Aaron writes about subdomains, explaining how they work and how they can be used to properly brand multiple web hosts with the same domain. Included in this post is a real-world example of a website distributed among three web hosts that uses subdomains to create a seamless user experience on one website.
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
Read the rest of this entry »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 [...]
Anyone who uses multiple computers has the struggle of maintaining productivity across different environments. Web browsers store passwords and bookmarks and preferences on each computer. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a way to have each computer automatically synchronize your bookmarks and passwords?
If your browser of choice is Firefox, you’re in luck. A product [...]
The upgrade process for Windows 7 is pretty straightforward – if you’re doing an in-place upgrade from 32 bit Vista to 32 bit Windows 7 or 64 bit Vista to 64 bit Windows 7. It gets tricky when you want to perform an upgrade from 32 bit Vista to 64 bit Windows 7.
You can’t do [...]
Unless you don’t pay any attention to the tech press, you’ve been hearing a lot recently about Google Wave. Even if you’re one of the lucky 100,000 with an invite – or one of the eight more users that each of those got to invite to the private beta – you’re probably wondering what Google [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Held every year in San Fransisco, the TechCrunch50 Conference showcases the best and brightest startups. We wrote about the 2007 winner, Mint, which this week announced that it has been acquired by Intuit for $170 million.
The experts panel this year included tech and investor rockstars including Kevin Rose, Robert Scoble, Marissa Mayer, Yossi Vardi and [...]
In July, Internet bidding provider LiveAuctioneers announced the release of an iPhone application that allows its users to view auction inventories as well as to participate in auctions by placing pre-auction Internet bids.
Yesterday, LiveAuctioneers announced the release of an application for BlackBerry devices that has similar functionality but, unlike the iPhone application, is free to [...]
Following last month’s announcement of an upcoming embedded bidding solution, Proxibid today announces that auctioneers can begin reserving this solution in mid-September. Also announced today is the preview of the new layout of the Proxibid website which looks like it sports a much cleaner appearance. Gone are the borders and tables, the auction calendar has [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Long a thorn in the sides of other Internet bidding providers, the National Auctioneers Association’s affinity relationship with Ableauctions.com is coming to an end. We’re excited about this development, as we feel it will foster a more open and competitive development of Internet bidding methods and techniques among all the vendors. Here’s the release.
Overland [...]
Image via CrunchBase
Our post on Wednesday described an announcement by Proxibid of their forthcoming embedding bidding service. This service will allow auctioneers to seamlessly embed Proxibid’s systems into the auctioneers’ web pages. In Wednesday’s post, we posed five questions we felt were important to ask of Proxibid and other providers who are looking to offer [...]
Read the rest of this entry »As we generate more video here at AuctioneerTech, we find ourselves becoming more and more familiar with format types. One of the challenges we faced with the creation of the Auction Video Podcast was getting the video into a format compatible with the iPod. This challenge, and many others, were immediately overcome when we came [...]
Read the rest of this entry »One of the most popular feature requests made of Internet bidding providers is that they offer a non-branded, embedded solution for auctioneers who want the ability to host bidding on their sites rather than having to push people to a third-party website.
Today, in an email to their auctioneer clients, Proxibid announced that they were working [...]
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There are many different approaches to email usage. While some, including John C. Dvorak, say that email is dead, we feel that if used properly email can be a valuable tool and can successfully double as a to-do list.
Google Gmail is superior to any other email service. The stunning feature set [...]
Image by adria.richards via Flickr
Most of the topics we cover here on AuctioneerTech come from technology news. In the last couple of weeks, however, one of the stories that rose to the level of national consumer news is the FCC’s involvement in a dispute between Apple, AT&T and Google. In letters to each company, James [...]
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digg_url = 'http://digg.com/business_finance/theAuctioneerchannel_com_to_provide_video_of_live_auctions';
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We’ve had our eye on recently-launched website theAuctioneerchannel.com for the last several days. A joint venture between Michigan auctioneers Scott Vander Kolk, Jr., and David Helmer, the site aims to promote the live auction industry through videos and blogs.
We caught up with Scott Vander Kolk and shot him a [...]
We frequently write about Twitter and its many benefits. We frequently visit our sister site at AuctioneerTweet to see what auctioneers are saying on Twitter. Today, however, we noticed something new. Actual items are now being sold on Twitter using the auction method of marketing.
Walt Kolenda, better known as AuctionWally, has conducted several Twitterauctions, as [...]
There is a disturbing trend in the auction industry. The availability and ease of installation of inexpensive or open source scripts that turn any website into an auction site [read: eBay clone] have convinced some trade publications and newspapers to try to be auctioneers. Newspapers and trade journals who try to be auctioneers by adding [...]
Read the rest of this entry »We realized recently that we’ve made a huge mistake by not adopting and advocating Dropbox long ago. Here’s how the service works.
Install the client. You’ll find a “My Dropbox” directory in your documents folder, wherever that may be. Anything you put in this folder is automatically and immediately synchronized on the Dropbox server. If you [...]
Real-time Internet bidding is a process that allows an auctioneer to accept Internet bids during an auction. A bidder downloads client software, usually either Flash- or Java-based, and can hear the auctioneer and place bids until each individual item is declared sold. There are several prominent real-time bidding service providers competing in this space, each [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Tech startup Wakoopa this week released some intriguing findings regarding software trends. They have relatively-real-time data on the usage of apps like Facebook, Outlook and Firefox, for example, throughout the day. They claim to have logged over 525 million hours of software usage from their 75,000 users. How do they get their data? Why is [...]
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It’s no secret that we’re enamored with Twitter. Our AuctioneerTweet site has over 45 auctioneers listed and it seems we’re continuing to add several each week as more and more auctioneers join Twitter.
Twitter is useful. It’s replaced instant messaging and reduced our use of email and Facebook. Even [...]
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As an effort to build and grow the community of auctioneers using Twitter, we launched a new website yesterday called AuctioneerTweet at – where else – www.auctioneertweet.com.
The concept is simple. Any auctioneer with a Twitter account can join and have his or her tweets included in the AuctioneerTweet timeline. A member list on [...]
Image via CrunchBase
We mentioned how easy it was to create web forms with Google Docs back in November. Now, technology blog TechCrunch is running a story about a very interesting do-it-yourself project combining the ease of Google Doc form creation with the enormous prospective bidder pool of Craigslist to form a rudamentary Internet bidding system.
Craigslist [...]
Even though our enjoyment of Twitter has caused Facebook to go the way of MySpace for us at AuctioneerTech – something checked infrequently, usually at the behest of the automated emails sent any time something happens – we still recognize the importance of contact lists. The hundreds – some have thousands – of friends on [...]
Read the rest of this entry »We have to admit that we’ve been following recent events at eBay with a little bit of schadenfreude. We’ve always held the position that someone who sells on eBay isn’t an auctioneer. eBay is the auctioneer that outsources the work of listing items to its sellers. Over the last few years, we’ve seen eBay shift [...]
Read the rest of this entry »If the most important component of an auctioneers website is the upcoming auction calendar, the most important component of a new-media marketing campaign after his website is the Internet auction calendar.
The concept of an Internet auction calendar is an aggregation of auctions from many auctioneers in one place. The benefit to consumers is that they [...]
Have you ever wanted a quick way to learn all you can about a website? A new web services called dataopedia.com makes it easy to view data like web stats, registrar information and links and stories from social networks. Note that the first search for a website seems to be a little sluggish, probably because [...]
Read the rest of this entry »We’ve received some search traffic from users searching for the phrase Auction Listing Specialist. As involved as we are with the National Auctioneers Association (NAA) and not ever hearing of such a course or designation, we decided to search it out as any responsible skeptic would.
It seems that Auction Listing Specialist is a course offered [...]
We’ve recently become fans – nay, a fanatics – of social music site Last.fm. It could be described as Internet radio, but with several twists that make it also a music recommendation engine. We started using the service several years ago, but only recently figured out how to truly integrate it into the day-to-day routine.
The [...]
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We start the new year with an obituary for eBay Live Auctions, not to be confused with eBay Live!, the eBay convention for buyers and sellers held regularly in cities around the country. As of the first of the year, the website ebayliveauctions.com now redirects to www.ebay.com.
eBay Live Auctions was the division of [...]
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No, we’re not talking about breakfast cereal. The Crunchies 2008 is a set of awards given to the top technology companies, products and ideas in a given year. The awards are sponsored by GigaOm, VentureBeat, Silicon Alley Insider, and TechCrunch. Last years winners included Facebook, Digg, Tesla Motors, Hulu and the [...]
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In this time of giving and over the course of the next few weeks that begins the new year, many of us may be looking for was to give to good causes. As many of us may have difficulties giving financially during these times, we look to alternative ways to help others. If [...]
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Video can be a fantastic marketing tool. The same video can convey a sense of incompetence if not distributed correctly. Ignoring the difference between an expensively-produced video and simple footage captured with a camcorder, both of which can be effective and important as components of marketing campaigns, the way a video is delivered [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Mahalo is an interesting search engine. Relying more on people than algorithms, Mahalo has a staff that builds pages for common search results. When auser submits a query that doesn’t match one of the prepared pages, Mahalo returns search results from many popular search engines – including Google, Yahoo and MSN – allowing the user [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Lunarpages is a company that offers very robust and generous website hosting plans. Their control panel is easy to use and automates the installation of many popular scripts such as Wordpress, Drupal, etc.
One of their value-added services is a monthly newsletter that they send out to their customers. The most recent issue discusses using Google [...]
I’ve spoken with many auctioneers recently who are at the beginning stages of a new technology project, usually a website redesign or new build of some kind. The questions everyone asks mostly revolve around the expectations they should have of the person or company being hired to build the website.
I’ve put together some content that [...]
Hello and welcome to the twelfth episode of the AuctioneerTech Auction Podcast for the week of 17 November 2008. My name is Aaron Traffas, and now that I’ve baited you with the catchy and possibly controversial title, lets examine the importance of local marketing as it relates to Internet bidding as well as a couple [...]
Read the rest of this entry »One of the reasons AuctioneerTech exists is to make life easier for everyone, including auctioneers. One of the ways this goal is accomplished is by reviewing software that performs a novel or important function. Most of the software covered is open source, and in this episode, we’re going to discuss open source software, explain why [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Microsoft Outlook is the best corporate email and scheduling tool. That’s a tough statement to make as an open source advocate, but until the open source equivalent called Evolution matures, Outlook will remain the corporate standard for email, calendar and scheduling.
For personal and small-business email, Outlook sucks. It’s bloated, expensive and has a problem with [...]
As a provider of tech support to users who are many miles away, one of the most valuable tools in the box is remote access. The ability to control the computer of a remote user to walk him through software installation or troubleshooting has greatly increased the accuracy and speed of support.
On the other side [...]
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Imagine being able to easily stream live video of your events. Imagine being able to embed that video on your website along with an optional chat window. What would such a system be worth to you? Ustream does all these things for free.
After creating a free account on ustream.tv, you can [...]
Google is a mammoth company, slowly weaving its way into every corner of the Internet by offering free services that are better than the competing for-pay services. The development of these free services is not cheap, especially when Google allegedly requires only 80% of their employees’ attention through their Innovation time off program which encourages [...]
Read the rest of this entry »It’s time for a little housekeeping. In case you didn’t notice, the new resources page was published a few days ago. Its goal is to list various offerings from various companies and vendors serving the auction industry. If you don’t see a product listed, it’s due to an oversight and not an agenda. If you [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Over the last several months, there have been many security bulletins about the vulnerabilities found in one of the fundamental technologies that makes the web work called DNS. DNS stands for domain name system. It’s a fairly complex system, but abstractly it’s fairly simple.
Every device on the Internet is accessed by Internet protocol (IP) address, [...]
eBay recently announced that in late October it will be eliminating checks and money orders as valid payment options for eBay sales. Remaining valid payment methods are as follows.
PayPal, owned by eBay
ProPay, partnered with eBay
Credit or debit card payments direct to seller
Payment upon pickup
There are several categories that are exempt from the payment restrictions, including [...]
Read the rest of this entry »I admitted on Saturday that there were indeed some good uses for the PDF. If, after analyzing the situation, PDF seems like the right tool for the job, here are some ways to make its use less painless and less expensive.
Adobe has two products related to PDF use and creation. Adobe Acrobat Reader is the [...]
One of the best marketing techniques for auctioneers and everyone else who is running a business is proper management of an email list. Keeping a list of emails in Excel and copying that list into the BCC field of Outlook does NOT count.
There are rules put in place due to the proliferation of spam. The [...]
My friend and fellow auctioneer Don Hamit pointed out to me at the KAA auctioneer contest yesterday that the recently-released Chrome doesn’t work with the recently-funded real-time Internet bidding platform Proxibid. I was able to get the Proxibid Bidder App to run in Chrome on XP and Vista. Here’s how to get it, and other [...]
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