Entrepreneur Geek

Putler: Paypal Reporting, Monitoring and Planning tool for Windows, Linux and Mac

If your business accepts payments via Paypal, chances are you login to the Paypal website a few times in the day to check your balance. You would even keep an eye on email alerts of new sales and feel happy when you close the day with good sales.

The Entrepreneur’s Urge

I can tell you from my own experience that I am on the edge of my seat when we launch a new product. I am biting my nails when we push “Send” on a newsletter with a special offer. I am curious to find out how much money I made while I was sleeping, and check my Paypal balance the moment I start my computer.

You may be a web entrepreneur, a microISV, a startup or an expert offering online courses. The urge to see how well you are selling is common to all. You may be looking forward to the first sale of your newly launched product or want to track your monthly performance against your targets.

The Problem

Logging in Paypal takes time. And if you keep it idle the session also times out quickly. Now this is good for Paypal, but bad for us. All we want to do is check the Paypal balance and find out what products are selling. We want some quick bits of information and get back to our work. The process of logging in and viewing details eats up time. And biggest, it distracts you!

The Solution: Putler

Now sure, you can write-up a small program that will check your Paypal balance. You could host it on your internal server and keep hitting it when you feel like satisfying your natural urge to check your Paypal balance! But why to make things complicated (and spend time understanding and building those scripts) when you can have someone give it to you on a platter?

Welcome Putler!
Putler shows your Paypal balance on your desktop, notifies you of balance changes, lets you set a target, shows today’s transactions and tells you how well are you doing against the target. It’s a simple and effective tool to watch your Paypal account right from your computer.

Just give your Paypal API information to Putler and he will start monitoring your Paypal balance. He will gently notify you when the balance changes. He even draws a nice chart of your daily balances along with a target you may have set.

This gives you a never before visibility on targets vs performance for your Paypal business account.

Apps Magnet Launches Putler Alpha. Get it now for free!

We are releasing a public Alpha of Putler today. Get it free, monitor your Paypal account, achieve business goals, and give us feedback!

Download Putler for free now!

We are starting with only the basic features, but will make Putler smarter and stronger as he grows! Do send in your ideas and suggestions on how we can make him better!

Thank you!

I wrote yesterday that I am working on a time estimate slider like The Hit List. It’s finally ready!

Here’s how it looks in The Hit List.

Smart Estimate Slider in The Hit List

And here’s how it looks in my Flex application:

Smart Estimate / Duration Slider in Flex

Want to see how it works? Here’s the live example.

Want the source code? Download source MXML here.

What does this slider do?

• Drag the slider to select estimated hours / duration.
• The drag thumb will snap differently between 0h to 1h (every 15 minutes), 1h to 1d (every 15 minutes, but within ticks), and 1d to 1w (every 2 hours).
• Can set the default value for slider
• Value of slider is converted to hours
• Can define hours in a day and days in a week
• Estimation slider shows up when focus goes in the text field. Hides when you click Done button (or another screen element that can get focus). But not when you focus on the slider itself.

It was a challenge, and I loved solving it. Had to hard code some calculations, but it’s still flexible. Allows customizing hours in a day and days in the week. This example also demonstrates Number Formatter, and how to handle focus events.

Still haven’t converted hours into a more readable text (e.g. 40h into 1w). But that’s for later.

Here’s another thing that you may like! Card Deck animation like The Hit List!

Do you like it? How would you have done it?

I was trying out a GTD application the other day called The Hit List. The application is superb, and I was really impressed with their attention to detail. One thing that excited me was their card view – and especially how they animated card swaps. You see a deck of cards, and as you navigate between next / previous cards, it animates picking the card and pushing it back, or taking it from the back of the stack and putting it at top. This was very much like how you would do it manually.

So I replicated it in Flex!

Click to see Card Deck animation in action

Interesting things in this example (or what can you learn):

• Card deck is drawn using Graphics API. We draw Rounded Rectangles and give the last one a shadow.
• Animation effects are done in a sequence.
• Changing the stack ordering of the cards to give a realistic effect.

Want source? Download the source code for this Card Deck Animation in Flex.

This is only an example. I am sure there are things to improve. I learned a lot while building this and I hope it’s useful for you.

Thanks to Sunny & Pradeep for doing the ground work on this. Kudos to Potion Factory for building an inspiring application

Update: iPhone 3G was launched in India. But with exorbitant price tags. 31K and 36K are just too much for this phone. I don’t suggest buying it at this price. Wait a few more months! The price will come down!

(Photo Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com)

The latest version of the iPhone will be launched around 11 July. And it will be available in India. The price will be $199 for the 8GB model, and $299 for the 16GB one. It will have 3G, GPS and much more!

Things look very exciting for the iPhone now! At the same time, Samsung is launching a competitor!

Time to dump Reliance?