www.auctioneertech.com is home to the Auction Podcast

A new site launches today and aims to use the auction method of marketing to allow users to sell news-related video to interested parties. We think it’s an interesting use of competitive bidding, and worth a look. Here’s the release.

January 18th, 2010 – New Orleans, LA – Bideo.com is a revolutionary online media exchange where creators of breaking news video and still images can manually protect and sell their content directly to publications in an auction setting. The Bideo message to creators is simple: stop giving away amazing videos and photos, and start selling them.

A tornado tearing across a field, a plane landing in a river, an amateur dunking on an NBA star, or exclusive shots of celebrities and athletes misbehaving, some pictures and videos are rare gems that are often the direct result of a camera phone being in the right place at the right time.

The increasing amount of valuable content being produced by citizen journalists is garnering interest from major publications, which are now welcoming an opportunity to access, purchase and publish such images. Brittain Stone, Photo Director for US Weekly, sees Bideo as a great resource for publications to obtain newsworthy material. “The Bideo format can be the efficient and trustworthy intermediary between those user creators and the buyer. It will be a way for us to tap into formerly ambivalent and often unattainable sources with ease and immediacy.”

HOW BIDEO WORKS

• The seller uploads an image from a computer or mobile device, adds a description and sets the auction terms. The original file is stored on a secure server while a watermarked copy is created and listed in a live auction.
• Bideo’s notification system automatically alerts relevant publications based on the item’s information. Sellers can also manually send notifications to their own list of potential buyers.
• Buyers assess the image and bid on the exclusive right to publish it. A buy now option is also available.
• The original file is transferred to the winning bidder’s account when the auction ends and payment is made.
• The seller receives 75% (and up to 85%) of the final bid price immediately after the sale is complete, and the seller agrees to honor the exclusive license purchased by the buyer.

Founder and CEO, Pike Barkerding, sees demand for a service like Bideo.com rapidly increasing. “Everyday more and more breaking images are published by citizen journalists who are not properly recognized or compensated for their work,” says Barkerding. “Bideo seeks to empower this growing army of ‘right-place-right-time’ creators by giving them a simple, secure and profitable way to promote their content to interested buyers.”

For buyers, Bideo serves as a central, organized source for newsworthy user-generated content that is otherwise difficult or impossible to obtain. “I think we [Us Weekly] miss a lot of interesting and topical images that aren’t represented by the established agencies and therefore don’t percolate up to us in a timely fashion if at all. On those occasions when these people do approach us, negotiations are skittish and drawn out because the potential sellers aren’t familiar with the ground rules of our particular marketplace,” says Stone.

Why an auction? “Newsworthy images can be difficult to price, especially non-professional, user-created images. Think eBay meets iReport. By posting content in an auction, sellers can let the open market decide the price and get the true market value for their work,” says Barkerding. “The same dynamic also creates a chance for buyers to find great deals on exclusive footage.”

Another benefit of the efficiency offered by Bideo is the ability for buyers and sellers to forego pricey middlemen (agencies), yielding lower cost to buyers, higher commissions to sellers, and greater immediacy throughout. “This also makes it attractive to professional photographers looking to sell a rare exclusive,” says Barkerding. “They can sell it autonomously on Bideo and get a higher return.”

Barkerding sees Bideo as a no-brainer alternative to the popular practice of giving content away for anything less than true market value. “Listing is free, and if you think it’s amazing, odds are someone wants to buy it. You set the price, you control the sale and, if it doesn’t sell, you can still give it away. So, why not try Bideo?”

Last summer, a private beta version of the site was launched in Los Angeles with a specific focus on celebrity content as a test market. During this soft rollout Bideo has been working with several L.A.-based photographers and celebrity publications including Us Weekly, TMZ, People Magazine, Access Hollywood, E! and Star Magazine. Bideo.com will be launched publicly on January 25, 2010 to serve and connect all forms of newsworthy content to publications in media markets throughout the world.

For more information on Bideo, please visit www.bideo.com/invitation.

For media inquiries, contact Matthew Bowes or Skipper Bond at 504-897-0462 or matthew@bondpublicrelations.com and skipper@bondpublicrelations.com.

What do you think about this auction application? Is it a great, new way to expose auctions to the media or does it provide barriers to the news process? Let us know in the comments.

We’re putting the final wraps on the 2010 KAA Convention at the Wichita Airport Hilton.

Thursday night featured a meet-and-greet honoring past presidents.

Lynn Langvardt was the winner of the Kansas Livestock Bid-call Contest held in El Dorado on Thursday night. Last year’s livestock champion, Charlie Cummings, won the KAA Bid-call Contest this year at the state fair and was installed Saturday night as the new state champion.

Here’s some video that was streamed live via Ustream using a Motorola Droid. It features current IAC Champion Kevin Borger, KAA Champion Charlie Cummings, and others selling during the fun auction on Friday night.

This week, we’ve examined domain names and email addresses as they relate to your brand. In today’s third installation of our Internet branding series, we’re going to take a look at your weblog. The same concepts that apply to your domain names and your email addresses absolutely apply to your blog.

Like email addresses, it’s really easy to get a free blog. Free blog providers include WordPress and Blogger. These free blogs assign a subdomain (the part of the domain that comes before the primary domain name) like yourauctionblog.wordpress.com. Some, like WordPress, even allow you to assign a custom domain name to your blog. This free blog approach is really great if you’re blogging about your grasshopper collection or you want to keep a diary of your trip to to the museum of bad marketing tactics, but if you’re blogging for business, you need to have your blog hosted professionally.

Your blog should be branded. Your domain IS your brand, so your blog needs to exist on your website in order to be properly branded. This rule means that the free sites are out of the question – unless you actually work for WordPress, your blog shouldn’t include wordpress.com in the domain name. Assigning a separate domain name to your blog is certainly better, but it still misses the target of hosting your blog on your primary domain.

But wait! We’ve been singing the praises of WordPress for years, why would we say that WordPress is bad? The answer is that wordpress.com is a commercial service that will host your blog. wordpress.org is a site that hosts the WordPress software that you can download for free and install on your own website. By installing the software, you can leverage the power and ease-of-use inherent to the WordPress package while allowing your customers to go to yourwebsite.com/blog or blog.yourwebsite.com. By having a custom WordPress theme created, the user experience can be seamless among your auction calendar, your static pages and your blog.

WordPress isn’t the only blogging software that you can use on your website, but it’s certainly our favorite. Your web host may have different software that can be just as easily and quickly installed and configured to allow you to post your articles and news by simply logging in and typing.

Internet branding is simple. While it may be easier to simply grab a free account from somewhere, it’s far more professional to have a comprehensive, congruent presence that is consistently branded to provide a seamless user experience.

Yesterday, we examined some of the factors involved in selecting a domain name for your business. It needs to be a .com, match your company’s name, be short and be marketed in lowercase. Today, in the next installment of our Internet branding series, we’re going to look at your email address.

The worst mistake you can make to turn customers away is to use something other than your name for the username. This mistake was the at the top of the list in a recent survey. sxygrl47@domain.com and ladybug_lover@domain.com worked great for user names in college, but now it’s time to use first.last@domain.com or firstlast@domain.com or just lastname@yourdomain.com. If you have an address that is checked by more than one person, such as a generic company address, then it’s okay to find something generic like auction@domain.com or info@domain.com, but don’t use it for your company account unless it is checked by more than one person. That’s not the address to put on your personal business card.

Outside of the above offense, few other concepts seem more obvious than the importance of having an email address that matches the domain name of your website. Nevertheless, we still see some auctioneers who advertise to their customers a generic, free addresses from email providers such as AOL, Hotmail/MSN/Live, Gmail – or worse, from their Internet service providers such as Cox, SBC Global or Comcast.

Using one of the above-mentioned providers for a personal email account is okay, though it’s much more fun to register a domain name for yourself or your family to use for non-commercial purposes. Using an email address for commercial purposes that doesn’t match your domain name is simply unprofessional.

Your website IS your brand. Why on Earth would there be any benefit in advertising an address that doesn’t include your brand? Reasons we’ve heard cited for using a generic email account for business include the following.

• I’ve always used this address
• I have multiple domain names
• Using Gmail makes me seem cutting-edge and hip
• I don’t know how to set up email for my domain name
• I like the tools offered by this provider
• I want synchronized Outlook but don’t want to host my own Exchange server

None of these reasons justifies letting customers see an email address that doesn’t include your brand. The only reason listed that doesn’t involve lack of configuration or simplicity is the idea that customers somehow perceive Gmail users as advanced. This is true, but only in comparison with other free email providers. We all like to make fun of AOL and Yahoo users, but consumers equally ridicule Gmail users who use Gmail for business. It’s assumed that these users are either too lazy or don’t know how to set up their own, branded email addresses.

The solution is simple. Use a service like Gmail – Google Apps for your Domain is a particularly excellent choice – or a company that provides hosted Exchange server to allow you to have one powerful interface to check all your email accounts. It’s very simple to configure addresses from one or many domain names to have email delivered to one location. Through the use of rules in Outlook or filters in Gmail, you can easily keep track of all your accounts in one central location. When properly configured, each email you send will appear to come from the appropriate account. The methods to this configuration are outside the scope of this article and will depend on your registrar and your web host.

We’ve actually met auctioneers who have removed the website from business cards, relying on different colors to make the domain in the email address stand out, thereby conveying both an email address and a website on one line. This leap of faith that customers will recognize this strategy isn’t for the weak-at-heart, but it’s an innovative idea, nonetheless.

When is it okay to use an email address for business that isn’t matched to your domain name? There are two scenarios.

1. You’re unemployed
2. You don’t have a domain name yet

If the first is true, you’re probably not using it for commercial purposes unless it’s to send and receive responses from resumes. In this case, a Gmail account – or, better yet, yourname@yourname.com – will lend the most professional impression to a prospective employer. If the second is true, stop reading now, read yesterday’s post and then buy a domain name. The first year’s registration costs less than having your logo embroidered on a shirt, and is many orders of magnitude more valuable and important.

Your domain is your brand. Your email address is an obvious and easy way to promote your brand and show your customers that you run a professional organization.

Today we embark on a three-part series regarding Internet branding. Specifically, we’ll discuss how the choices you make for your domain name, your email address and your blog begin to build your brand before you think about designing a logo or writing a word of copy.

There are some rules to follow when choosing a domain name for your site.

Select a .com TLD
A TLD is a top level domain. .com, .net, .org were among the first and are still the most common TLDs in the United States. Unlike other TLDs like .gov and .mil, anyone can register new domain names with these three TLDs without restriction. The .com TLD is for companies or commercial endeavors. .org is for non-profit – you guessed it – organizations, while .net is for more personal projects that aren’t as official as .com or .org. There are now many other TLDs, and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is planning to begin to allow essentially an unlimited number of new TLDs soon, increasing the number from perhaps 100 current TLDs to possibly thousands.

The problem is that nobody remembers websites that don’t end in .com. Now you’re going to object, reminding us that the new domains offer specialization. “But .pro would be a great choice since I’m a professional!” No it wouldn’t. Professionals choose .com. “But .ca is available and I’m located in California!” Your location doesn’t matter. If you’re in the United States and advertising your commercial website, .com is for winners.

Own the domain that matches your company name
“We’re a US company and someone already has aaaauction.com,  .us works just as well!” No it doesn’t. If someone already has the .com name for your company, you absolutely need to change your business name. That’s how important it is that your domain name matches your company.

If your website is kansasbid.com, make sure that your company name is Kansas Bid and vice versa. If you try to get cute with your domain name, few will remember it.

Shorter is better
If your company is named for you, your first and best bet is your last name. In other words, if our auction company is called Aaron Traffas Auctioneers, we would look for traffas.com. It suffers from being difficult to spell, but we’d get around that problem by registering travis.com, traffis.com, trafas.com and so on, having each of the alternate misspellings point to the main account. However, since traffas.com is taken, we’d settle for aarontraffas.com, knowing that it was a little less desirable than traffas.com but not quite a deal breaker.

However, let’s say that we’re John Smith Auctioneers. Obviously smith.com is taken. Obviously johnsmith.com is taken. Do we look for johnsmithauctioneers.com? Now we’re getting into the problem of a lengthy domain name. The longer the name, the more difficult it is to predict misspellings, the harder it is to fit on business cards, the harder it is to read on billboards, and – worst of all – the harder it is to get customers to remember the site. Was it johnsmithauctioneer.com? Was it johnsmithauctions.com? Notice they never think to ask if it was .net or .org or .us or .idiot.

Own your domain name
This problem is rampant within the auction industry. Many auctioneers are approached from an upselling [read:predatory] website hosting company with a sales pitch that goes something like this. “We’ll host website for you and even register your domain name so you don’t have to deal with a registrar or mess with any of that techy stuff.” We really like it when they use the word techy, by the way. The company then registers your domain name for themselves and creates your website. Should you ever wish to leave, you can’t simply point your domain name to another provider because you don’t own it, they do.

Find out if you own your domain name. Go to http://www.whois.net/ and enter your website. Sometimes, as in the case with Network Solutions, it will tell you you have to go to the registrar used to register the domain name to see who owns it. Stay with us. This exercise is important. Your web host can be listed as the technical contact, but you must be listed as the registrant or you don’t own your website.

CamelCase isn’t for websites
This rule isn’t necessarily about selecting your domain, but it’s about how you present it to your users. It will probably generate some opposing comments, but we feel it’s both true and important. Websites are case-insensitive. That means that auctioneertech.com is just as valid as AuCtIoNeErTeCh.com. Why don’t we write our website using CamelCase like AuctioneerTech.com since that’s the way it looks in our logo? Because websites should ALWAYS be written exclusively in lowercase. Writing your site using intermittent capital letters may make it seem easier to read, but it also makes you seem a little less – to use the word from our patronizing, predatory salesperson from above – techy than the competition. Your customers notice the details, don’t give them the opportunity to think less of you because of something as simple as how you write your domain name.

Priorities
In summary, your website is the most important marketing component to your business. While many people will come to your site by clicking a link, far more will visit your site because they saw your website in an ad or because they’ve been there before. Make it easy for them not only to remember, but to guess. The first thing most everyone does when trying to load a site is to type the company name and add .com. If that doesn’t work, if we’re interested enough we may look up to see what it was supposed to be, either by referencing the ad or searching in Google. In this case, it’s already a strike against the site and the milk is a little more sour before we’ve even arrived at our destination.

The current website and interface for financial institution Capital One suffers from some accessibility issues. While its source code suffers a little from divitis and classitis (using the DIV and CLASS (X)HTML elements excessively for layout purposes), by far the most annoying problem is that the site requires users to enable JavaScript to login to view their accounts. It’s as if accessing your Capital One account gave you a paper cut. It’s annoying, but it may be worth a little blood and a Band-Aid® to turn on JavaScript and see your transactions.

This morning, however, Capital One sent an email to its credit card customers announcing that they were moving from an accessibility paper cut to full-on, get-it-over-with-quick amputation.

Starting January 24, 2010, your online statements will be available in PDF format only. HTML access will be discontinued.

If you don’t already have Adobe Reader(R), which is a PDF file viewer program that can open and interact with your online statements, you can download the latest version for free. Please visit [junk link obscured by HTML tracking gibberish].

Remember, your current statement as well as statements from the previous 18 months are always available for you online. Simply log in to Online Banking and select the Statements tab. If you need to, you can even download and print PDF copies, which are identical to your paper statement. Please visit [junk link obscured by HTML tracking gibberish].

If you have signed up for paperless statements and can’t download Adobe Reader(R), click here to learn how to start receiving paper statements again. Please visit [junk link obscured by HTML tracking gibberish].

Their current system is quickly and easily accessible by anyone who can use JavaScript. This user base includes nearly all browsers and mobile devices. It’s pretty fast and allows users to easily and effectively access transaction history. Capital One is turning it off.

In place of their current, working system, they’re leaving us with a head-fake towards functionality by saying we can still download our transactions in PDF format. While it’s true that PDF is an accepted standard, making it the only way to access our data poses the following problems.

1. Now the users must launch a separate program to view their transactions. This program takes time to launch. Even users with Chrome’s PDF plugin, which renders the PDF in the browser using Google, are removed from the carefully-crafted user experience offered by the website.
2. Screen readers and mobile devices will have a harder time accessing the site, if they can access it at all.
3. Third party sites like Mint may no longer be able to access the information. It’s too soon to tell if Mint will be effected, but such a significant change is bound to affect any automated system that logs in to access transactional data.

To make matters worse, they’re recommending the Adobe Reader(R) software, by far the most bloated and malware-like PDF reader on the market. If the user isn’t careful, simply attempting to download Adobe Reader installs a package called Adobe Download Manager. We’re not making this stuff up. If you have Adobe Reader, check your installed programs list. Did you ever wake up and say, “Gee, I wish I could find a product from Adobe that I could install to make it easier to download other Adobe products.” Bet not. It was installed because you didn’t read carefully when you installed Reader. We call it malware when a product installs something you didn’t know about, and Adobe does it with their Download Manager. Uninstall it, you don’t need it and you never did – Acrobat Reader can be downloaded just fine without allowing extra crap on your system. For more information about the proper use of PDF, view the transcript or listen to the episode from Auction Podcast Episode 5 – PDF.

Now don’t read this article and think that we’re saying that PDF should never be used. PDF is a fine format, and the ability to view transactions as a PDF would have been a nice feature to add to Capital One’s existing offering. Providing customers with the ability to print their statements in a way that is formatted like the statements sent in the mail is a very laudable goal. The problem is that they’re moving exclusively to this new format, at the expense of the usability, accessibility and speed by disabling their existing system.

Imagine if we auctioneers said that the only way to get information about an auction, property, or other item was with PDF. Think of how our users would feel when they could no longer simply read the content in their browsers but instead had to launch a completely separate program and enter a different user experience. Sure, we’ve mentioned this topic here before, but Capital One’s accessibility failure announced today gives us a concrete example of why this entrapment of content is bad for users.

Duluth, MN – A Stillwater man is the 2010 Minnesota State Champion Auctioneer. At the 22nd annual auctioneer championship held in Duluth, Matthew Schultz won the competition in which 27 auctioneers competed.

The contest was held last night during the Minnesota State Auctioneers Association Conference and Show. Schultz has been part of the auction profession for almost half of his life. He is a graduate of World Wide College of Auctioneering and prior to this contest won the 2002 Minnesota Rookie Auctioneer Contest. He currently sits on the Young Professional Auctioneers Advisory Committee for the National Auctioneers Association and is actively involved in both the Minnesota and National Auctioneers Association.

Schultz will now have his entry paid into the International Auctioneers Championship to be held in Greensboro, North Carolina this July. Asked to describe how he felt with one word, Schultz said, “Awesome!”

The contestants were judged on presentation, chant/voice, effective auctioneering and an interview conducted on stage. This year’s Reserve Champion was Austin Bachman of Ottertail, Minnesota. Rounding out the top five were Kurt Johnson of White Bear Lake, Theresa Ann Larson from Aitkin and Bryce Hansen of Prairie Farm, Wisconsin.

The MSAA celebrated their 60th anniversary at this year’s conference and show, which concluded Saturday night in Duluth. The association is an organization of licensed auctioneers who work to promote the auction profession. As the new champion, Matthew Schultz will serve as a goodwill ambassador for Minnesota Auctioneers throughout 2010.

Justin Clark shows off his ruggedized, waterproof camera with custom auction functionality and explains what realtimebid.com is and does for auctioneers. This video was recorded in July, 2009, at the 60th International Auctioneers Conference and Show in Overland Park, Kansas.

For those of you who have followed us from the beginning, you’ll recall that the first version of the site included a subscription feature that allowed users to receive short, plain-text email updates each time we posted new articles. Well, somewhere between our initial home at Lunarpages, our subsequent moves to Slicehost and then GoDaddy and now our final home here at (mt), that functionality was misplaced. Now it’s back and available in a sidebar widget as well as on the revamped subscribe page. You won’t get spam and your address won’t be compromised. You’re authorizing us and only us to send you a short, plain-text notification when we post new articles.

The second new, shiny widget you’ll notice below the subscription form is from Skribit. It’s a new service that provides a very fast and anonymous way for anyone to suggest topics for future articles, podcasts or interviews. It’s faster and easier than using the feedback form, and it also makes your suggestions public so that other readers can quickly and easily ditto the suggestion. If you want to see an article – or more articles – about the buyer’s premium, Internet bidding, auction calendars, tech rumors or skepticism, type it in and submit it so we can get on it.

You’re sold. You’ve read something or heard something that tipped you off to the fact that netcasts and virtual meetings don’t have to cost an arm and a leg. You’ve created your Dimdim account and are preparing for your first presentation. What do you need? What should you do?

Login early and install the screencaster plugin
Dimdim has a special browser plugin that’s needed to show your screen. If your presentation involves more than just a slide show, you’d better account for the quick and easy installation of the plugin so you’re not surprised by it during the presentation.

Test your webcam and Flash version
It’s really easy to login to Dimdim and make sure that your webcam is working properly. Create a test presentation with just yourself and be sure that you’re prompted for camera access. If you approve it and can see yourself on your screen, everything is working great. Don’t wait until the day of your presentation to test your hardware, and while you’re at it be sure you’re using the most up-to-date version of Flash. Secunia is a great tool to be sure all your plugins are updated.

Use wired broadband
Dimdim does a good job accounting for limited bandwidth, but if your presentation is important in any way, you need to get serious about it. Find a hard-line broadband connection that is connected by cable or DSL. If you’re in a bind and you’re wanting to show something to your coworkers, then you can probably get away with using your computer’s wireless adapter or even Sprint or Verizon mobile broadband. If, however, it’s important that your presentation doesn’t experience dropouts or, worse, disconnections, then find a real Internet connection.

Get a headset. Really.
While Dimdim can rely on a bridge line, Dimdim is much better when you use the computer audio with one caveat: that you have a headset. If a single person with a microphone in a presentation doesn’t have a headset and is instead relying on the computer speakers and the mic that is built-in to the computer, problems are eminent.  The sound coming out of the speakers is picked up by the microphone and creates an echo for all in attendance. If you don’t have a headset mic, and can’t run to Walmart or Best Buy and get one, you should postpone your presentation until you have one for the sake of everyone.

Get a second computer
Your presentation is most likely going to be a PowerPoint presentation, a screencast, or a combination of the two. In any case, you’re most likely not going to be able to view the chat or your video while you’re presenting. It’s always good to be able to monitor what’s going on, so it’s in your best interests to set up another computer right next to the one from which you’re using to present. It doesn’t take much – borrow a friend’s netbook if you don’t have one – but it’s quite worth the piece of mind to have a monitor so you can see your presentation through the eyes of the audience.

Get Firefox on Windows
You have a Mac. You’re cool. Now use it as your second computer from which you can monitor your presentation that you’re giving from Firefox on Windows. Dimdim is awesome in that it’s cross-platform and works on many different environments, but a public presentation is no time to risk things going wrong simply to demonstrate that you paid more for your computer than everyone watching. Linux users, this rule goes for you, too. Grab a Windows computer and launch Firefox to give your presentation.

Best practices
Any presentation should be a two-way communication. Dimdim’s chat tool is a very obvious way to watch the reaction from the audience. Having a speakerphone connected to Dimdim’s bridge line is another way to be sure the audience can ask a question or make a comment about what you’re doing. Be sure, of course, that the phone isn’t loud enough to be picked up by the microphone on your headset.

Dimdim is a fantastically simple and reliable product, but it’s pretty easy to overlook any of the points listed above and end up with problems ranging from minutes lost doing troubleshooting to entire presentations that aren’t viable or aren’t recorded. Good luck.