Finally, A Woot! Product Feed!

Woot Logo

I absolutely love Woot!, the one-day-one-deal site that posts a new item for sale at a usually incredible price every day at midnight central time. I’ve bought a few things from the service here and there over the years, and never been on top of my game enough to grab a bag of crap, but I’m happy with the stuff I’ve bought.

But there’s a little problem. I used to subscribe to the Woot! RSS feed back when I used a desktop RSS reader, then again when I used Bloglines, and then again when I finally gave up and added it to my Livejournal friendslist. Then, before the holidays in 07, the Woot folks apparently decided that not enough people were reading their oh-so-witty blog posts, and changed the site’s RSS feed to include them, instead of the way it was before – only the daily product.

I didn’t care too much until they started posting incredibly image-heavy (not that I care about loading times, it just clogs up a list of posts in a feed reader) and generally uninteresting blog posts. I went searching their site for a products-only feed to soothe my pain, but found nothing. Eventually I turned to the rest of the Web, hoping that I couldn’t possibly be alone in my predicament, and sure enough, I’m not!

I found someone else with the same complaint; and they had actually contacted Woot about it where I hadn’t. Woot’s reply was…lacking. Essentially without being dismissive, but without being helpful either, they told him to get lost and go Google it. He didn’t like that, and when I read their response, I didn’t like it either. So he went ahead and wrote an app that parses Woot! blog feeds for just the products, and adds them to a custom Feedburner feed. Hallelujah! Trevor saves the day!

I commented to let him know how indebted I am to him for creating the feed, and now I’m telling the world so no one has to deal with what we dealt with. Check it out for yourself:

[ DailyWoot FeedBurner Feed ]

And let Trevor know he’s freaking awesome:

[ Trevor Fitzgerald :: Daily Woot Product Feed ]

3 thoughts on “Finally, A Woot! Product Feed!

  1. Pingback: Bookmarks for Monday, February 4th — Trevor Fitzgerald

  2. Ed La Touf

    I purchased a eeE PC 9000. i continuously have to reload the operating system. It usually happens after I have received an automatic update to my Flash Player (needed to get to my favorite application on Facebook). I called ASUS who provides maintenance, they said the hard drive is too small and no updates can be applied(kind of makes the machine unusable). when I contacted WOOT they sent an Email with lots of information, but the last two bullets were telling:

    “If you receive your item and it doesn’t work, contact the manufacturer first. They made the junk. Let them deal with it. If they turn out to be total tools, contact service@woot.com and we’ll grudgingly provide some further assistance. ”

    “If you receive your item and decide you don’t like it, take it to eBay or pawn it off on one of your so-called friends. We don’t want it, either.”

    I will never use WOOT again and if you do, your doing it at your own risk!

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