I spent the past year creating Price Hipster, a product search engine and price watching website for the OzBargain community!

Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 11:45
Last edited 13/11/2015 - 12:45

Update 13/11/15: Thanks everyone for the support and feedback! I realise there are heaps of comments here and no one wants to read through them all. If you have a suggestion, it has probably already been raised. I'm currently working on a big update and I'll be sure to let you all know when I release it. I'll be keen to get further feedback and suggestions then. :-)

Hi fellow OzBargainers!

I've spent the past year creating a powerful tool for you all.

https://www.pricehipster.com.au/

These are the reasons I created Price Hipster:

  1. Searching for products across multiple stores is painful. Sometimes you don't even know which stores to check for a product. Wouldn't it be great to conveniently search all stores from one place?

  2. Even if you want to find a product in one particular store, most store websites are very bad at searching their own products, and they're slow at it.

  3. There is no convenient way to find out the previous prices of products, making it difficult to hold vendors accountable for false claims of discounts. Some products vary wildly in price. Some change price nearly every day. For example:

https://www.pricehipster.com.au/product?id=NJNmxsZ3k5n

I really appreciate those OzBargainers who have taken the time to use internet archives to dig up previous prices, but it's less than ideal, and hopefully will now be a thing of the past!

Price Hipster currently includes 5 websites in its index. That will expand in the near future.

Questions for you all:

  1. Which stores should be added next?

  2. OzBargainers in Western Australia, how is the search latency for you? The search servers are in Sydney. I live in Brisbane and the search is pretty much instantaneous here.

If you find any issues with the website or have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

General Discussion

Related Stores

Price Hipster
Price Hipster

Comments

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 13/06/2017 - 21:58
        +1

        Update: I just changed the way sorted searches work to make it more like the way eBay does it so you'll now get more results where some are less relevant than others.

        It should be in the next update within the next week.

        • divergent on 15/06/2017 - 16:43

          Hmm, that's strange. I didn't get the alerts I expected on Wednesday from Woolworths. And I see now that all my Woolworths alerts have disappeared. :(

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 15/06/2017 - 17:05

            @divergent: They should come back. It seems that Woolworths itself has disappeared since they've changed their site. I'm on the case.

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 15/06/2017 - 19:03
            +1

            @divergent: Update: all products from Woolworths are back.

          • divergent on 15/06/2017 - 20:32
            +1

            @divergent: @jazoom: Yay! I got my first alerts just now. They look good. :)

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 15/06/2017 - 20:40

            @divergent: @divergent: Yay! 😁

    • Olokun on 18/06/2017 - 12:31

      Hi Jazoom

      Just a heads up that it appears that sorting by discount % does not seem to work any more.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 18/06/2017 - 12:35

        How is it now?

        I suspect it was more that nothing was working for a few minutes after an update occurred.

        • Olokun on 18/06/2017 - 12:47

          When I try and sort by discount % the order is still ~90% the same as best match

          Just tried clearing my history and no go.. ill have another go in evening and ill let you know if it's still playing up.

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 18/06/2017 - 13:08

            @Olokun: I can't reproduce a problem. Can you please PM me the link this gives you: http://www.whatsmybrowser.org

            But the fact that it 10% changes for you it seems it's working.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 18/06/2017 - 14:35

        Update: I just fixed the problem. The change should go live within the next 10 minutes.

    • doweyy on 25/06/2018 - 10:38
      +1

      Hey jazoom, I'm just wondering if it was possible to implement a feature whereby you exclude certain stores. I noticed that Camera House have overloaded the electronics page today and it would be awesome if we were able to filter it out.

      Cheers!

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 25/06/2018 - 11:15

        Hey doweyy, that is certainly possible. It's on my to-do list. Thanks for the feedback. :-)

        Also, something else that might help this is a smarter recommendation engine, which is also something I'm working on.

        • doweyy on 25/06/2018 - 16:43

          Awesome, thanks for that quick feedback :)

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 25/06/2018 - 16:47

            @doweyy: No probs

  • shangoz on 10/12/2015 - 18:24

    Looks it not include Kmart and Bing Lee, and Myer, Aldi etc

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 10/12/2015 - 18:30
      +1

      Kmart and Myer are definitely included, as of today. :)

  • Maki on 11/12/2015 - 10:06

    Well Done mate, a great site and I really love it. I think you are gonna make big money from this site, your hard work will be paid off.

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 11/12/2015 - 12:31

      I'll be happy if it can become self-sustaining, but I do have big plans for it. Thanks for the support!

  • closey on 10/01/2016 - 21:37

    This receiver is showing as $749 when the good guys site says $989 (regular price): https://www.pricehipster.com.au/product?id=NkzTaQtEDe
    https://www.thegoodguys.com.au/yamaha-av-receiver--rx-v679b

    I take it I must have missed it, and pricehipster hasn't updated again yet. :(

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 10/01/2016 - 23:11

      Hey thanks heaps for the heads up. Actually I don't think you missed anything. I did a major rewrite of the core of one part of the scraper over the last few days and a few anomalies crept in. I've got it under control now, which you'll see if you click that link again. All evidence of the silliness has been erased. :-)

      Sorry for the inconvenience.

  • tulalit on 11/01/2016 - 11:37

    Could you please add Chemist Warehouse as well please?

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 11/01/2016 - 12:26

      Pharmacies are definitely on my list. :-)

  • matt_will_fix_it on 11/01/2016 - 16:37

    I have the option for "daily deals" ticked in my profile, but don't seem to be getting any emails. Which email address are they sent from?

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 11/01/2016 - 16:40

      Hi Matt,

      Do you mean just for the last 2 days? I have actually paused it for a couple of days while I worked on a core part of the scraper. I wanted to make sure that it didn't send a bunch of incorrect prices while I was sorting out bugs. I'll probably start it sending out again today.

      Thanks for reaching out!

      • matt_will_fix_it on 11/01/2016 - 16:44

        Yeah, I only enabled it in the past few days, so makes sense :)

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 11/01/2016 - 17:04

          Sorry for the confusion. It should be back up and running soon.

  • sunset_on_the_101 on 28/01/2016 - 15:29

    hi jazoom,

    what about the online pet shops? It would be great to know when flea treatments or expensive brands are on special

    site like these would be awesome.

    petbarn
    petstock
    bestfriends

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 28/01/2016 - 15:55

      Pet stores. Good idea. I'll likely do that at some stage.

      • matt_will_fix_it on 28/01/2016 - 15:56

        Also how about Dan Murphy's?

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 28/01/2016 - 16:00
          +1

          Definitely towards the top of the list.

  • jdgreen75 on 08/02/2016 - 20:27

    Hey, thanks for creating this. Bloody great. Got a nice pair of shorts for $10 at Big W :)

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 08/02/2016 - 21:06

      You're welcome :-)

  • Make it so on 10/02/2016 - 13:19

    This is a very nice website, with incredible performance (even in WA).
    Perhaps some computer shops could be added. MSY has a horrible website for finding anything. And is shoppingexpress in there yet?

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 10/02/2016 - 23:13
      +1

      I would love to get those kinds of shops on board. Follow on Twitter or keep an eye on the Facebook page to get updates about new stores.

  • bargainhunter_dande on 10/02/2016 - 13:19

    Awesome site!
    Any idea if Costco can be included?

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 10/02/2016 - 23:14

      Hmm… not sure about that one. I'll look into it. It's still not in many places around Australia yet, though.

      • bargainhunter_dande on 11/02/2016 - 08:51

        Suggestion for that. In the site, if u make a section to upload prices by crowd sourcing, you can update the prices. May not be comprehensive list of prices, but as more people use, more updates regularly.

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 11/02/2016 - 09:07
          +1

          Thanks for the suggestion. I don't think that would work very well since it would end up in user frustration due to prices not being updated. It would take away from the very up-to-date pricing we currently have on Price Hipster.

  • ozzie13 on 10/02/2016 - 14:47

    Hi, may have been asked previously but can you add the option to browse by store and discount? So say if I go into Woolies I can see their best deals rather than searching for each product?

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 10/02/2016 - 23:15

      You can already do that. If you don't have the new filter bar you may need to clear your browser's cache.

  • matt_will_fix_it on 11/02/2016 - 20:13

    Is there any way to email a product price history?

    E.g. if I want to show the price history here on ozbargain, currently the only way I can think to do it is take a screenshot, upload it and then paste a link. e.g. http://i.imgur.com/uZFrZ7J.png

    Would be much easier if you can just paste a hyperlink to pricehipster price history. Maybe I'm missing something?

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 12/02/2016 - 10:30

      Yup, you're missing that link button down in the bottom left. :-)

      I'm thinking I need to make this more obvious.

      • matt_will_fix_it on 12/02/2016 - 11:05

        Ohh I see it now :) Thanks!

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 12/02/2016 - 11:14

          no probs

  • redhaze1 on 17/02/2016 - 15:39

    I looked up "The Complete Bourne 4 Movie Collection (Identity / Supremacy / Ultimatum / Legacy) Blu-ray" and it shows as $48. Clicking through to the product shows it's $29 - https://www.bigw.com.au/product/the-complete-bourne-4-movie-…

    I guess this can be explained by the fact that their website says its $48 when you search for it - https://www.bigw.com.au/search/?sort=price-desc&q=bourne%3Ap… - but then shows $29 when you click on it.

    I did successfully order it for $29, but I wouldn't know how many products have this inaccurate pricing. Perhaps your site could click through to the product details to get more accurate prices?

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 17/02/2016 - 15:56
      +1

      Hi redhaze1, it is possible that they've just recently updated that product and they have two separate sources of data within their own website, and they haven't caught up with themselves yet. In that case, hopefully it'll get sorted out soon.

      Otherwise, "clicking through" to each product would mean the scraper would have (on average) 40 times more work to do than it currently does. Since this is the first time I've ever seen/heard of such a thing happening (and trust me, I've spent a lot of time with the scraper), I don't think it would be sensible to implement that.

      Fear not, I have plans to avoid these kinds of problems in future, though it will take some time to get it all set up.

      Thanks heaps for the great feedback!

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 17/02/2016 - 15:58

      Oh hey, it appears they've sorted themselves out. The search link shows the correct price now. Unfortunately, Hipsterbot has just finished with Big W so it might be a couple of hours before the price gets updated in Price Hipster. :-)

      • redhaze1 on 17/02/2016 - 20:34

        They have made the prices the same - $43. So I did well buying it earlier today for $29 when something was wrong! Their "online only" movies are done through a third party, so perhaps that other company complained about it being too cheap. Anyway it's been shipped so they're not going to try to cancel the order. :) Hopefully this remains a rare occurrence so you don't have to spend any more time on it.

        btw thanks for the website - I only found it recently and do find it helpful. One bit of feedback though: I struggled to find where to mention this issue. There's no support info on the site. I'm guessing that's on purpose - unless it's your full time job you wouldn't have time to look into every complaint imaginable!

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 17/02/2016 - 20:42

          Hi redhaze1,

          Actually I value feedback greatly and am very happy to receive it here on OzBargain, here or here.

          I don't have a support form on the website because I anticipate Price Hipster getting quite popular and I don't want to spend all my time answering questions. I already get a lot so I don't want to imagine how many I'd get if people didn't have to spend any effort to contact me. I'd never get time to work on the site!

          May I ask how you found out about Price Hipster?

        • redhaze1 on 17/02/2016 - 21:05

          @jazoom:

          Yeah I thought as much with how busy that could get! I've liked your page on FB, so now I'll get info about site updates. I first heard about your site in deals on the front page of OzBargain.

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 17/02/2016 - 21:10
          +1

          @redhaze1: Thanks for the info, and thanks for the support! I've got a new update or two in the works that'll be quite nice. I'll be sure to post to the Facebook page when it's done. :-)

  • Karlos101 on 18/02/2016 - 11:12

    @jazoom

    hey mate,

    ive had a quick squiz at the site. well done, looks and works great.

    i was just wondering if you would do an inclusion of computer hardware sites

    mwave
    scorptec
    msy
    pccasegear
    techbuy
    etc etc

    or would you do a subsite, just on pc related stuff?
    or, not even bother because of staticice?

    keep up the great work.

    • Olokun on 18/02/2016 - 11:31

      Even though I think that PH is much better a comparison site then Static Ice, I think it would be better to focus on other popular stores that are not currently (or easily) compared.

      • Karlos101 on 18/02/2016 - 11:37

        what is this PH you speak of?

        • Olokun on 18/02/2016 - 11:42
          +1

          —-> Price Hipster <—-

          :-)

        • Karlos101 on 18/02/2016 - 11:43

          @Olokun: i thought you were talking about a site for comparing PC parts. my bad.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 18/02/2016 - 11:54
        +2

        Well my plan at the moment is to finish some more features of the site, then add heaps of different stores. Top of my list is liquor stores, pharmacies and computer parts stores.

        I like StaticIce but I think we can all agree it has needed an update for a long, long time.

        • Karlos101 on 18/02/2016 - 15:37

          haha, definitely agree about static ice.

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 18/02/2016 - 11:55

      Thanks for the support.

      See my reply to Olokun's comment.

  • michael_123 on 21/02/2016 - 14:31
    +1

    Just a suggestion…

    Are you able to implement the "-" character for search exclusions like Google?

    For example, I was searching for printers and the majority of results are for ink so to make it easier, I could have used the search 'printer -ink' instead.

    Either way, great website, I have used it quite a lot of times in the last few months!

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 21/02/2016 - 16:40
      +2

      Done! It works great.

      It'll be included in the next update (very soon).

  • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/02/2016 - 07:52
    Merged from Price Hipster New Features

    Hi fellow OzBargainers,

    Thanks for your continuing great support of Price Hipster! I've got some more exciting updates for you all:

    1. Negative search terms. Just put "-" in front of the word you want excluded and the search results won't contain it. For example, if you want results for Xbox but not Xbox One you would type "Xbox -one".

    2. Some of you already know, but the search filters have been greatly improved. You can also sort in many different ways. These can even be combined with negative search terms for seriously powerful and seriously fast search.

    3. Voting on deals. Sometimes Price Hipster struggles to know which price drops represent actually good deals. For example, a $700 dress might not be a good deal at $400 but an $800 iPhone might be a good deal at $750. Voting allows you to boost the deals you like and suppress those you don't. It helps everyone to see overall better deals.

    Again, your feedback has been very valuable and Price Hipster wouldn't be what it is today without it. Keep it coming!

    • Olokun on 22/02/2016 - 08:19
      +1

      New -ve features looks good.

      Just wondering if you are intending to get the site to do anything with the extra info field such as "titleItems_model_digit" on TGG and "product-id meta quiet p_txt-sm" on HN websites to help improve the search results when looking for specific models?

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/02/2016 - 08:29

        Thanks Olokun. I don't have immediate plans for that, but model numbers would be very useful and is something I'd like to address in a more general sense.

    • lyl on 22/02/2016 - 08:44

      Can you remove all spotlight posts from the front page? They clog up the front page, and theres never a good deal. Sorry.

      Once again thanks so much, keep up the awesome work.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/02/2016 - 08:46

        Just hit down vote on them and you'll help "teach" Price Hipster that they aren't appreciated so much. This is why I created this feature. :-)

        Thanks heaps for your support!

        • lyl on 22/02/2016 - 08:47
          +3

          Yeah thats exactly what i plan to do muahahah >:D
          Death to spotlight.

        • tarb on 23/02/2016 - 12:18

          Really great site!

          Tip to also help fix the spot light deals would be to filter close matches, I reckon it would take some strain off the +/- user experience.

          Id apply the Levenshtein distance algorithm to create a filter on all spotlight deals and remove all >90% matches -with the same price. This would help remove all duplicate items (ie, the 10+ light bulbs, different color drink bottles, lunch boxes etc); and is normally pretty easy to implement.

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 15:01
            +1

            @tarb: I've considered that, but I feel like sometimes people need to know that the variations on a product are also on sale. Also, if someone is searching for a specific variation and they can't find it, that would be bad. It's a tricky question that I'll keep thinking about.

            There aren't usually so many similar products on the front page.

    • Maki on 22/02/2016 - 09:46

      With your second point: Some of you already know, but the search filters have been greatly improved. You can also sort in many different ways. These can even be combined with negative search terms for seriously powerful and seriously fast search.

      What does default mean? Newest to oldest? I saw that you already got price, discount and discount %.

      Moreover, is it possible to have all stores listed under 1 product? For example, if I search a command hook, it will actually compare all stores (Big W, Woolies, Masters, Coles…) and list the cheapest?

      Thanks again for the great work in building this site.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/02/2016 - 09:56

        Hi Maki, "default" is kind of a mix between best search match and best deal. It aims to give results that most people will be happy with.

        Combining the same product among stores is a huge technical challenge. It will take some time, but it's on my radar because it will obviously be very useful.

    • mafmouf on 22/02/2016 - 09:49
      +3

      At first I was a little unsure of another price comparison website. After reading the forum about it a little while ago (despite the name), I took a leap and tried it. Having been surprised by the speed of retrieving results, I've been a fairly frequent user and has saved me a couple times when speed was key to my situation. The name is what saved me because it was so obscure, I remembered it. Having said that, I notice small changes made such as sorting and better result listings.

      TLDR: Great job jazoom!

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/02/2016 - 09:59

        Hi mafmouf, thanks for the feedback. I'm glad to hear that the name is serving the purpose I intended and that the site has been useful for you.

        • mafmouf on 22/02/2016 - 12:21

          No problem. I was also wondering what kind of future features you are looking at adding? I've been impressed with the leaps and bounds already. I won't quote you on any of this by the way.

          Ps. How could we support if we wanted to?

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/02/2016 - 15:47
            +1

            @mafmouf: At the moment I am working on making Price Hipster smarter with what's a deal, etc. The next step will probably be putting things in place to scale up the number of stores quickly.

            Thanks for your willingness to support. Some examples of ways to show support are:

            1. Like/Share the Facebook page.

            2. Follow on Twitter.

            3. Tell people about Price Hipster.

    • rgr on 22/02/2016 - 10:27

      good job jazoom. i reckon if you can add reviews to some certain things and even categories then it'll be even better.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/02/2016 - 11:39

        Hi rogr. Thanks for the feedback. Categories will be very technically challenging, but very useful, you're right.

        • rgr on 22/02/2016 - 11:47

          how's the backend setup? i was thinking if you could add another column that corresponds to "item_store" or something, then basically have categories be queries that select using "item_store" as a WHERE clause.

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/02/2016 - 15:38
            +1

            @rgr: That's the easy part. The problem is knowing what categories to put each product in.

          • rgr on 22/02/2016 - 16:39

            @rgr: @jazoom:hmmm…good start might be just by stores only, assuming that you're also capturing the store column for each item. you're scraping everything and moving it into a database at the moment right? i'd assume if that's the case then it'd be a very manual job. i have some time on my hands so if you need any help with data cleansing then send me a PM.

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/02/2016 - 16:47

            @rgr: @rogr: Thanks for the offer. The thing is, if I plan for Price Hipster to index many more stores (which I do), the method for categorising needs to be scalable and automated. I think my time is better spent on other things at the moment since whatever I did with that now would become obsolete in the future when I get a proper system in place for it.

          • rgr on 22/02/2016 - 17:17

            @rgr: @jazoom: i suppose it would be much easier if you had a proper API from the stores to work with like amazon has.

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/02/2016 - 17:29

            @rgr: @rogr: True. But even then different stores use very different categories, so that particular problem would still exist.

          • basilv on 24/02/2016 - 12:32

            @rgr: @jazoom: Wouldn't be hard to map categories from each store to a pricehipster category. Yes, a little time required when first releasing a new store but a lot easier than managing it an individual product level. Categories at each store may change over time but it's just a matter of alerting yourself when this occurs and adjusting the mappings.

            Having said this, I can't see myself using categories. Search does everything I would use the site for.

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 24/02/2016 - 16:42
            +1

            @rgr: @basilv: You're right. We'll see how we go when the time comes to implement such a feature. I think it will be useful for browsing, but as you say, search is good enough if you know what you are looking for.

    • tin tin on 22/02/2016 - 10:36
      +1

      Voting a great idea. Maybe after a couple of downvotes deals should get hidden from the front page? Once voting gets popular sort by number of votes would be handy.
      Edit: It looks like deals are already sorted by number of votes by default.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/02/2016 - 11:41

        Yeah the votes have a big impact. You won't notice the negatively voted ones so much since they'll be blasted into obscurity. You don't see the order change immediately on voting due to caching.

    • bigticket on 22/02/2016 - 11:13

      Great work on a truly magnificent website. Practically use it everyday. Now with the improved search filters, it is even faster narrowing down items.

      One added feature I would like to see is a direct link of the item on the sellers web page that opens in a new tab.

      If I could up vote your post, I would. Again, great job jazoom!

      • sween64 on 22/02/2016 - 11:59

        Don't you get that link when you click visit store?

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/02/2016 - 16:11

        Thanks heaps for the support!

        sween64 is correct. When you're looking at the details of a product (just click its tile to see the details) there is a button/logo in the bottom left that tells you to click it to visit the store. The default action is to open in a new tab.

        • bigticket on 22/02/2016 - 18:30
          +1

          Thanks @sween64 and @jazoom, did not notice the store link.

          Price Hipster is truly a amazing product search engine, and to my knowledge nothing else comes close.

          The OP should, in the near future, when there are a significant number of visitors to his web page look at getting a return on all the hard work by adding paid advertising and referral links to Price Hipster.

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/02/2016 - 19:11

            @bigticket: Thanks for the kind words. I'm planning on making a sustainable business out of it at some point, but as you said, number of visitors is crucial.

    • Hotpotcorn on 22/02/2016 - 11:32

      love the website! use it pretty much daily

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/02/2016 - 16:12

        Thanks Zfan111222.

        • Hotpotcorn on 22/02/2016 - 17:11

          just out of curiosity, you gain much profit from this website?

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/02/2016 - 17:24
            +2

            @Hotpotcorn: None. At the moment it's costing me money for servers and services.

          • Hotpotcorn on 22/02/2016 - 17:28

            @Hotpotcorn: @jazoom: wow! thats dedication :) love your work! keep it up! hope you will start gaining some money soon :)

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/02/2016 - 17:31
            +1

            @Hotpotcorn: @Zfan111222: Thanks. Having a full-time job means I can easily absorb the cost, but it also means I cannot spend all my time improving Price Hipster. Making it profitable would enable faster growth, so I am planning to head in that direction at some point.

          • Maki on 23/02/2016 - 10:29
            +1

            @Hotpotcorn: @jazoom: You should liaise with the stores and get referral cash backs. You deserve to earn big money with this website.

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