Projects

Here are some projects I’ve been working on and continue to support based on the feedback of its users.  There’s something about working on personal projects that really push you to do your best to deliver something useful and of higher quality to a vast majority of people.  I hope these applications will be of great usage to you as they were fun to work on.

imageAmazon Book Linker v1.1

This is a free plugin for Windows Live Writer which allows you to search for a book on Amazon and insert a link to it on your blog post.

Features:

  • Powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) which provides fast and accurate lookups of practically any existing book.
  • Easily and seamlessly insert a link to a book on your blog post using a customized HTML template based on some predefined macros.
  • Allows you to provide your own Amazon Associate Tag to each link so that you can make a sales commission when someone buys a book from you.  Plus, your Amazon Associate Tag will be remembered every time, so you basically have to enter it once.
  • Gives you the opportunity to specify the Amazon locale to use for your search (i.e., Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, etc.)
  • View the details of any book and buy it directly from the plugin.
  • Preview the HTML code that will be inserted in your blog post.
  • Dynamically choose the book cover’s image size and view the changes on-the-fly.

Scenario:

In this scenario,  I’m making a search with the keywords “Martin Fowler” because I’m interested in inserting a link to one of his books.  Since I’ve set the settings to lookup the book on Amazon.ca (Canada), the links to all the books will come from there.  If I want, I can also tell the application to search on Amazon.com (United State), Amazon.jp (Japan), Amazon.de (Germany), Amazon.fr (France) or Amazon.co.uk (United Kingdom).  I can specify this information by clicking on the Settings button which will popup an “Advanced Settings” window for me to enter this information and more.

Furthermore, my own Amazon Associate Tag will be used for this link, so that when someone orders this book from my link, I’ll make a sales commission from it.  You can specify your own Amazon Associate Tag instead.  I can always change the Amazon Associate Tag through the “Advanced Settings” window, but what’s even cooler is that you only have to do this once.  That’s right, the application will remember your Amazon Associate Tag next time you use it!

If I want to modify the HTML template, I can simply click on the Modify Template button which will popup a window with a text editor and modify the template from there by using some of the predefined macros.  A list of the available predefined macros is a available by clicking on the Help button of the “Modify Template” window.  This way, I can come up with my own template to match my site or blog.

If I want to view more details on the book, I can select a book and then click on the Details button.  From there, I can also decide to purchase it by clicking on the Shop Now! button.

And if I like this application so much that I can live without it, I can always decide to make a donation to Brian for all his hard work. :)

Donations

I love writing and delivering computer applications both as a product innovator and a software programmer, even more when such products can be used for free by many people.  I give thanks to God for giving me the necessary imagination and minimum intelligence needed to bring my visions to reality.  If you like my projects and would like to make a donation as a token of appreciation (my Paypal ID is bdicroce@gmail.com), you may do so by clicking on the Donate button below.  Thank you!  Gracias!  Merci!
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