Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Ebay on the go: the way I would like it.



As some of you might know, I am a total fan of eBay. From shoe laces to household appliances, I get it all of of eBay. But being on the road and following auctions at the same time isn't trivial. On more then one occasion, I had to pull over the car, start up my laptop and steal someone's wifi connection just to place a winning bid.
There is also the stress of selling something at a low starting price: Will the price pick up to what you imagined, or is nobody interested in what you're selling. Last month I sold an old guitar on eBay. I bought it 20 years ago for a meager 20 Euro. Being my first guitar, it has seen lots of use and abuse. Since I don't play it anymore, I decided to put it up for auction, expecting to get around 10 to 20 Euro for it. Big was my surprise when I saw the auction picking up: People were bidding and following and the price rose to more then 40 Euro in the first days. I was so excited about it that I wanted to check up on my auction every minute of the day.
Every eBayer will recognise this feeling: whether you're bidding of selling, he excitement of the auction is a major part of the fun. To be able to get continious quick eBay updates on my mobile would mean a lot to me.

This is a good time to put the CityLive widget engine to good use. I will try to make my ideal eBay widget using the xml based language of the Citylive widget engine, so I can have it with me all of the time on my mobile.

I started off by making a conceptual design of what the eBay widget would do. What do you think, will this be a success or do I need to take a different approach? I'm looking for some feedback from people who also would like to use eBay on a mobile.

1 comment:

  1. very curious for the result, and indeed quite handy. I don't sell stuff on Ebay but I regularly buy things and indeed: sometimes I lose auctions just by being not capable to go online the moment the auction ends. Frustrating, since the game restarts...

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