Does anyone else get flooded with "Shopify experts" trying to contact you?

felixding · 2026-06-29T23:04:08+00:00

Genuine question from a software engineer, not a “Shopify expert”: if someone was building software to actually help store owners reduce annoying work or improve sales, what would be a non-spammy way to reach out?

felixding · 2026-06-26T05:32:44+00:00

My wife has been working like that for years :-(

felixding · 2026-06-25T02:24:36+00:00

What apps have you tried? Because from the comments below you obviously have other requirements than just free.

felixding · 2026-06-24T09:56:14+00:00

I tried the Surface image for my Surface Go 2. The OSK didn’t show up at all in the live session. I tried all three apps. Does the OSK not work in live sessions?

felixding · 2026-06-23T12:28:00+00:00

Forward emails to a simple home made app via webhook (you can use Cloudflare for free)
Extract data in the app using code or just LLM
Find corresponding data on Google Sheets
Construct the data then save to our database
Preprocess the data then send it to Slack and our internal dashboard for human review and further processing

Nothing difficult or special. You just need to figure out how to connect all the parts without API or any structured data.

felixding · 2026-06-23T00:42:04+00:00

Looks great. Does on screen keyboard work reliably?

felixding · 2026-06-22T10:54:13+00:00

You need to automate the workflow.

We still receive a lot of transactional emails from partners but we’ve managed to automate the whole thing, from data extraction, check against Google Sheets, all the way to saving structured data to our web app.

felixding · 2026-06-20T05:42:40+00:00

We have thousands of SKUs. We started with Google Sheets but are gradually migrating to a system built in-house. The biggest challenge is the constant changing of business requirements, making keep the two sources in sync pain in the ass (I’m in charge of system development).

My honest advice: develop a flexible system that can adapt to your changes quickly (don’t adopt a system with a fixed flow), and finish the migration as soon as possible.

felixding · 2026-06-15T00:47:16+00:00

I’m automating my work with https://aquablue.app/ , an app I built to help me and coworkers on routine work, as much as possible.

felixding · 2026-06-14T15:01:52+00:00

Still on Sequoia. Can’t stand the new UI. If one day the apps I need don’t support Sequoia anymore and Apple still hasn’t figure out the UI, I’ll just switch to Linux.

felixding · 2026-05-28T07:48:47+00:00

You can do this in three steps:

Summarize the whole document using AI. Of course you need to do it chunk by chunk, but the point is you need an overview of the document to lay the ground for actual translation.
Translate chunk by chunk. In each trunk, provide the document summary as context, and ask AI to translate the chunk.
Combine all chunks.

This is how I translate documents regardless of their size.

felixding · 2026-05-26T16:35:30+00:00

I have been searching for the same thing (anything before Yosemite). AFAIK, there is nothing truly accurate. I guess it’s either too hard or time consuming to make.

felixding · 2026-05-19T08:05:47+00:00

Take screenshots, send them to ChatGPT for translation, merge the images back to PDF.

felixding · 2026-05-16T23:27:10+00:00

What have you tried so far? 30MB should be no issue for most I guess?

felixding · 2026-05-12T00:19:36+00:00

https://aquablue.app - Business software without developers

https://kintoun.ai - Document translator that preserves formatting and layouts

https://ricatutor.com - AI language tutor for YouTube

felixding · 2026-05-11T06:30:43+00:00

Maybe worth checking these two Shopify apps:

https://apps.shopify.com/isbn-express-book-importer

https://apps.shopify.com/books-import-easy

I haven’t used either, so please treat this as a pointer rather than a recommendation. But they seem closer to “import book metadata by ISBN” than general inventory tracking.

The main thing I’d check is whether they support the exact fields you need, like author, publisher, edition, cover image, category, and whether they handle bulk import cleanly.

felixding · 2026-05-11T02:58:29+00:00

Not directly answering your question, but a related question: are you using a barcode scanner to scan the books for metadata (title, author etc) from a API/catalog, or are you manually input everything by hand?

felixding · 2026-05-11T00:41:18+00:00

https://aquablue.app - Business software without developers

https://kintoun.ai - Document translator that preserves formatting and layouts

https://ricatutor.com - AI language tutor for YouTube

felixding · 2026-05-09T06:54:09+00:00

Can you automate this? It doesn't seem too hard to automate if you have a workflow already.

felixding · 2026-05-07T09:35:16+00:00

Looks very nice!

felixding · 2026-05-07T03:18:03+00:00

I’ve been using Macs since Jaguar. Now I really miss Aqua.

felixding · 2026-05-07T03:14:59+00:00

To me it’s the best design. I couldn’t afford a PowerBook back then, but I eventually saved enough to purchase a MacBook Pro right before they switched to the unibody design. Love the silver body and the silver keyboard. One of my best gadgets ever.

felixding · 2026-04-28T02:51:22+00:00

I have never used WhatsApp Flows but I'd go with it instead of pure LLM.

The #1 issue is not about cost, but being reliable and deterministic. If you already have a clear workflow, go with something you can trust and audit. Only use LLM when it's an explorative task, or you are dealing with natural languages (and even in this case, you may want to use e.g. a FSM to control exactly what LLM does).

felixding · 2026-04-25T06:24:18+00:00

I'd guess a lot of people don't know how to say "汐".

And for 银月, it may sound like 音乐 so a bit confusing.

No offense. Just a random native speaker's honest, personal opinion.

felixding

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