page has changed to just a search field. Thats right, you now need to search to find what you are looking for, but I'll share a little secret with in you in this blog post, if you leave the search field blank and just click the "Tiki Search" button you will get back everything.

Thirdly, if the listing on the other site has images in the postings, we will try to grab the first image and use it as a gallery image. Your listings will still look best when they are hosted on TikiWade though, because you have more control.

We will continue to work on improving TikiWade, please continue to check it and give us feedback. Please also tell others about TikiWade. The more people that are using it the more we can improve it.

Thanks

Wade