Further Speed Improvements

I have decided to turn on caching to full throttle.

This means that I don’t request the browser any more to check back with blummy.com (to see if something has changed in the configuration) when you click on your blummy bookmarklet. So if you have high latency times between you (e.g. when you are living on the opposite site of the planet) and blummy.com this will most probably be good for you.

The bad side — and that’s why I haven’t done this before — is that you might run into a stale copy of blummy more easily when you do some re-configuration. So here are two hints if you don’t see what you have configured:

  • Delete the blummy bookmarklet and re-drag it from the configuration page. There is a little random value that should prevent a stale copy.
  • Clear your browser cache.

I hope that you encounter a further speed increase with blummy and keep on spreading the word ;)

Introducing: Wish-O-Matic

So Christmas is approaching and you need to buy some presents for your friends. So good for the idea, but what to buy?

I’ve created a little web app for that, called Wish-O-Matic. You choose a few things of which you know that your friend likes them. That’s it. That app will tell you what would match these items.
The Amazon Web Service API is used, so the products are somewhat restricted to the products they offer.

Give it a shot: Wish-O-Matic

christmas, x-mas, gift, present

Create your blummlet: Wizard

Do you miss a service on blummy? Well, create it for yourself. Don’t have a clue how Javascript works? Does not matter anymore.

  • [Feature] Wizard for create your own blummlet

This should make it quite easy to create a blummlet for any service yourself.

Because space is a little limited there, I give a more detailed introduction here:

Suppose there was no blummlet for searching at Google and you wanted to create one:

  1. First, log in and go to the create a blummlet page. Open the wizard there.
  2. Open a new window or tab and navigate to the service (i.e. http://www.google.com/).
  3. Enter the query BLUMMY and submit the form. Wait for the results to appear.
  4. Click the location bar of your browser and copy the whole URL (mark the text and press Ctrl-C or Cmd-C). This would be http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=BLUMMY&btnG=Google+Search for me.
  5. Go back to the create blummlet page and type in the service name (i.e. Google) and paste the URL to the corresponding field (Ctrl-V or Cmd-V).
  6. Click “Create”.
  7. The wizard should have disappeared and most of the fields have been filled out. Now enter a description and click “Save”. Done.

blummy, wizard

Loading Blummy…

People have been complaining that it took more than one click to open blummy. The problem is that it may take some time to transfer the blummy script source to your computer (due to slow server, network, whatever). So after the first click, blummy is loaded from blummy.com, when you click again (before blummy appears), you instantly close blummy again, so nothing happens. Only after the third click blummy opens.

Now our user fuska had the great idea to display a small “loading blummy” text, so the user knows what’s going on.

  • [Feature] “Loading blummy…” informs the user about the current ongoings.

The downside of this update is that you need to replace your blummy bookmarklet (as the loading text is displayed by the bookmarklet to do that instantaneously). So go to blummy.com, log in, and drag blummy to your toolbar again. That should do the trick.

Thanks, fuska!

blummy, loading, feature