Woot Alarm:

Want something that will notify you when Woot has something good? Especially during a Woot-off? This can help you out.

Requirements

Usage

  1. Unzip someplace on your computer that won't get cleared out, and remember the path to where you saved everything.
  2. Open up the Scheduled Tasks folder, either from the control panel or from Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools.
  3. Add a new scheduled task, name it whatever you want, set the starting folder to wherever you saved the files, and for the command enter "java -jar woot.jar <arguments>". Arguments will be explained later.
  4. Set the schedule to execute at whatever time you want it to check. I have mine set to check at 1:03am (EST) every day, and during a Woot-off, I'll set it for something between once a minute and once every five minutes.

Arguments

-s: Save the name of the product so that if it is seen on the next check, the alarm will not go off again (useful for overnight Woot-offs, and it should not affect daily use). Saves the product name to a file named "last.w00t" in the same directory as the .jar file.
-t <timeout>: By default, the black command window will stay open for 10 seconds after completing (successfully or with an error) so that you can read any messages, including the product name, price, and percent remaining, so you don't have to go look at the main page if you don't want to. Use this argument to change how long the window stays open in milliseconds after completing the check (so 5 seconds = 5000 milliseconds).
<anything else>: Everything else counts as a keyword, and if it shows up, it will set off the Woot-alarm. You may use quoted phrases here (such as "hard drive"). Comparisons are case-insensitive. Note that if you enter something like "ide", the alarm will trigger for words containing that sequence of letters (for example, "video"), so I would suggest using " ide " as the pattern to look for.

The Alarm

The Woot-alarm, if triggered by a keyword showing up in the product name, will tell Winamp to start playing. Make sure that Winamp is running and has songs in its playlist, and that your speaker volume is high enough so that you can hear it (or so that it can wake you up). Also, you probably shouldn't leave Winamp playing, as you won't be able to tell if the Woot-alarm tells it to start.

Error Codes

If you happen to miss the command window, the "Last Result" column of the Scheduled Tasks folder will tell you whether there was a problem. Here are the meanings of the codes that it displays:
0x0: No problems
0x1: No keywords provided
0x2: Error with name resolution looking up www.woot.com
0x3: Failure to create a socket and connect to www.woot.com
0x4: Error creating input and output streams for network communication
0x5: Error reading the response from the socket
0x6: Bad response from the server (perhaps it was overloaded)
0x7: Error reading the page from the socket
0x8: Unable to find the product name (perhaps the layout changed)
0x9: (Not used)
0xA: Error reading or writing the "last.w00t" file
0xB: Unable to find Winamp (did you remember to start it?)

Download

Application (executable jar and DLL)
Source (Java and C)
To compile, you will need JDK 5.0 SE and MinGW.

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