Mole End Software News February 2008

News from Mole End Software

We hope you have now settled into 2008 and are looking forward to an exciting year. Since the beginning if this we have been working on improvements to the Product Mash.

Product Mash
We have released a new version of the Product Mash with support for Shopping.com and RSS feeds. We have also added more features to allow easier and more complex feeds. For more information please go to the Released Software section.

Smart Stamp
We have written a knowledgebase article on how to integrate Actinic with the Royal Mail Smart Stamp software. More information at the following link:

http://moleend.helpserve.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=99

One Stop Order Processing
A new version is currently in beta. For more details please see the Products in beta section.

Software Released

Product Mash
The new product feeds and features are described below:

1. Shopping.com feed. You can get more infomation at the following link:

http://www.mole-end.biz/acatalog/Shopping.com_Feed_Product_Mash.html

2. You can now include hidden products in the feed (e.g. for Amazon). This is useful when the feed needs to represent your different product permutations as separate products (where your product linked products permutations are hidden on the website).

3. You can now use Custom Variables anywhere in your property definitions. You simply need to use a !!$ before and $!! after the custom variable to use. For example, to use a custom variable called EAN enter !!$EAN$!! in the field definition. Using this approach you can use more than 1 custom variable in a property definition.

4. You can include the contents of files for feed values. You need to put !![ before the filename and ]!! after the filename to include the text within the file. This is in addition to the already supported Actinic custom variable file contents type.

5. RSS feed. You can now publish a list of your product pages (or sections) on the internet. This can be used by your customers to monitor your available products (and when new ones become available). Some shopping portals also allow you to submit your products to their site as an RSS feed. For example, you can subscribe to Mole End's RSS feed (using your web browser or an RSS reader (such as www.rssreader.com or www.feedreader.com)) at www.mole-end.biz (at bottom left of the page).

We also offer RSS feeds for all of our Support knowledgebase articles (so that you can check for any new articles or you can easily look for the answer to one of your questions). An example for the Product Mash knowledgebase articles is:

http://moleend.helpserve.com/rss/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=view&kbcategoryid=3

To subscribe to any of the other product articles go to the relevant product knowledge base section (at moleend.helpserve.com) and click on (or subscribe to) the RSS icon at the top right of the article section.

You can get more information on the new feed at the following link:

http://www.mole-end.biz/acatalog/RSS_Feed_Product_Mash.html

6. We have added a feature to all the feeds that allow you to host the feed on your website (e.g. Google and Yahoo Sitemap, PriceRunner) to automatically pickup your Actinic settings.

7. There is also a new feature that allows the text from within the HTML description to be included in the feed.

Existing customers of any of the feeds can get the an upgrade to include the new features by simply pressing the upgrade button (in the About box). The RSS and Shopping.com feeds are free to anyone who has purchased an All feeds Product Mash license.

Products in beta

One Stop Order Processing
We have been working on a few enhancements to the One Stop Order Processing calculation fields. We have added some new macros and now support multiple field macros.

If you would like to take part in the beta please contact us at support@mole-end.biz