by Avishay Lavie, Software Engineer at Delver

So, here we are again: a new release. We’ve got two – no, wait, three – new features on this release. Ready?

Enhanced Multimedia Status Thingies

Up till now, you could post a status message to your Sears Social profile, consisting of a piece of text or possibly even a link. Now, don’t get me wrong: that was pretty nice. We can give ourselves a friendly “A for effort” on that one.

But frankly, it just doesn’t cut it anymore. We know you won’t be satisfied with anything less than a full-blown multimedia rich content embedding experience. I mean, we know you’re a high-quality user. You know your stuff. Clearly, you deserve nothing but the best in social user-generated-content viral online sharing.

In case you don’t know what we’re talking about, let me put it this way: Your status. With photos. And videos. OH YES.

As a bonus, you can also easily catalog that content. I know, it’s like we’re reading your mind.

What’s Hot? What’s New?

To round up our previous additions to the newsfeed, starting from this release we’ll show you some Top Selling Products and New Arrivals in the recent activity newsfeed, so you could always stay up to date with the latest trends and the hot new stuff, and expand your shopping horizons.

Ooh, ballet shoes! See, my shopping horizons are already expanded a little bit.

Mobile Notifications

The Sears Social mobile experience just got a little better with the addition of notifications when your friends check-in somewhere. Now, we know you sometimes goof off and use your iPhone for other silly activities that do not involve our app (don’t worry, we won’t tell anyone). So we’ll make sure to notify you even when the app isn’t running.

The observant readers among you might have noticed two important points in the above screenshots: The first is that Guy, our mobile team lead, has been so careless as to allow 6 unread emails on his iPhone. The second, possibly of even more importance, is that we have another new type of notification up there in the left screenshot: the new features notification.

Yes, now you’ll get a notification when we add new features to the site or the mobile app. No, that’s not a valid excuse to stop reading the blog. Besides, the new features notifications link back here anyway, so there.

by Avishay Lavie, Software Engineer at Delver

Today we’ve added two new features to the newsfeed:

Deals and Videos

Many users rely on the newsfeed for discovering cool new stuff. That’s why we incorporated personalized recommendations into it a while back. This release continues this line by sprinkling some Featured Videos and Weekly Deals onto the newsfeed, making it even easier to discover new shopping-related content.

Auto-Scrolling

We display quite a bit of items on the newsfeed, but sometimes you just want more. For those of you with really busy feeds or an unexplained desire to delve into the past, we’ve added automatic scrolling: whenever you approach the end of your newsfeed, a new bunch of new stories will be loaded automatically, relieving you of the pesky task of clicking “show more”. To use a terribly bad metaphor, it’s like taking a Segway ride down memory lane.

by Avishay Lavie, Software Engineer at Delver

Product Specifications

We realize that sometimes you need a few more details on that product you’re looking at. Like, say, what’s the shooting speed of that camera you’re hot for.

Today’s release adds a product specifications chart to a large portion of our products. Now, whenever you visit one of those products, we’ll give you the complete specs right there on the product page.

Oh man, 4 continuous shots per second! I’m totally getting one.

Newsfeed Stories Say Where They’re Coming From

We’re making it easier for users to learn about new ways to use Delver. For example, some users might not be aware of our cool iPhone app. Well, starting today, whenever you do something interesting using the iPhone app, we’ll make sure your followers’ newsfeed mentions it:

The same goes for our bookmarklet importing feature. If you somehow missed the fact that you can import products into Delver even when you’re on another site (seriously now, how cool is that?), we make it crystal clear right there on the newsfeed, with a handy educational link:

There. Now you can’t say we didn’t tell you.

by Guy Haimovitch, Product Manager

AdYourWay

You will now receive relevant product recommendation based on your recent actions. The recommendations will appear as an integral part of your personalized activity feed.

Ads in Homepage

The right column of your homepage will now display the hottest promotions to make sure you never miss out on a good deal.

by Guy Haimovitch, Product Manager

A new search auto-complete drop-down menu is now available when you begin to type your search query. This feature will help you save time by completing you search query and maybe even provide you with new search ideas.

Just use your mouse cursor or keyboard’s up and down arrows to select the search you want to perform.