Tieclip Shutting Down October 31st

Dear Friends, Users, Countrymen,

As of October 31st, 2012, Tieclip will be closing our doors.

This was not an easy decision to make, but owing to increasingly adverse market conditions, and a difficult roadmap ahead, Kevin and I have decided that it's the right time to move on to bigger and better projects.

I wanted to take the time to thank each and every one of you for all the support, feedback, and awesome well-wishes you've given us over the past year and a half. It has been an absolute pleasure to design software not only for you, but with you.

Tieclip will remain active until October 31st, at which point we will be shutting down the service. At that time, all user data will be deleted, all Tieclip Pro subscriptions will be canceled, and any unused days will be refunded.

Thanks again to all our amazing users, without you guys none of this would have been possible. It has been a fantastic experience and neither Kevin nor I would trade it for the world.

If you have any questions please feel free to email us at contact@tiecliphq.com or contact me directly at BenHodes@tiecliphq.com.

And now, onward and upwards!

Ben Hodes
Co-Founder

Kevin Barnes
Co-Founder

Hey, remember garage sales? They’re like craigslist but not on the internet, and they’re awesome.

I am very pleased to announce that Tieclip has teamed up with our very own Capitol Hill Seattle Blog to sponsor the upcoming Capitol Hill Garage Sale! This is truly an awesome community wide event and we are really excited to be a part of it.

The garage sale is Saturday, June 9th all across the Hill, with a community location at Broadway Hill Park (Federal & Republican). If you’re anywhere near Seattle I would highly recommend stopping by, as there promises to be over 60 individual garage sales, and you just know there’s some kick-ass hidden treasures to be had.

If you want to help spread the word, we’ve thrown together this awesome flyer that you can print out and staple to your nearest phone poll, tree, or city council alderman.

Download the flyer: chs-garage-sale-day.pdf [565 KB]

We’ll be manning a booth at the community location, so stop by and say hello!

New Feature Tuesday: Auto-Location

We here at Tieclip believe in helping you be as lazy as humanly possible. That's why we created our Best Guess™ search technology, so you don't have to think very hard. In that rich tradition, today we are pleased to announce yet another time saving feature: auto-location.

With new auto-location, Tieclip will locate your nearest ZIP Code for you automatically, saving you precious keystrokes and countless seconds. Also, it makes us 10 times more likely to get into an issue of Wired because now we can say we do "geo-location" and they love that stuff.

Anyway, enjoy the new feature, and remember to drop us a line with any questions or comments.

Automatically search across nearby cities

Today we are pleased to roll out an update that automatically includes nearby cities in your search results. Best part? You don't have to do a thing. Tieclip automatically deduces which craigslist locations are closest to you and automatically includes them in your search.

For example, say you're in Seattle: your results will now include Bellingham, Olympia and more--just in case that great deal was lurking a little farther away from home.

If you're in Boston, you'll now get New Hampshire and Western Massachusets included at no extra cost, not that you pay sales tax on craigslist anyway.

And if you're in San Francisco you can now rest easy knowing you'll never miss a deal in Sacramento or Stockton, that is, assuming you can catch a train out that far.

Try it out, you just might be surprised to learn what you've been missing.

How to search craigslist with Tieclip

Searching craigslist can be a chore. You know you should use it more often, but it's just so annoying to sift through pages of blue links looking for what you want. Thankfully, Tieclip (http://tiecliphq.com) makes searching craigslist quick and easy.

Say you're looking to buy an iPad 2. People are starting to unload their old iPads now that the new iPad 3 has a new screen with a billion more gigapixels, so now is a great time to buy.

Enter what you're looking for and your zipcode. That's it.

First, we enter what we're looking for (iPad 2) and our zipcode. Tieclip automatically figures out the best keywords for our search and which local craigslist will work the best.

Rate items just like Netflix, only for buying stuff instead of watching stuff.

Next, we rate some items. By telling tieclip what you like (and what you don't) we can use some pretty sophisticated algorithms to recommend only the best items, and get rid of the fluff.

All your results, sorted by recommendation. How useful is that?

And that's it! Sort and filter your results to quickly find a great item. Send an email, and you're done in 5 minutes. It's almost... too easy.

But wait, there's more! Create an account and we'll save your search, keep checking it even while you're asleep, and even send you email alerts the minute a great new item is posted. Searching criagslist shouldn't be a difficult experience, and with tieclip it's easy as can be.

Oh, and it's free. What have you got to lose? Try it today.

IE8 Facebook XD Proxy fix

I find little else as infuriating as bashing my head against some phantasmal 3rd-party issue which is stopping me from working on something I'm actually interested in.

Thankfully, that’s not a problem I’ve had to deal with recently, as I’m currently working with the always phenomenally documented Facebook JavaScript SDK and world-class standards based web browser Internet Explorer 8.

That being said, if you find yourself using the Facebook JavaScript SDK, specifically FB.login(), and find that in some browsers your callback function is never executed because of a blank popup titled XD Proxy, I hope this post can help.

The Problem

• Utilizing Facebook’s FB.login() results in a blank popup with the title XD Proxy, and therefore, no callback.
  
  

The Cause

• I’m honestly not 100% sure, but I believe it has something to do with IE8 handling cross domain communication poorly.
  
  

The Solution

• When calling FB.init() make use of a Custom Channel URL
  
  

Tieclip Beta is LIVE

Kevin and I are extremely pleased to announce that as of 12AM PST 11/29/2011 Tieclip is live to the world! We’ve tweaked the site to be even easier to use than before, and we’re really excited to roll out the red carpet. With our new hotness, simply tell us what you’re looking for, your zip code, and we take care of the rest. Really, that's it.

But the terrific news doesn’t stop there, oh no. Today we are pleased to announce our new ratings system to help you find what you want on craigslist faster and easier than you probably though possible.

Just like Netflix™ you rate items 1-5 stars. As you rate more items, Tieclip beings to learn what you like, and what you don’t. When new items are posted to craigslist, eBay, or any other supported site, we can then take a guess at how much you’ll like that item, and give it a projected rating.

Better still, if you upgrade to Tieclip Pro (coming soon!) you can choose to receive email alerts whenever new items are posted that match your preferences. It really does take all the stress out of shopping on craigslist.

So please, try it out, and let us know what you think (we love feedback). It couldn’t be much easier, and we think you’ll be really happy with the results.