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Exploiting Ebay Contains The Vital Secrets You Must Have

Sun, 17 Nov 2008 08:40:00 GMT

posted by exposed

Exploiting Ebay Contains The Vital Secrets You Must Have

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Ebay to integrate StumbleUpon into Skype? Probably the other way around…

Wed, 19 Apr 2007 22:01:03 GMT

posted by danny

eBay plans to buy StumbleUpon according to Om, who asks if eBay might want to integrate StumbleUpon search-like technology into the Skype client. I think it’s the other way around. StumbleUpon is the distribution point.

A few points to consider:

- Browser toolbars are becoming an increasingly large source of search traffic for Google and for Yahoo!.

- They hold insanely good real estate from a UI perspective.

- People’s natural inclination is to search while browsing, and browse while searching. Searching from within a web browser is super fast and super gratifying. A desktop client doesn’t have a role in this tendency. Anyway you slice it, using a desktop client to launch a web page will always be a worse user experience.

- It’s a better strategy to integrate skype into the toolbar itself. This will help facilitate click-to-call while web browsing.

- eBay has grander consumer media ambitions beyond Skype, and securing toolbar real estate will be key to distributing and integrating other services (the other major portals all have mastered this, and eBay is definitely thinking big).

- Did I mention how freakin’ valuable the toolbar real estate is? The toolbar is the remote control of the web.

Sure eBay is getting an alternative search product, but I think more important than that, they’re securing a proven distribution point for all of their services.

The Sale of the House of Usher: Part 2

Tue, 28 May 2008 00:10:00 GMT

posted by NJKidd5

In yesterday's post I laid down the facts on a man named Ian Usher and his plan to sell his entire life on ebay as one package deal this June. His website and the idea are extremely well-structured, providing all the practical answers for the mortgage, the job, the potential immigration issues and much more, but the entire concept leaves a tremendous amount of room for speculation. What kind of person would buy another man’s life? What will become of the buyer and the seller in the future? First and foremost, however—-Why is this jet-skiing, home-owning, accent-bearing Australian selling his
life?

In the appropriately titled “Why” section of the website, Usher tells a story of the better days with a woman named Laura. Ian describes Laura as, “the best girl in the world.” “I loved her with all my heart, and she loved me back too.” After being together for 15 years, the couple moved to Perth, Western Australia and bought the beautiful home that Usher is now dying to escape. Trouble in paradise.

“After over twelve years together and five years of fantastic married happiness, I was hit with a bolt from the blue. I was blindsided at about 11pm on a Wednesday evening by a shocking and awful discovery”

This is the extent of the description that Usher offers us about what actually happened. Between the lines of other sections we find that Laura is still alive and that the pair has simply separated. Usher remains completely respectful to her and constantly compliments her on multiple fronts, making this ‘shocking and awful’ experience all the more confusing to pinpoint. Friend and fellow PopSense contributor, Stelios Phili, discussed with me essentially every possible event that could meet the description of ‘shocking and awful’ on a Wednesday night for a husband to encounter. I’ll spare our family-friendly audience any details that may or may not have included the milkman, farm animals, a production crew, and/or duct tape.

Either way, Usher credits the separation with Laura as the principle reason for his planned departure from this lifestyle. Everything in his current life reminds him of this past that he can no longer live in, and its time to move on. I guess this is one way to do it.

So take the photographs… and abandon your identity

Obviously this seems a bit drastic, especially considering how grateful Ian is for the things and people in his life that are now going up for sale. The website is accented by tons of videos which prove exactly that appreciation (Warning: Spend too much time watching the videos and reading the supplementary life-tracking blog and you’ll become Ian Usher without ever paying a dollar). Usher describes these videos as “my own impression of Perth”.

Does Ian Usher’s impression of Perth become nameless future buyer’s impression of Perth?

Here begins the endless line of questions.
Will the buyer of Ian Usher’s “life” become Ian Usher? Does he act as the website tells him to? Does he truly become friends with Ian’s friends?

Who can we imagine making such an absurd investment online?
In the spirit of the website, it would be nice to see someone of similar socioeconomic status to Ian making the purchase and really assuming the lifestyle.

But, in order for this to happen, for one to truly purchase a life in its entirety, would this buyer then have to turn around and sell his own life, thus creating a ceaseless cycle of soul selling?

His friends seem confident, including in a letter of support on the website where one optimistically states, “We’re not about to loose a friend, we’re looking forward to making new ones.”

Realistically, this probably won’t be the case. Someone willing to make this large of a purchase, more than likely, wouldn’t be interested in really abandoning the life they currently occupy for one of lesser socioeconomic value. Unless, of course, they too just simply want to get out.

You go your way, I’ll go mine

Ok, so you still think this whole idea is crazy?
Well, you’re not entirely alone.

Man puts his life up for sale, gives out all of his contact information, encourages visits to his home, films his entire existence all for being 1 out of 3 billion men who feel they have been wronged by a woman in some way.

Whereas the survey section does show 24,000 people calling it an “Awesome Idea!” (myself included), there are still 6,500 people calling it a “Pretty dumb idea”, 10,000 trendily referring to it as “e-nonsense”, and 23,000 other smarmy skeptics simply responding, “Interesting…”.

Still, the Guestbook is both extremely supportive and overly personal. Something about the project’s openness seems to inherently encourage readers towards a similar willingness to connect with Usher, the other viewers of the site, and themselves. The discussion forum has also stimulated some serious self-examination and a collective effort at making sense of this whole project.

Though Usher’s intent seems pure, one can’t help but raise an eyebrow (or two) at his survey question of, “Could you do it?” Alright, tough guy, is that a challenge? Ok, ya got me, I wouldn’t sell everything that defines who I am on an internet auction… especially in a buyer’s market.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love the idea, I just don’t appreciate the phrasing.
Regardless, anyone who can use YouTube and Ebay this effectively is a friend of mine.

The Lingering Questions, Some Closure, and Poe

“I love the adventurous nature of the project, and am excited about a new start”
Less than 30 days to go, we can only imagine that this very excitement that first riled Usher into action is only growing stronger each day.

We still must ask questions, for our own sake.
Will he actually get a new start?
Is he really just trying to prove a point?
What happens to him next?
Can he truly part from everything that he once had, everything that he currently is?
Does one need to make a purchase or a sale to get a new life?

I said in my first piece that he was disproving life’s value by giving it a value. But is it really up to him at this point? It’s in our hands now, the intrigued buyer willing to give everything up and do the very same thing, the millionaire trying to escape his sphere, the venture capitalist with a purely monetary interest. We are the ones setting the value, not Ian Usher. He’s leaving the corruption to us.

And so we turn to beloved UVA-dropout, Edgar Allen Poe and his The Fall of the House of Usher. It seems creepily fitting that a tale of the unidentifiably frightening (in classic Poe fashion) shares its name with our life salesman. Suffering a Roderick-like “morbid acuteness of the senses,” Ian Usher feels the very presence of the woman that is indirectly making him sell his own life away. But he must escape before he slips into Madeline’s illness, that of, “a settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person” in this life entrenched in the past.

It is the uncanny, the Freudian concept of that which is so familiar, yet notably strange so as to produce an uncomfortable feeling. Ian Usher, a young person like you or me, content in his existence, a working man, with friends, a home, and things to help define himself by. Read his webpage and you will know him well, for his lifestyle is clearly not foreign to any of us. Yet this same man, who could very well be you or me, decides that none of these things matter anymore, and that he will leave them behind. Ian Usher is your friend, your Uncle, your neighbor, yourself. He is so similar, yet his action places him in some realm that is beyond our understanding (or our want to understand).

On the top of Ian Usher’s webpage, near the flashing banner that tells us when he will be “departing this life,” there is a slide of children’s drawings. Sloppily colored yet oddly perfect, there is the jetski riding a disproportionately large wave, a motorbike flying down a hill. A square home with a triangle rooftop, friends holding hands, drinking to good health, enjoying the warmth of a hot tub and good company. Finally, a man, parachuting in from the heavens, coming from nowhere and becoming someone he is not. Squeezed into the frame of the wider-than-life front door awaits his future, stick figures with open arms as the sun literally smiles down on them all.

Everything about it is so unrealistic, childlish… innocent, pure.
So I ask, just as Ian asks on that same flashing banner…
“Will you be the owner of this life?”

The Sale of the House of Usher: Part 1

Sun, 26 May 2008 22:53:00 GMT

posted by NJKidd5

Let me begin with a long overdue apology to all readers. As always, your support is greatly appreciated and absolutely necessary to the success of this blog, and for that we hope to regain your love by providing daily articles and all the other features you've seen today for the rest of the summer and hopefully beyond. But this plea for forgiveness begs one obvious question—what could have POSSIBLY been more important than writing regularly on PopSense? Well, a few days ago I would have staunchly defended my actions of focusing on schoolwork, family requirements, and my general well-being, but such concerns suddenly seem petty and irrelevant in light of my recent discovery. Thanks to Ian Usher and his unusual endeavor, I am forced to reconsider. I, and we, must ask ourselves, what exactly is the point? For what purpose do we build up our material and emotional lives if they can disappear at the click of a button. We ask ourselves the one question that never before seemed to have an answer, but just might now; what is a life really worth?

Ian Usher, living comfortably in Perth, Western Australia, using the Internet to its fullest extent, is marketing the ultimate product on ebay...his life. At age 45, Usher, ripe for a mid-life crisis, isn’t blowing his retirement fund on that Rolls Royce you pass at the dealership everyday on the way to a dead-end cubicle job, instead he’s bolstering his bank account by giving it all away. But this isn’t a pick-and-choose deal. What you see is what you get, that’s right, everything in his life is for sale in one big package deal, the whole kitten caboodle (wow, caboodle is a real word?!). House, car, jetski, motorbike, entertainment center, spa, a job, friends (indirectly), if it’s his... it’s yours.

The concept may seem funny and an early symptom of insanity, but this is no joke. His website is beautifully constructed, answering any and all questions that a prospective buyer or bystander could possibly have (on a literal level at least, see: my next post for more). From promotional videos to the FAQ section, Usher understands the weight of his decision and has done his homework to make this work.

For what it’s worth… after taxes

“At noon on Sunday 29th June 2008 I am going to depart this life…” Amidst the epic commercialism of it all, the poetry of Usher’s exit cannot be forgotten as the banner fades in and out atop the page.
“… LIVE ONLINE!!”
I digress.

The auction begins on Sunday June 22nd and fittingly starts at 1 Australian Dollar (.95 USD=1 AUD). Seven days later, this dastardly dare devil from down under will walk away with only the clothes on his back, his wallet, and his passport.

“It could ALL be yours”
“Everything I have and everything I am”
Sounds enticing, no? A bit frightening too. There’s something exciting and terrifying about someone seemingly just like me or you giving it all away, disproving life’s value by actually giving it a value.

Born in England, later moving to Australia with his wife Laura in 2000 (more on her later), Ian tells his entire life story to all. As much as this, and many of the site’s aspects, may technically be a way of making prospective purchasers comfortable with their product, I can’t help but feel a growing attachment to Usher. Mixed feelings of questioning his motives and applauding his efforts make it all the more intriguing.

The three bedroom, two bathroom home comes fully furnished (obviously) along with some pretty neat accessories that Usher markets with such passion that it is difficult to imagine him parting with them. The house itself is valued between 400-420,000 dollars and many of the rooms look like a screenshot from the Sims. This now-single bloke shows off his bachelor pad with a level of professionalism that convinces me that this is the right decision for him… or at least that he should become a real estate agent after all this.

Either way, he’ll need a new job, since he’s actually giving his away in the process as well. The owners of Jenny Jones Rugs have extended the offer of a two-week trial period to the buyer to work as a “rug store assistant”. Heavy lifting of the Oriental’s finest and customer service with nagging old ladies, sounds like a dream come true. In reality, however, this poses the first of far too many questions—will the winning bidder really need a job?

It’s all been done… but not like this

While questions of the future will dominate my next article, let me close off today by taking a quick look at the precedents set by previous life-entrepreneurs.

Just last year one man planned to sell his life in the same way that Usher’s project details, but the offer was far less enticing.
His reasoning was also mind-numbingly frustrating, a classic case of, “protest against mass consumerism, saturation advertising and the obsession with money”… coming from a man who is selling his life for a dollar value. This social genius never seemed to have followed up on his plan, unfortunately.

In 2001 we encounter the slightly more reputable work of a Mr. John D. Freyer who sold all of his items on ebay… one at a time. After what must have been months of 10-cent bidding on Power Ranger action figures, hand-me-down sweaters, and crusty old toothbrushes, Freyer capitalized on the situation by calling it art… the age-old secret to all things seemingly pointless. After Freyer sold everything, (including his website to the University of Iowa Museum of Art) he kept up correspondence with the buyers, and even ventured out to visit all of his objects in their new homes. He then, of course, wrote a book about it. We can only hope that Usher remains true to his intent and avoids the extremely tempting capitalist possibilities.

Tomorrow we’ll examine Usher’s motives, the public response, and what we might imagine the lucky winner of this bid to actually be like. The questions are endless, and in the spirit of Usher’s attempt at answering one seemingly unanswerable one, so too shall we try our luck with a few of our own.

Strange things for sale on Ebay

Tue, 16 Jul 2008 18:32:15 GMT

posted by Morninglark

Sometimes its just fun to look for weird stuff..

For example, this week you can buy:

The Secret of Invisibility says it’s an amazing book that renders you completely invisible. It goes on to claim, that it’s used by the CIA and makes you completely invisible. (and for only $24.95 haha) You have to actually click on the product and read the funny stuff he claims.

Do People actually buy this stuff?? Um..yeah they must. He has been selling it for several years and has hundreds of positive feedback comments. (Go figure)

(when you click on this link you get the sellers page..scroll down to see what they list. If I chose to link to an actual sale item, then it would expire and I would have broken links!)

—————–

Next auction you just can’t pass up today… SAND…yeah that’s right…

This isn’t magic sand, or invisible sand…oh hell no. This person is gonna go outside, pack up some dirt from her beach and ship it to you..and wants you to pay for it. Um..its DIRT lady..are you kidding me???

(to see this auction, click on items for sale, then click on “Everything Else”)

BEEN TO FLORIDA ? WISH YOU COULD HAVE STAYED ? WISH YOU COULD HAVE TAKEN SOME OF FLORIDA WITH YOU ? WELL NOW YOU CAN HAVE A LITTLE PIECE OF FLORIDA FOR YOUR OWN.

THIS AUCTION IS FOR AUTHENTIC FLORIDA SAND FROM SIESTA KEY BEACH, I WILL INCLUDE A PICTURE OF YOUR SAND BEING RETRIEVED FROM THE BEACH. THE SAND WILL BE UP TO 1 LB AND MAY INCLUDE SOME SEA SHELLS, STARFISH, SAND DOLLARS , OR OTHER DRIED MARINE LIFE.

_____________

Then there is a guy that actually has an ebay store, and sells weird stuffed insects and stuff.

(not cute ’stuffed animals’ from the toy store..nope..STUFFED real animals)

This is a stuffed Piranha captured in Peru (according to the ebay listing)

He also sells preserved leeches, skulls, bats. Well what can I say..

If you just can’t live without a stuffed snake…go see this guy!

Or go see a shrink…your choice!

If you see more unusual ebay postings..share them in comments!