Amazon Wii Twitter Bot | overstimulate

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 amazon twitter wii comments

I had the idea to write a bot that would check Amazon for Wii availability a long time ago. I finally got around to writing it.

Introducing WiiMe

WiiMe is a twitter bot. It checks amazon every second to see if there are any Wii's available, and if so will update the status on Twitter. So if you 'follow' the bot, Twitter will send you a message as oon as the bot finds Wii's!

Implementing WiiMe was easy, as I had written much of the code for other projects which integrate with Amazon (Book Burro) and Twitter (Book Finder).

I've not mentioned Book Finder here, but it is a bot, that if you send it a direct message, you will get a response of the price range for the book at Amazon. You can send the bot either an ISBN or a string - sending the ISBN isbetter since it finds the exact book you are looking for.

Using Twitter as a platform for notifications is pretty cool. Twitter solves notifications to phone, IM, and (soon) email - I only have to write the code that is unique to my app.

Already 3 people have got a Wii thanks to WiiMe! (and that was before I had even shared it with anyone)

I had previously tracked Wii available on Amazon with a Grasemonkey userscript.

Responses to "Amazon Wii Twitter Bot"

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 Peter says:
Thanks I got a wii for my sister-in-law via your twitter tracker. Wondering how hard it would be to set one up for Wii remotes too.
Tue, 25 Mar 2008 Joshua McKenty says:
Peter, I've built a cheap knock-off of WiiMe (jesse knows, already) that you can use for ANY Amazon item - you can find it at http://buylater.cognition.ca.