The big question is, will you need to pay to share your videos at higher quality, or will that be free? Also, are they talking about a higher resolution and higher data rate, or just higher data rate? It would be nice to move up to 400X300 or 640X480, but that seems unlikely. At least they can do away with the artifical scaling they're doing now on playback, which is really horrible.
Currently, the only good outlet I've found for high quality video sharing is vuze.com. I currently upload videos to both YouTube and Vuze, since with Vuze you have to install the torrent client, etc. The upside is full HD videos.
I find it very interesting to note that the videos you upload are stored in the original format. A lot of people are probably kicking themselves right now for not uploading them at a higher quality, although lately I've been sending them high quality files so that when they are recompressed you're not adding crud on top of crud. However I've never sent them anything higher resolution than 320X240. Might have to re-up some stuff if they decide to kick the resolution higher than that.
When you have an ornery parent...that REFUSES to get broadband...even if he's paying MORE for dialup through earthlink...you get desperate when you're visiting. Especially when two or three neighbors are running unsecured WiFi.
I think it should be legal unless you're cracking someone's WEP or WPA to get in.
I like the idea of disclosure. Let em do whatever they want, they just have to tell you in a straightforward way. Doesn't solve the problem, but puts it in the spotlight. A good start...
It's definitely an imperfect solution to a complicated problem. As a previous poster put it:
Also, remember we're talking about feds. Comcast's monopoly, AFAIK, is provided by local governments. That's who should be setting terms. Kicking it it so far up the hierarchy of government, just reduces The People's power in the decision.
The root issue here is the 'last mile' problem. A bunch of competing cable and phone providers would result a mass and tangle of wire going everywhere. A government enforced monopoly (which is what we have) is not much better, but it's more aesthetic. What we really need is a proliferation of secure wireless based services, much like how satellite TV competes with cable TV. Unfortunately, consumer grade satellite internet has horrible latency and other problems. I think the answer is some type of cellular or mesh solution. Some companies use long range wifi and other directional antenna based systems, and mesh networks are pretty awesome if you can get enough people to participate. There also needs to be enough competition among all of these services to foster innovation. So more than one wireless provider for any given service area.
Again we run up against the FCC, which allocates wireless frequency spectrums here in the US. There is a lot of artificial and real scarcity - with the most innovation happening on the unlicensed bands (2.4ghz and it's multiple 5.8 ghz).
Internet connectivity (fiber optic) as a public utility is interesting - but only if it is done on a local level. Anything bigger than that, say, statewide, is bound to become mismanaged and horrible. (just think of the DMV...)
Comcast is just trying to protect its bandwidth, but as the parent poster mentions, the way they are doing is potentially dubious.
Also, to correct a misnomer from another post, their principal purpose is not to -stream- video via torrent (although they are now experimenting with that using their internal player) but to allow downloads of very large video files that people then watch locally.
I am a Vuze / Azureus user and so far this is the only good solution I've found for hosting my legal original HD videos on the web short of running a legal torrent server myself, which wouldn't get as much exposure. Vuze has also set up a system where you can sell downloadable video content for a price if you wish, a boon to indepdendent video producers.
Some things that they have done recently have been aggrivating (re-compressing files to a semi-proprietary format) but on the whole they have the right idea. And they are the textbook example of a company that is the most hurt by bandwidth throttling if it is done to an extreme as Comcast is doing (completely denying a download session)
Unlike Comcast itself, Vuze provides an outlet for speciality video producers to get their stuff out there.
I looked at the two screenshots. The spatial resolution at 1:1 isn't so hot on that camera, but hey it's orbiting the moon, so can't ask for much more right now. It will also look better in motion. Hopefully I can get the Discovery HD program somehow.
Comparing to the medium format still footage by Apollo's Bill Anders (Whom I've had the pleasure of briefly meeting when he was flying a P51 around here recently), Bill's photos are exposed more for the lunar surface than the earth. It appears that the white clouds of earth are overexposed when the moon is in correct exposure, at least in the one shot linked above. The HD camera probably has a comparable or a little less exposure leniency depending on whether the Apollo cameras used slide or negative film. (I think they were slide?)
The JAXA footage has the earth exposed nicely and the moon is out of peak range, with most features deep in a medium grey. This has an advantage of bringing out the contour features on the lunar surface better. Also, seeing the progression of sunrise really looks interesting with no atmosphere. Landing on the moon at the perpetual twilight line would give one unlimited time to walk around and frame the earth against numerous lunar features. With the enlarged size of the earth, it will take less telephoto length to capture it at a reasonable size in the frame.
Because they are an American company? Large companies from other countries are also nationalistic, usually they are proud of the place where the company was allowed to foster and grow.
I learned very early on that Photoshop's current UI is excellent if you have two monitors. It is horrible on one monitor. This is a critical point that most people trying to use it on one monitor seem to miss. You need one screen for your image and the other screen for EVERYTHING ELSE.
I have a nice workspace saved with all the winlets / pallettes broken out and filling up the second screen. Even the new top bar that they have in CSx I put on the right screen across the top, since it is detachable / dockable.
As another user commented, I am surprised by how good and how well thought out Office 2007's interface is. Usually when you try to contextualize stuff you end up making it frustrating for power users. This has not been the case with Office so far, and I could see Photoshop trying something like that.
The big pitfall to avoid is making it difficult for power users to have access to all the features all at once. I have every palette activated and arranged on the second monitor, so I have instant access to anything I want at any time. The most used pallettes are on the left, near the edge of the screen that crosses over to the primary monitor.
Keyboard shortcuts are also key with photoshop, as others have mentioned. There are some REALLY obscure ones, such as CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-E to put a flattened copy of active layers into the current layer, but I use that one ALL THE TIME, less so now with the advent of adjustment layers but still frequently.
I have used Photoshop for everything from broadcast television graphics to high end photo retouching and photo collage work / print layout design. It's like an extension of my being at this point. It will be interesting to see where they go with it.:)
All I ask is full support for third party development...I was given a free iPhone as part of an awards ceremony thing, and it's currently stitting in my glove box unused. I haven't had much of a desire to pay the extra $20 to put in on my account once the pre-paid account that came with it ran out. I played with it, installed the third party package installer, but quickly realized after they released the new firmware upgrade that Apple is doing it's typical control freak thing. The iPhone is screaming for awesome third party development. I want an IRC client that doesn't disconnect when you switch to another application, and Trillian (which they are trying to release for the iPhone in spite of Apple)
It's brilliant, but it's a toy. Please Andy, release something awesome that will actually make me want to buy a smartphone. The iPhone is amazing as far as the ergonomics and touch screen, but it's no good when you can't do anything with it.
Andy's an old timer from the Bay Area BBS scene...I believe he used to run Spies on the Wire...he still has the domain as his personal page. www.spies.com. I believe I had an account there at one time or another. Glad to see he is still doing well.
Agreed. EA was legendary back in the day, when the market was much, much smaller and games much, much simpler. It took a company that could aggregate the small studios to keep them all afloat and present them to a national audience. (seems that part hasn't changed much..) There were hardly any franchise or movie tie-ins, those were mostly reserved for pinball games. (well, there was the Goonies for the C64...)
I remember sometime in the late 90s when EA's reputation really started to slide. Remember the slashdot coverage of the dismal work conditions and morale at EA? The employees were suffering and it showed in the games. Typical crisis of corporate culture.
Hopefully EA will tread lightly over BioWare, and more importantly, BioWare will watch out for itself. If BioWare gets into a situation that kills their creativity or changes their culture to the point that they can't produce the same quality games, then it's their own fault for selling out on bad terms.
More or less a good article, but I'm very surprised that there is not a single mention of SRI, given that is the best example of university-millitary-private sector development cooperation, and the breeding grounds for such things as...the computer mouse. (Douglas Englebart)
I worked on the campus for a while in 2000 - 2001. Interesting place.
Also, yes, there are a lot more people in SV now, but it's not nearly as bad as it was during tech boom, when everyone had somewhere to be all the time. It was nothing short of amazing, but it's nice that it's back to some level of sanity. I wouldn't describe what's going on now as some sort of tech bust, I'd describe it as 'normal'.
Alright. I load in HDV camera footage via CineForm, and edit in Vegas. I output WMV files and also MPEG HDV m2t files for output back to tape. I view the WMV files on the PC. Does Vista affect any of this? HDV is 1440X1080, and I occasionally render 1920X1080. This is all original content from my HDV tapes.
On a related note, has anyone successfully dual booted Vista and XP? (the only reason I can see using Vista is for DX10 and games)
After reading the article I'm still not sure exactly how it works. How do they know who is behind the particular auction ID? Do they have access to the auction houses' databases? It appears to only use whatever information is online.
Does it also use whois information for domains? Not sure what htey are doing to correlate information. Need more details!
They are real, I took them. (with a remote trigger, mind you) Rocket engine exhaust isn't something you see every day close up, so I would expect it to look unusual.:) Methane plumes look exactly like alcohol (see our EZ-ROCKET vehicle) they have a not so bright visual component compared to kerosene, and they both take on a blue/violet hue. With kerosene, you can't see shock diamonds unless you dial down to about 1/4000th shutter speed at ISO-100. With methane and alcohol, they show up at perfect exposure in late afternoon sunlight against a relatively dark background. I've spent the last 5 years photographing rocket engines and I've gotten pretty good at it - I know what to expect when I go out there.
I've been seeing these at Siggraph for years. They do look very nice. You basically need a very bright light source (not hard) that doesn't generate too much heat (a little harder) and a way to modulate that light over a very large range (harder). It would be fun to have a converter for DSLR RAW images to display in HDR, or the usual bracketed ones.
The examples they usually use are things like light streaming through stained glass in a church, where normally you'd either only see the stained glass properly exposed, or the rest of the room, but not both. It does work to very good effect in those instances, and heightens the "window into the world" effect that high resolution displays have. If this were to be combined with 2X HD resolution 60P motion video (about 4,000 pixels across) it would kick serious ass as the next 'Imax' lifelike motion picture display.
Oddly enough, the captcha for the post reply screen right now is 'aperture'.
I second some of the more well thought out community policing ideas brought up here. Ebay cannot employ paid staff to adequately monitor the zillions of auctions that get listed every day, that does not compute as any kind of business plan. But overseeing an army of community volunteers...that's the way to go, as long as abuse can be curtailed. (people falsely reporting their competitors) some of the suggestions above seemed to mitigate that problem.
I've been selling on Ebay since almost the beginning - but I haven't bought anything ordinary in a long time for precisely the reasons people have mentioned here. The one time I tried to buy a piece of electronics, it turned out to be stolen. (A laptop, I returned it to the rightful owners) The lesson I learned was never buy any sort of portable electronics or anything that's easily fenced, because that's where it ends up.
I've had great success as a seller of unique items. The most interesting and high value was a 1963 Corvette Stingray Convertible. We got a far, far higher price than what locals were offering us. Ebay is almost always a better option than anything else.
On Ebay, the entire world of internet connected citizens really IS your marketplace, if you have anything of value to sell. this is the best thing Ebay has going for it right now. Everybody checks ebay by default to see if the thing they want is on there, even if they don't plan on initially buying from there, just price shopping. Many change their mind along the way.
My selling tips are:
* Sell something unique or at least semi-rare
* Be completely honest and up front about everything, and you will have perfect feedback, unless you run into a total nutjob buyer. (I've had some close calls, so now I put more disclaimers on the auctions about things like "customs duties and tariffs are not included" etc.) Include LOTS of documentation for something that could be suspected of being stolen.
* Go way out of your way to make people happy after the auction is complete. A good business transaction is a voluntary transaction between two people who are both satisfied with the outcome. If they get the item and it's damaged, fixed the situation as quickly as possible.
* Start your bidding at $1 (or $100 for high priced items) with no reserve, no matter what the item is. If you don't believe you'll get market value or what you want from the item then you should ask yourself if you should really be putting it on ebay, or if you really want to let go of it just yet. Do your homework and research completed auctions. Low start bids drive large numbers of bidders, which will increase the chances your item will become a 'hot item' and will get people to notice it in general. The Corvette started at $100 no reserve and ended at $27,000.
* make liberal use of the bold/highlight features for any item that costs over $100. it's the cost of advertising / doing business on ebay...no big deal. If your margins are that bad, don't sell on ebay. If you don't like their fees, don't sell on ebay. They are a lot cheaper than running a brick and mortar store or selling on consignment.
* your excellent feedback will increase bidding confidence in your buyers, it works. Work hard to keep it perfect. Don't sell anything you yourself wouldn't buy at the price you are expecting for it. BE HONEST.
* despite accusations to the contrary, Ebay is still a SELLER'S MARKET. The audience you reach by listing your item on there is INSANE. Now that everybody knows that, the competition for commodity items is also INSANE. I see nothing unpredictable about their current situation - the market is finally saturated with sellers to meet the demand of the buyers. Natural forces balancing out. It was very skewed in the beginning, almost comical. Unfortunately now the sellers include all of the scum of the earth, particularly folks who make a steady living scamming people. Buyer beware. Ebay needs to take steps to keep up with this situation, or th
If enough bands revolt agains the venue, the venue will be forced to cancel their Ticketmaster contract and go with something more agreeable. Route around...route around...
With the advent of legitimized auctions, the acts will have to stand their ground and negotiate a percentage instead of a flat fee, if that's what they were getting before. The huge acts will have to pave the way for the smaller ones to do this.
I find all the recent comments about libertarian slashdotters funny. I've been reading Slashdot since a little after it's inception and I've found that it's the same people - they've just grown up and left college. Everyone is a socialist in college. In the early days, Slashdot was vehemently left leaning.
Try starting your own business, you'll rearrange your priorities very quickly. It's not like a religion where you have to be converted by reading books or listening to a talk. (people like to bring up the Ayn Rand card all the time...) Though I do admit Heinlein incorporates basic free market principals and spins good yarns at the same time...
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, that tutorial makes we want to do that for every single video I upload. :) I had heard that was possible, but holy moly.
Dial up was never, ever, ever designed for applications such as streaming media.
The big question is, will you need to pay to share your videos at higher quality, or will that be free? Also, are they talking about a higher resolution and higher data rate, or just higher data rate? It would be nice to move up to 400X300 or 640X480, but that seems unlikely. At least they can do away with the artifical scaling they're doing now on playback, which is really horrible.
Currently, the only good outlet I've found for high quality video sharing is vuze.com. I currently upload videos to both YouTube and Vuze, since with Vuze you have to install the torrent client, etc. The upside is full HD videos.
I find it very interesting to note that the videos you upload are stored in the original format. A lot of people are probably kicking themselves right now for not uploading them at a higher quality, although lately I've been sending them high quality files so that when they are recompressed you're not adding crud on top of crud. However I've never sent them anything higher resolution than 320X240. Might have to re-up some stuff if they decide to kick the resolution higher than that.
When you have an ornery parent...that REFUSES to get broadband...even if he's paying MORE for dialup through earthlink...you get desperate when you're visiting. Especially when two or three neighbors are running unsecured WiFi.
I think it should be legal unless you're cracking someone's WEP or WPA to get in.
I like the idea of disclosure. Let em do whatever they want, they just have to tell you in a straightforward way. Doesn't solve the problem, but puts it in the spotlight. A good start...
The tags are the moral equivalent to wikipedia defacing. They are amusing, and you knew it was going to happen. //reads them for the humor value
That's what happens when I post during the afternoon food coma. ;)
The root issue here is the 'last mile' problem. A bunch of competing cable and phone providers would result a mass and tangle of wire going everywhere. A government enforced monopoly (which is what we have) is not much better, but it's more aesthetic. What we really need is a proliferation of secure wireless based services, much like how satellite TV competes with cable TV. Unfortunately, consumer grade satellite internet has horrible latency and other problems. I think the answer is some type of cellular or mesh solution. Some companies use long range wifi and other directional antenna based systems, and mesh networks are pretty awesome if you can get enough people to participate. There also needs to be enough competition among all of these services to foster innovation. So more than one wireless provider for any given service area.
Again we run up against the FCC, which allocates wireless frequency spectrums here in the US. There is a lot of artificial and real scarcity - with the most innovation happening on the unlicensed bands (2.4ghz and it's multiple 5.8 ghz).
Internet connectivity (fiber optic) as a public utility is interesting - but only if it is done on a local level. Anything bigger than that, say, statewide, is bound to become mismanaged and horrible. (just think of the DMV...)
Comcast is just trying to protect its bandwidth, but as the parent poster mentions, the way they are doing is potentially dubious.
Also, to correct a misnomer from another post, their principal purpose is not to -stream- video via torrent (although they are now experimenting with that using their internal player) but to allow downloads of very large video files that people then watch locally.
I am a Vuze / Azureus user and so far this is the only good solution I've found for hosting my legal original HD videos on the web short of running a legal torrent server myself, which wouldn't get as much exposure. Vuze has also set up a system where you can sell downloadable video content for a price if you wish, a boon to indepdendent video producers.
Some things that they have done recently have been aggrivating (re-compressing files to a semi-proprietary format) but on the whole they have the right idea. And they are the textbook example of a company that is the most hurt by bandwidth throttling if it is done to an extreme as Comcast is doing (completely denying a download session)
Unlike Comcast itself, Vuze provides an outlet for speciality video producers to get their stuff out there.
I looked at the two screenshots. The spatial resolution at 1:1 isn't so hot on that camera, but hey it's orbiting the moon, so can't ask for much more right now. It will also look better in motion. Hopefully I can get the Discovery HD program somehow.
Comparing to the medium format still footage by Apollo's Bill Anders (Whom I've had the pleasure of briefly meeting when he was flying a P51 around here recently), Bill's photos are exposed more for the lunar surface than the earth. It appears that the white clouds of earth are overexposed when the moon is in correct exposure, at least in the one shot linked above. The HD camera probably has a comparable or a little less exposure leniency depending on whether the Apollo cameras used slide or negative film. (I think they were slide?)
The JAXA footage has the earth exposed nicely and the moon is out of peak range, with most features deep in a medium grey. This has an advantage of bringing out the contour features on the lunar surface better. Also, seeing the progression of sunrise really looks interesting with no atmosphere. Landing on the moon at the perpetual twilight line would give one unlimited time to walk around and frame the earth against numerous lunar features. With the enlarged size of the earth, it will take less telephoto length to capture it at a reasonable size in the frame.
--Mike
Because they are an American company? Large companies from other countries are also nationalistic, usually they are proud of the place where the company was allowed to foster and grow.
I learned very early on that Photoshop's current UI is excellent if you have two monitors. It is horrible on one monitor. This is a critical point that most people trying to use it on one monitor seem to miss. You need one screen for your image and the other screen for EVERYTHING ELSE.
:)
I have a nice workspace saved with all the winlets / pallettes broken out and filling up the second screen. Even the new top bar that they have in CSx I put on the right screen across the top, since it is detachable / dockable.
As another user commented, I am surprised by how good and how well thought out Office 2007's interface is. Usually when you try to contextualize stuff you end up making it frustrating for power users. This has not been the case with Office so far, and I could see Photoshop trying something like that.
The big pitfall to avoid is making it difficult for power users to have access to all the features all at once. I have every palette activated and arranged on the second monitor, so I have instant access to anything I want at any time. The most used pallettes are on the left, near the edge of the screen that crosses over to the primary monitor.
Keyboard shortcuts are also key with photoshop, as others have mentioned. There are some REALLY obscure ones, such as CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-E to put a flattened copy of active layers into the current layer, but I use that one ALL THE TIME, less so now with the advent of adjustment layers but still frequently.
I have used Photoshop for everything from broadcast television graphics to high end photo retouching and photo collage work / print layout design. It's like an extension of my being at this point. It will be interesting to see where they go with it.
--Mike
All I ask is full support for third party development...I was given a free iPhone as part of an awards ceremony thing, and it's currently stitting in my glove box unused. I haven't had much of a desire to pay the extra $20 to put in on my account once the pre-paid account that came with it ran out. I played with it, installed the third party package installer, but quickly realized after they released the new firmware upgrade that Apple is doing it's typical control freak thing. The iPhone is screaming for awesome third party development. I want an IRC client that doesn't disconnect when you switch to another application, and Trillian (which they are trying to release for the iPhone in spite of Apple)
It's brilliant, but it's a toy. Please Andy, release something awesome that will actually make me want to buy a smartphone. The iPhone is amazing as far as the ergonomics and touch screen, but it's no good when you can't do anything with it.
--Mike
Andy's an old timer from the Bay Area BBS scene...I believe he used to run Spies on the Wire...he still has the domain as his personal page. www.spies.com. I believe I had an account there at one time or another. Glad to see he is still doing well.
Any old Spies members feel free to speak up...
Agreed. EA was legendary back in the day, when the market was much, much smaller and games much, much simpler. It took a company that could aggregate the small studios to keep them all afloat and present them to a national audience. (seems that part hasn't changed much..) There were hardly any franchise or movie tie-ins, those were mostly reserved for pinball games. (well, there was the Goonies for the C64...)
I remember sometime in the late 90s when EA's reputation really started to slide. Remember the slashdot coverage of the dismal work conditions and morale at EA? The employees were suffering and it showed in the games. Typical crisis of corporate culture.
Hopefully EA will tread lightly over BioWare, and more importantly, BioWare will watch out for itself. If BioWare gets into a situation that kills their creativity or changes their culture to the point that they can't produce the same quality games, then it's their own fault for selling out on bad terms.
--M
More or less a good article, but I'm very surprised that there is not a single mention of SRI, given that is the best example of university-millitary-private sector development cooperation, and the breeding grounds for such things as...the computer mouse. (Douglas Englebart)
I worked on the campus for a while in 2000 - 2001. Interesting place.
Also, yes, there are a lot more people in SV now, but it's not nearly as bad as it was during tech boom, when everyone had somewhere to be all the time. It was nothing short of amazing, but it's nice that it's back to some level of sanity. I wouldn't describe what's going on now as some sort of tech bust, I'd describe it as 'normal'.
Alright. I load in HDV camera footage via CineForm, and edit in Vegas. I output WMV files and also MPEG HDV m2t files for output back to tape. I view the WMV files on the PC. Does Vista affect any of this? HDV is 1440X1080, and I occasionally render 1920X1080. This is all original content from my HDV tapes.
On a related note, has anyone successfully dual booted Vista and XP? (the only reason I can see using Vista is for DX10 and games)
After reading the article I'm still not sure exactly how it works. How do they know who is behind the particular auction ID? Do they have access to the auction houses' databases? It appears to only use whatever information is online.
Does it also use whois information for domains? Not sure what htey are doing to correlate information. Need more details!
--M
They are real, I took them. (with a remote trigger, mind you) Rocket engine exhaust isn't something you see every day close up, so I would expect it to look unusual. :) Methane plumes look exactly like alcohol (see our EZ-ROCKET vehicle) they have a not so bright visual component compared to kerosene, and they both take on a blue/violet hue. With kerosene, you can't see shock diamonds unless you dial down to about 1/4000th shutter speed at ISO-100. With methane and alcohol, they show up at perfect exposure in late afternoon sunlight against a relatively dark background. I've spent the last 5 years photographing rocket engines and I've gotten pretty good at it - I know what to expect when I go out there.
Cheers,
--Mike
I've been seeing these at Siggraph for years. They do look very nice. You basically need a very bright light source (not hard) that doesn't generate too much heat (a little harder) and a way to modulate that light over a very large range (harder). It would be fun to have a converter for DSLR RAW images to display in HDR, or the usual bracketed ones.
The examples they usually use are things like light streaming through stained glass in a church, where normally you'd either only see the stained glass properly exposed, or the rest of the room, but not both. It does work to very good effect in those instances, and heightens the "window into the world" effect that high resolution displays have. If this were to be combined with 2X HD resolution 60P motion video (about 4,000 pixels across) it would kick serious ass as the next 'Imax' lifelike motion picture display.
Oddly enough, the captcha for the post reply screen right now is 'aperture'.
Looks like they just read my post from the previous EBay thread.
-M
I second some of the more well thought out community policing ideas brought up here. Ebay cannot employ paid staff to adequately monitor the zillions of auctions that get listed every day, that does not compute as any kind of business plan. But overseeing an army of community volunteers...that's the way to go, as long as abuse can be curtailed. (people falsely reporting their competitors) some of the suggestions above seemed to mitigate that problem.
I've been selling on Ebay since almost the beginning - but I haven't bought anything ordinary in a long time for precisely the reasons people have mentioned here. The one time I tried to buy a piece of electronics, it turned out to be stolen. (A laptop, I returned it to the rightful owners) The lesson I learned was never buy any sort of portable electronics or anything that's easily fenced, because that's where it ends up.
I've had great success as a seller of unique items. The most interesting and high value was a 1963 Corvette Stingray Convertible. We got a far, far higher price than what locals were offering us. Ebay is almost always a better option than anything else.
On Ebay, the entire world of internet connected citizens really IS your marketplace, if you have anything of value to sell. this is the best thing Ebay has going for it right now. Everybody checks ebay by default to see if the thing they want is on there, even if they don't plan on initially buying from there, just price shopping. Many change their mind along the way.
My selling tips are:
* Sell something unique or at least semi-rare
* Be completely honest and up front about everything, and you will have perfect feedback, unless you run into a total nutjob buyer. (I've had some close calls, so now I put more disclaimers on the auctions about things like "customs duties and tariffs are not included" etc.) Include LOTS of documentation for something that could be suspected of being stolen.
* Go way out of your way to make people happy after the auction is complete. A good business transaction is a voluntary transaction between two people who are both satisfied with the outcome. If they get the item and it's damaged, fixed the situation as quickly as possible.
* Start your bidding at $1 (or $100 for high priced items) with no reserve, no matter what the item is. If you don't believe you'll get market value or what you want from the item then you should ask yourself if you should really be putting it on ebay, or if you really want to let go of it just yet. Do your homework and research completed auctions. Low start bids drive large numbers of bidders, which will increase the chances your item will become a 'hot item' and will get people to notice it in general. The Corvette started at $100 no reserve and ended at $27,000.
* make liberal use of the bold/highlight features for any item that costs over $100. it's the cost of advertising / doing business on ebay...no big deal. If your margins are that bad, don't sell on ebay. If you don't like their fees, don't sell on ebay. They are a lot cheaper than running a brick and mortar store or selling on consignment.
* your excellent feedback will increase bidding confidence in your buyers, it works. Work hard to keep it perfect. Don't sell anything you yourself wouldn't buy at the price you are expecting for it. BE HONEST.
* despite accusations to the contrary, Ebay is still a SELLER'S MARKET. The audience you reach by listing your item on there is INSANE. Now that everybody knows that, the competition for commodity items is also INSANE. I see nothing unpredictable about their current situation - the market is finally saturated with sellers to meet the demand of the buyers. Natural forces balancing out. It was very skewed in the beginning, almost comical. Unfortunately now the sellers include all of the scum of the earth, particularly folks who make a steady living scamming people. Buyer beware. Ebay needs to take steps to keep up with this situation, or th
If enough bands revolt agains the venue, the venue will be forced to cancel their Ticketmaster contract and go with something more agreeable. Route around...route around...
With the advent of legitimized auctions, the acts will have to stand their ground and negotiate a percentage instead of a flat fee, if that's what they were getting before. The huge acts will have to pave the way for the smaller ones to do this.
That's right! Off my lawn! :) I'm only 31 though, and I *NEVER* liked those things about concerts, even when I was 16.
I find all the recent comments about libertarian slashdotters funny. I've been reading Slashdot since a little after it's inception and I've found that it's the same people - they've just grown up and left college. Everyone is a socialist in college. In the early days, Slashdot was vehemently left leaning.
Try starting your own business, you'll rearrange your priorities very quickly. It's not like a religion where you have to be converted by reading books or listening to a talk. (people like to bring up the Ayn Rand card all the time...) Though I do admit Heinlein incorporates basic free market principals and spins good yarns at the same time...
-M