Just to add some more fuel to Rowan’s on-going discussion of a Trade Me API and gadgets, a group of Stanford design(!) students releases a Firefox eBay toolbar (actually a hacked version of Firefox) with big implications. The toolbar does the basics, but also removes all paid advertising and shows photos for all results of …
Category Archives: Internet Business
Drop off stores – will they work here?
Thinking of opening some Trade Me drop-off stores? After all – there is a gap in the market right? Drop off stores are big in the USA – they are places where you bring items for sale on eBay, and they list and sell them on eBay for you. The stores necessarily take a huge …
DPReview falls to Amazon
DPReview is the site for checking out the latest hotness in digital cameras. I’ve been using the site for years as I tend to lose, drop, vibrate to death or otherwise attempt to destroy the digital cameras I own. Strangely enough they don’t totally die (I look for robustness), but they are broken enough so …
People will click on anything it seems
Didier Stevens purchased this lovely little google ad – that offered to download a viurus to your PC. and 409 people clicked on it. That explains the traffic to this blog…
White pages being stolen?
A strange press release from newly independent Yellow Pages, who are: “approaching a number of large New Zealand businesses and government organisations believed to be misusing information from White Pages online.” They are saying it is part of an “industry move”, with quotes from IAB’s Josh Borthwick and Keith Norris from the Marketing Association. So …
Amazon continues to make me think..
The other day I was surprised that Amazon was going to ship my order of 21 books in 19 different packages. On Friday night I picked up the first round of arrivals from Amazon. Over two days five boxes had arrived, each containing one book. Four of the books were identical (photo), and all of …
Netguide, Stuff, Trade Me, Pimp my plane…..
On the one hand I am not a big fan of the Netguide awards methodology. On the other hand Stuff managed to glean two awards (Best media site and best homepage), while Trade Me took home three more. Thanks to everyone that voted for us – both Trade Me and Stuff. It was a huge …
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Comparing Trade Me and eBay by the numbers
I’m not sure how many people realise just how good Trade Me is. Let’s look at some comparative public numbers against eBay. There are plenty of reasons behind the differences, and I’ll write about the publicly known ones sooner or later. Auctions Here’s an excerpt from a reply I made to this great post on …
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unmovable ads destroy content…oh and mac surfers are growing
If you are going to host a popout ad, please please please test it with a few browsers. This Computerworld article looked really interesting, until I found it was blocked by an unmovable ad. I was running Safari, on my Mac, which delivered the point of the article more elegantly than any words.
The NetRatings demographics survey instrument
We all see these, and for some reason recently I’ve been seeing the NetRatings survey a lot when I go to the NZHerald site. Perhaps my cookies keep getting deleted, perhaps I’m using too many different browsers (3 on my mac, 1 at work). The data we in the industry get from these surveys is really valuable, so I’m going to attempt to constructively criticise the survey questions:
Publishing all those letters to the editor
“Most” of the letters to the editor received by The Economist are published on their website, with the best ones also making the newspaper. The letters are helpfully grouped by the article that they refer to. It is a wonderful synthesis of old and new world media. This is a classic idea that seems so …
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Static versus flash
Liv touches one the eternal static versus flash ad debate. I like the idea of the elf but he seems to be taking forever to download, whic make me wonder what on Earth he is bringing with him. and I wonder if he likes macs?
Amazon logistics: single shipping
I ordered 21 books from Amazon the other day, choosing, as I always do, ‘expidited international shipping’. The books normally get shipped in 2 or 3 boxes, but this was my email inbox this morning….. Has Amazon figured that it is actually cheaper to ship items by piece to NZ than in a few bigger boxes? …
Church, State and PCWorld
1: Draft (or edit) an article called “Ten Things We Hate About Apple” 2: Get a call from your business-guy CEO who likes getting calls from Steve Jobs – asking to kill the article 3: resign. editorial integrity is everything. 4: End up a hero on the web – including slashdot. Fantastically well done to …
TheAtlantic.com
The Atlantic Monthly magazine continues its transformation from an excellent magazine and ok website into an excellent magazine and an excellent website. The site now features A lister bloggers Matthew Yglesias and Andrew Sullivan, along with James Fallows and Ross Douthat who are a senior Atlantic correspondent and a senior Atlantic editor. The homepage, as …
Lance Wiggs 