InvisibleHand blog

Watch this space for the latest news about InvisibleHand project. We'll blog here about new retailers, new countries and new features.

Status Update: Up-and-Running

InvisibleHand is back up-and-running. Apologies for any inconvenience that was caused by the outage in the US.

Status Update: Brief Outage

A server problem is causing an outage for InvisibleHand users in the US. If you’re using InvisibleHand on a US retailer, InvisibleHand won’t show a notification. We’re working on it and should have everything up-and-running within the next 20 - 30 minutes.

Users in the UK and Germany will be unaffected.

InvisibleHand is now a Safari extension!

InvisibleHand is now available as a Safari extension. It lacks a few bells and whistles but otherwise should work just like other version for Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer. Please let us know if you notice anything unusual!

Calling All Canadian Retailers

Hardly a week goes by without us receiving a stack of emails from Canadians asking for InvisibleHand to compare Canadian retailers. We have good news: InvisibleHand is coming to Canada!

We’ve already added some Canadian stores, but we’d like to add a few more before we officially launch there. If you’re a Canadian retailer (or know someone who is) then please contact us. We’ll be delighted to add your store to InvisibleHand.

Just send an email to info@getinvisiblehand.com and we’ll explain what to do.

Version 2.2 for Firefox is out

Few days ago we’ve updated you about problem with version 2.0. It was a priority for us to fix the issue, and as a result version 2.1 was released on the day when we’ve discovered the problem. It took few more days to release new version 2.2 that replaces both of them.

We hope you’ll find new types of notifications introduced easier to notice, better looking and easier to navigate. You can now open products from alternative retailers in separate tabs if you wish. We’ve also added support for Yahoo! and Bing search engines apart from Google (and as usual, you have control over that setting on Options page).

We’ve also released versions with the same functionality for Google Chrome and Internet Explorer, so regardless of which browser you’re using, enjoy!

Version 2.0 of InvisibleHand for Firefox is broken

Several users reported that the latest upgrade of InvisibleHand for Firefox to version 2.0 has caused many websites to log out without a reason. This is due to a bug that we didn’t catch during testing. I am very sorry this has happened. I will make sure the next release of InvisibleHand for Firefox performs well.

If you are affected by this problem, please either downgrade to 1.8.2 (which is up on the Mozilla addons website right now) or upgrade to 2.1 when it is released (should happen today or tomorrow).

Again, I’m sorry this has happened and I’ll make changes to the development and testing process to make sure the bugs like that get caught early.

Evgeny Shadchnev
InvisibleHand developer

InvisibleHand is Hiring

InvisibleHand is growing fast, with over 150,000 downloads, over $50 million of savings found, and plenty of new features to add. So we’re looking to a new add a brilliant new developer to our London-based team. You’ll need:

  • Extensive Ruby development experience
  • Experience building highly scalable service oriented architectures
  • Agile development
  • SQL database experience, using multimillion row datasets, preferably including MySQL
  • Experience developing in Javascript
  • Good understanding of HTML and CSS
  • Strong quantitative and algorithmics a plus
  • Windows development experience an advantage
  • Browser extension development experience an advantage
  • Retail application experience an advantage
  • 3+ years of experience required

InvisibleHand is part of Forward Innovations. By joining InvisibleHand, you get all the perks which go along with being part of Forward Innovations, including:

  • Fantastic working environment; flexible hours, casual dress-code, top spec computer, Aeron chairs, free fruit and treats everyday!
  • Flexible benefits package; a contributory pension scheme and over 20 options including health insurance, child care support and gym membership.
  • A multi-cultural team; we have team members from over 20 different countries. Our ‘pot luck’ evenings where people cook their national dish are legendary.
  • A beautiful office; furnished with massage chairs, a pool table, foosball table, PS3, Wii and a draft beer machine.
  • We like to have fun; regular company get-togethers and a spectacular Christmas party (we’ve taken the entire company to Las Vegas 3 times!)

Please send your details to jobs@forward.co.uk

InvisibleHand Passes 100,000 Downloads

More and more people are discovering that they can use InvisibleHand to automatically get the lowest price. So we’re delighted to announce that InvisibleHand has gone through the 100,000 download mark.

We’re working hard to make InvisibleHand even better with new features and improved product matching. Plus, InvisibleHand for Internet Explorer will be launching in February.

InvisibleHand for Chrome now supports Google

Starting from version 0.1.4 that we released minutes ago, InvisibleHand supports Google notifications. Most users love this feature but you can disable it on the options page if you want.

In the past few days more than 2000 people have installed InvisibleHand for Chrome and many have left comments with praise and suggestions. Thank you, it is very much appreciated!

InvisibleHand for Google Chrome is updated to 0.1.2

We’ve updated the Chrome version of InvisibleHand to 0.1.2. The latest version includes the support of all countries (US, UK, Germany). It’s also much faster than v. 0.1!