TicTap Blog

For a long time now, every product in TicTap has a price alert feature. It allows you to set a price and we’ll email you when it meets your budget. This is a nifty feature that has saved many people money.

But previously, it would only track your budget against the lowest price.

Today, we release an improved version that lets you set what type of seller you want to track against. You can choose to track Amazon.com, Used seller or 3rd Party new seller.

This is helpful for many international buyers who can only buy from Amazon.com and not a Marketplace seller. Or you might have already made up your mind to buy your favourite book used.

Let us know how you like it or if you encounter problems

Of late, the external web host of TicTap Contextual Ads has been havng some issues.

We’re disappointed enough to want to move over to a new host. That might take about a week. So we ask for your understanding if we face anymore issues in the mean time.

This has been a lesson for both Damon and I.

TicTap Contextual Ads is back up and running again. We hope this problem doesn’t occur again with the web host. They’re actually helpful guys, and accidents happen.

If anyone has problems using TCA, please drop us a note.

Thanks for your patience!

We’ve just been informed by the folks who host tca.tictap.com that they’ve experienced a dramatic hard disk failure.

It will be a while before they restore our files from backup. In the meantime, TicTap Contextual Ads will be inaccessible to new users.

We’re really sorry about this.

Not many people are aware that we have designed TicTap for use in screen readers and wireless devices.

Our stats tells us that most people still visit the main TicTap site. So we’ve included 2 convenient links within each product page that link directly to the wireless and screen reader page.

This should be helpful if you are using TicTap on a small screen device like a PDA or smartphone, or if you are visually impaired.

We’re in the midst of the upgrade to TCA version 1. This is a major rewrite of the code as we try to add in more useful features to spur people to buy from your sites.

Let us know what you want ok?

Previously, it was difficult to know if an Amazon Marketplace seller ships internationally. We just didn’t have that information to tell you at TicTap.

That has changed.

From today, we make clear which sellers ship internationally. If you don’t see the ‘Ships internationally’ phrase for a seller’s description, that means it doesn’t.

Expedited shipping information is also presented when it is available.

With version 2.2 of the WordPress Plugin for TicTap Contextual Ads, you can now preview your ads in the Configurations page.

Every time you update your configurations, the plugin will show you the products that will appear in your blog.

It also helps with troubleshooting. If you can see product previews, then you know TCA is set up properly.

Amazon UK has a new beta tool for its Associates called Self-Optimising Links.

According to the site, “Self-Optimising Links feature products chosen automatically based on the content of your site. To create Self-Optimising Links simply modify the template and appearance elements and copy the resulting code on to your site. With Self-Optimising Links, you do not need to chose which product, product line or even keyword that best fits a page. Our algorithm will take care of reviewing your site and selecting relevant product offerings.”

This sounds just like Google Adsense, except that it shows Amazon product banners.

We had users of TicTap Contextual Ads write to us before saying that as long as TCA does not ‘magically figure out’ the context of a page, then Google is ok with its use alongside Adsense.

It seems that Amazon’s Self-Optimising Links violates that. So users should check with Google and Amazon to see if both can be used at the same time.

If Self-Optimising Links don’t work for you (and they only work in the UK), you can try TicTap Contextual Ads. It’s free, highly configurable, easy to use and doesn’t violate any algorithmic contextual ads programs like Google, MSN or Yahoo!.

We’ve just release version 2.1 of the WordPress Plugin for TicTap Contextual Ads.

It contains code to check if wp_footer() and wp_head() were declared in the WordPress templates, and alerts you if it cannot find them.

In the previous post, we mentioned this problem of plugin hooks that theme creators leave out.