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Mobile app
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Since we started the site a few years ago, we've had consistent requests for a mobile app or a mobile version of the site. The first requests were for an iPhone app since that was the only decent mobile platform around at the time. Now we get even numbers of requests for iPhone and Android versions. We're in the final planning stages for how the mobile version of the site will work. I wanted to solicit feedback from our users to make sure we're on the right track. Let me know if we're going astray on anything here.Target features for the first version:
- Mobile version of the site instead of a native app. This way, iPhone, Android and Windows Phone users can all benefit
- Run as fast as a native app
- Internet connection only needed to update prices. Once that's done, you can browse the site without connectivity. This should be handy for those who have no phone signal at the flea market or garage sale
- Browse products by console
- Used and New prices
- eBay, Half, Amazon and GameStop prices
Plan to add later, if people want it:- barcode scanning
- search by name
- pricing cart
- charts
Are there any essential features we're missing? It's likely that the mobile site will initially be available only to paid subscribers. We try to give them new features first. We might also make the mobile version available to everyone, but have extra features for paid subscribers. We're still playing around with different options. We'd love to hear your thoughts. -
+1 for a mobile site.
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I think search or barcode scanning should be added as soon as possible, search for sure.Browsing through all the products by console can be a bit cumbersome with larger consoles like PS2, PS1, and DS.Scanning would come in handy when buying newer stuff. I've been at GameStop a number of times and wondered if some game in their bargain bin is really a good deal or not. Being able to scan it and see the price I could pay if I bought it somewhere else would be great.
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The pricing cart, for sure. This is the site feature I use most. Also, if you do make an Iphone app, I would love to help beta test it.
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I think a search feature is the most important of all features. At least for my purposes for the site. I want to know what a good price is for a game. Barcode scanning is more of a PR feature to add to the bullet list, in my opinion at least, but it's still a neat feature.And I would love to beta test an Android app if you need any testers for that. Me and fei3587 can be the dudes to cover each mobile platform.
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Sooo... I kind of went ahead and did this on my own! A friend of mine had been bugging me to make him an Android app to browse the site more easily, and I've certainly come across situations where I would find it handy, so I went ahead and did it. Here's a link to the Android Market: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.jgrue.vgpc
Features include:
- Search for games by title, browse by console, or scan a barcode.
- When browsing, order results alphabetically, by popularity, or by price.
- Display current used and new prices, as well as links to shop at Amazon, eBay, Half, JJ Games, etc.
- View pricing history on a multi-touch enabled graph.
There are some things mentioned here that it doesn't do (offline storage, shopping cart, other platforms) that I could possibly do if there's lots of demand, but I also went and tossed the source code onto GitHub so that the guys that run the site could use it as a base for themselves and extend it to movies as well. I just wanted to give myself a quick project to practice some Android programming concepts, and this fit the bill nicely.
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Great work Gruenberg. Very impressed. I will be posting a blog article about this to let more users know. The programming side of PriceCharting said they are really impressed with your work and wanted to tip their hats to you.gruenberg said:Sooo... I kind of went ahead and did this on my own! A friend of mine had been bugging me to make him an Android app to browse the site more easily, and I've certainly come across situations where I would find it handy, so I went ahead and did it. Here's a link to the Android Market: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.jgrue.vgpc
Features include:
- Search for games by title, browse by console, or scan a barcode.
- When browsing, order results alphabetically, by popularity, or by price.
- Display current used and new prices, as well as links to shop at Amazon, eBay, Half, JJ Games, etc.
- View pricing history on a multi-touch enabled graph.
There are some things mentioned here that it doesn't do (offline storage, shopping cart, other platforms) that I could possibly do if there's lots of demand, but I also went and tossed the source code onto GitHub so that the guys that run the site could use it as a base for themselves and extend it to movies as well. I just wanted to give myself a quick project to practice some Android programming concepts, and this fit the bill nicely. -
Wow. I downloaded your app and I too am very impressed. I haven't tried the barcode scanning yet, because I didn't want to install a separate barcode scanner just to try it but everything else looks great. Well done.gruenberg said:Sooo... I kind of went ahead and did this on my own!
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I'll have to install the iPhone app (if available) because I am constantly on the road looking for games and movies and this would benefit me (as well as others) for a "on-the-fly" solution.
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yes! thank you, gruenberg! :)
Edit: is there any way to sort by price (high to low or vice versa) when you search for a title? For instance if you search "mario" in the app, I would love to be able to sort it by price... also, filtering by console would be handy too!
Great job though! Barcode scanning and everything - awesome!! -
We've just released a mobile version of the site. You visit the same URL you always have and the site magically adapts to fit your mobile device. You can rotate your phone to see more features. It should work on iPhone and Android devices. We haven't tested it on Windows Mobile, but it should work there too. You can see the full details in the blog post.
As far as features go, every feature that's available on the desktop site is also available on the mobile site (except for historic prices). This includes searching by name, searching by UPC, the pricing cart, etc. We haven't implemented barcode scanning. After using the site ourselves for a while, we'll decide whether to add that feature.
We also haven't implemented offline mode and the performance isn't quite as fast as native. Although we've spent a lot of time on performance improvements, so it should be pretty responsive even on slow 2G networks.
Let me know what you think.
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