Folks, the latest patch of hair I've torn out was in the name of getting up to speed with eBay's affiliate program and API. The details of getting all that to work are best left for my therapist, but the good news is that you now have more buying options for any given item. Just go to a toy's package details page, and any available eBay auctions for that item will be listed. The tricky part, of course, is wading through all the thousands of Transformers listings up on eBay at any one time, and figuring out if, say, a particular Optimus Prime from the Cybertron line of toys refers to the deluxe or voyager incarnation of the toy. It's the kind of thing that gives me seizures if I spend too much time on it. I'm still tuning the matching algorithm I came up with, but to be safe I err on the side of being too careful, meaning that I'm more likely to ignore a listing I'm unsure of than to include it, and so far the system seems to be working pretty well for a day's work.
Anyway, this is all paving the way for even groovier features down the road. In the meantime, please, please use the links if you're going to be fishing around on eBay, because, well, even your poor 'ol buddy Shmax needs to eat from time to time.
- shmax
