Two of my favorite execs at eBay are John Donahoe and Matt Carey. Both are honest and good guys. Both were mentioned in an interesting NYTimes article.

I am officially a patent holder. Well-I guess eBay holds the patent. Just don't ask me any details about the patent. :-)

Thanks to Marty, Chris and Kirk for graciously putting me on the patent.

I've been wanting to buy a new Mac laptop! I'm so tired of my 2-1/2 year old Dell machine that runs XP crashing incessantly. (Un)fortunately my laptop was recently stolen which gave me the perfect opportunity to buy a Mac. I was pretty fired up to make the step, but then hit a roadblock. While the Mac does have a version of Quicken, it lacks a whole bunch of features available in the Windows version. In addition, the conversion of Quicken data seems like a nightmare.

So it looks like I will be stuck in Windows hell until Quicken makes a better Mac version. I guess that is what less than 5% market share will get you.

I am a big fan of user defined homepages and have been a MyYahoo! user for quite some time. Howewever, I've never loved MyYahoo! as an RSS reader and have been waiting for Yahoo! to launch a directory of widgets/gadgets I can easily import.

I've been trying Netvibes for a couple weeks and have now fully converted to it from MyYahoo! There are a couple reasons why I love Netvibes: First, I can view my email directly from my Netvibes homepage. Second, Netvibes has a growing directory of third party applications (my favorite besides the eBay integration is the one with Box.net). Finally, the RSS reader is much more powerful that MyYahoo!'s.

So the big question is how do they make money? Time will tell.

I will be speaking on a panel run by IBD Network this Wednesday (5/24) at Wilson Sonsini. The topic is: Business in the New World Order – Revenue Models 2.0. I'll then be involved in a speed dating round later in the day with the execs from some high growth companies. I'm looking forward to the chance to see some pretty cool companies.

Digital Video Records (DVRs) like Tivo have clearly impacted the viewing habits of millions of TV watchers. Viewers can now view their shows whenever they want. This has thrown the traditional TV advertising business on its head. For example, I can't remember the last time I watched a show live and I can't remember the last time I watched a commercial (except for eBay's IT campaign).

However, my viewing habits may need to change as I've noticed it is increasingly difficult to actually not find out the details of an episode before I watch on my Tivo. Whether by hearing the details on the radio, catching a peak of a story on the Internet or hearing it from a friend or colleague, I seem to know all the big juicy details before I view my recorded programs. It has gotten so bad that I'm actually considering watching live TV again (or atleast avoiding the radio, Internet and human contact). This makes you wonder if the networks are making all this information easily available to change viewing habits. I wouldn't put it past them. The networks have never been good at adapting.

First I read on Jeremy Zawodny's blog that he was leaving for Google. Then I read a couple lines of Scoble's blog and saw he was also leaving for Google. I emailed Adam and Alan to give them a heads up.

OK...this can't be just a coincidence. I continued to read Scoble's blog and was thinking, wow, this guy is really not holding anything back.  OK...what the hell is going on here?  Then I remembered today is April Fools.  Serves me right for getting online at 630am on Saturday.

My SBC DSL bill had an error (can you believe I was being overcharged?) so I called up SBC customer service.  After getting the situation resolved (SBC's customer support was great by the way), the SBC rep asked if I was interested in any new services.  I wanted to hear what SBC had to offer.  They asked if I wanted:

- satellite? No, I have DirecTV
- cell phone? No, eBay takes care of that
- IPTV is coming out. Great...I can't wait to hear about it.
- long distance? No, I use Skype

The rep then asked me about Skype (he had never heard of it - although he had heard of VOIP).  After I explained to him all about Skype, he said "That is amazing...I'm going to give it a try."  Nothing like getting SBC's frontline reps to give Skype a try. Who knows, maybe this rep will start telling SBC customers about it!

Bonfire Media, an eBay developer that powers eBay Wireless, was mentioned in a NYTimes article regarding mobile commerce.

John Battelle came by eBay last week to kick off a speaker series the eBay Developers Program is sponsoring on innovation.  I'm reading his book now and suggest it to anyone who wants to delve more deeply into the world of search.

You can get the code/more info here:

Shop eBay Now: Powered by terapeak

We made two big announcements today re: the eBay Developers Program.  The first is the removal of many of the fees associated with being an eBay developer. The second is around our Developer Challenge 2006 with the assistance of our friends at O'Reilly.

Yesterday was just the latest in a series of mysterious Google product "announcements!".  Google seems to have more sightings than Sasquatch. 

These announcements got me wondering if Google is taking a page from Microsoft's playbook.  Microsoft was known (and still is) for announcing products years in advance of an actual product launch.  This essentially froze the purchasing market as buyers would wait for the Microsoft release.  In the process business plans, start-ups and some pretty successful companies went adios!

It seems odd that Google keeps on "accidentally" releasing these products to the world.  One hypothesis is this is a strategy to get attention and impact other companies.  Since Google is such a media darling, it seems to have worked pretty well.  The impact to related companies ranges from annoying blogs like this to sometimes far greater impacts.

I'm certainly not saying Google is anything close to Microsoft in terms of market influence.  After all, Microsoft has a long history of releasing successful products (and subsequent versions of them).

Right now Google has a bunch of me too products (Froogle, Talk, Mail) with limited adoption.  Time will tell how much revenue they really drive.  However, it is clear that Google is riding the media wave of all time.

As always, these are my opinions and not those of my employer.

Interesting post by Ro.

Check them out:

http://www.markovic.com/markovic.com/ebay/search.php
http://www.auctionmapper.com/
www.2RealEstateAuctions.com

I can see the lawsuits flying...

One of the great things about running eBay's Developers Program is I get to see some really cool products in action.  Two particularly innovative products in the wireless arena are Receller and Unwired Buyer.

Receller allows a cell phone user with a built-in camera  to take a picture of an item and have it quickly listed on eBay by one of Receller's trained representatives.  Unwired Buyer will notify you via a phone call to your cell, landline or even SkypeIn number when an item is about to close on eBay.  You can use a phone keypad or Skype's dialpad to bid or buy the item. 

Now you can buy and sell on eBay without ever visiting the browser. Check them out!

Christoph Buenger has built two slick Windows Media Center applications: one for eBay and one for Skype. Plus, he is asking for donations and takes PayPal.  Ahh..the Power of Three.

Given the recent spike in Web 2.0 articles, it must be Web 2.0 next week.  There are a couple good posts out there.  Tim O'Reilly wrote a very thoughtful article. Om Malik gave his opinion here (I'm just glad he didn't trash eBay in this post ). Toni Schneider from Yahoo! also posted some Web 2.0 thoughts (although he inadvertently forgot to mention eBay! ).  Adam will be speaking at Web 2.0 about his very own mash-up.  Originally I was scheduled to speak as well, but eBay's quiet period got in the way!

I'm at Microsoft's PDC and decided to leave the keynote a bit early after a MSFT exec got on stage and said "over the next two hours..."  Given I had been there already for 90 minutes, I wanted to see what else was happening at the event.

Unfortunately, after I left MSFT announced they will be selling a limited number of these phones.  They retail for $1,000, but you could buy them for $150.  However, since I left early I had no idea and missed out on the opportunity.

Serves me right...

From Steve Jobs' commencement address at Stanford.

I just got back from a week of vacationing in Alaska.  This gave me a chance to catch up on some long overdue magazine reading.  In reading everything from Forbes to Newsweek to BusinessWeek, the common theme was China.  Articles ranged from how to not lose your shirt in China to why I should blame China for oil approaching $70 a barrel.

The one article in Forbes, however, that really struck me was about India.  Basically the article asked are we forgetting about India as a result of the China "bubble"?  The article highlights by 2050 India will have the largest population in the world (1.6 billion versus 1.4 billion for China) which means India is arguably more attractive to the US as an export market.  China is very dependent on prison labor (20 million convicts) which likely means its workers aren't exactly being trained and educated as well as the tech focused (and English speaking) Indian population.  And last, but not least, India is a democracy which clearly is important given its location to the Middle East and China.

Hopefully we don't overlook India as my money is they will sneak up on China to become the predominant political and economic player in the region.

Blackberries are so addictive they are referred to as Crackberries. 
Case and point: while flying down from Seattle I was sitting next to a guy 
who was pounding away on his Blackberry as we descended. Every few 
seconds he would look up and down the aisle to make sure the attendant wasn't 
coming. Once the coast was clear he would go back to typing away. 

Hello...you shouldn't be worried about getting busted by the attendant! 
You should be worried about sending the plane into a tailspin. Go to 
rehab and kick the Crackberry habit. 

Full disclosure: I wrote this while flying at 10,000 feet, but made 
sure to shut the wireless component of my Blackberry off. After all, I'm a 
recovering Crackberrier myself. 

The concept of the Web as the next platform and all the great applications that can be built has gotten a lot of attention recently. CNET just wrote this article on the topic.

Ro wrote an interesting post regarding the Alibaba and Yahoo! relationship.  Not sure what the ultimate outcome will be...but it should be fun to watch!

For any of you Java developers out there, IBM wrote a great article on how to build a simple eBay search application using our SDK for Java.  Check it out!

A couple weeks ago, John Donahoe, eBay's President mentioned he had read Thomas Friedman's new book: The World is ...   more »

You probably saw Bob Geldof use the media to unfairly pick on eBay.   While I certainly appreciate the great ...   more »

BIAP, a member of the eBay Developers Program, just launched eBay on TV in Austin with Time Warner.  ...   more »

For all you Plone fans out there, the eBay Developers Website
just relaunched using Plone. Check it out.
   more »

I'm a big fan of my Sirius satellite.  It seems like the folks at Sirius have gotten the concept of ...   more »