TheTrumpTimes

The wonderous world of Ebay

2006-11-13T13:56:00.000-08:00

Well, it was about this time last year that a friend of mine really got me going on Ebay. Instead of slaving at a campus job like I do, this friend of mine makes his money off ebay - supplying people with difficult to find objects that he continues to get his hands on. My fascination with this is what drove me to blog about it.

Ebay is a virtual market place where a person can find anything and everything that they dream about. The site is accessed through a membership and once enrolled one can buy or sell anything. The selling is driven by bidding, a system where people collectively decide the value of an item. It is a marketplace where you will see both ends of a bidding spectrum, expensive things scooped up at bargain discounts or small seemingly valueless items bidded up because of sentimental value or a bidders love for the product.

Ebay offers many features to help the bidder. Functions like being able to browse stocks of similar items or stocks of items sold by the same seller. One can look at completed auction items to gauge a going price for the item and the feedback feature can either warn or intice a buyer into buying from a person. Negative feedbacks warn of poor quality goods, high prices or disgruntled sellers. Positive feedback tells of good quality and service. This function especially shows how the members control the information. When viewing reports you know that the feedback was given by people just like you who were buying the same products.

Searching for products is easy! If you know what your looking for a google type search box is available. Searches will key in on phrases or words and display all matching items across many catagories. This brings us to the next method of searching. A tree like system is available to use in the ebay side bar. A list of catagories appear to help guide a user towards different types of products. Clicking on one of these topics brings the user to popular items within that catagory and allows them to create specialized searches within these sub-catagories. Topics are organized in heirarchical manners.

Once you find your item - bid away. All you need to do is click place bid and enter your amount. If you win, ebay offers you many payment options ranging from check to money order to credit or debit.

The website offers all of this information at the click of the mouse. Easily laid out links provide easy access to all information. The hardest part about using ebay is remembering your password!

Many sites compete with ebay. Speacialty sites like retail websites or Amazon.coms offer a more expert guided search and buy options. People might find these sites to be more of a mall like atmosphere where ebay feels like a garage sale. One website in direct competition with ebay is Craigslist. This website boasts a greater array of what can be searched. Aside from products craigslist offers classified and realty listings among other options. They have many more catagory trees to explore and can be a hot destination for people who want to do more than shop for products.

Thanks Tim!

2006-10-19T17:50:00.000-07:00

I would just like to take this oppurtunity to thank my dear friend Tim Cocciardi for psting a link to my blog on his site. Thanks again Tim.

You can find a link to Tim's blog in the sidebar of my website.

Google Analytics - HW5

2006-10-11T12:25:00.000-07:00

Date range	Visits	Pageviews
10/4/06 - 10/10/06	2	2

My blog has very little traffic. So far only 2 visits/page views in about a week.

Company Paths

2006-10-04T07:38:00.000-07:00

For the HW4 assignment I chose to find a path between my beloved Comcast and fellow communications company Charter Communications. The path was relatively short, making its way through 3 other companies as well as 3 directors serving on multiple boards. The most interesting part of the path is the amount of vertices that are connected to William H. Gary III. Talk about somone who must be rolling in money! Gary is adjacent to 8 other vertices, all of which being companies, meaning that he has a say in the decisions made at multiple large firms such as Pfizer, Dell Computers and Prudential Financial.

I chose these two companies mainly because I was interested in how competitors could be connected. After learning in class about the commonly accepted law of "six degrees" I thought it would be fun to see just how closely linked two companies competing for sales could actually be. While looking at the data surprises such as William Gary being a part of both JP Morgan Chase as well as Prudential Financial seems odd being as though both companies are Wallstreet rivals.

Overall it was amazing how from one company you can find numerous interconnected people that will eventually (in a rather short distance) bring you to be connected with another company.

Music and Football

2006-09-26T18:36:00.000-07:00

Well now that I have cooled down from my comcast rant I suppose I am composed enough to tell you of my weekend. For those of you who have been following my football fixation I hope you saw thatmy Fightin' Irish took it to Mich. State this weekend. The game was close throughout and although I could be seen cursing (at both notre dame as well as comcast) my boys pulled out a nail-biter 40 - 37. (Click on the image to see upcoming schedule.)

Aside from my horrific addiction to a school's athletics I also have been teaching swim lessons at our wonderful pool at fit-rec. The classes are small and the students are awesome! For anyone interested in learning to swim the fit-rec is definatly the place. I love teaching and would love more students so look into it.

I decided to add stubhub.com as well as the Dave Matthews Band official website to the cs bookmarks page because of my love for music that in turn fuels my need to buy tickets to the shows! Check them out.

Much more posting will follow if comcast permits it.

Stay Safe.

Comcast Cable

2006-09-26T18:32:00.000-07:00

Hopefully I will get full credit for this homework #3 even though it will most undoubtably be late thanks to comcast digital cable. I subscribed upon moving into college and have had trouble with everything except the billing, at least that department is doing their job because thebills are always ontime. I managed to get the company to finally come and fix the cable television just in time for the internet to go down this morning! So her I have sat attempting to blog since the end of classes at 4pm! If any of you are thinking about cable television.....steer clear of comcast!

Anyways I chose a basic license for my blog. People can do what they want with the material as long as they allow others to share the contents of their or my creations. I agree with sharing information and think that the internet is the perfect tool for people to discover new things. You can see my license here -> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/

Hectic Weeks and Notre Dame Football!

2006-09-20T07:45:00.000-07:00

So this week has been absolutly hectic!

Between all of the homework and lifeguarding/teaching swim lessons at the fit rec (http://www.bu.edu/fitrec/facilities/fitrec/features.html#Aquatic) it already seems like the week is never going to empty out into the weekend. Usually all that brings is more free time for reading and working but it always brings around my favorite day of the week - Saturday. This da gives me 12 hours of what I love the most - College Football. Specifically, Notre Dame.

This obcession started when I was no more than 3 or 4. I spent many saturday's with my grandfather, an irishman who loved his whiskey and his Fightin' Irish. Ever since he introduced me to the blue, the gold and the great game of football I have been an absolute fanatic. This saturday sends Notre Dame on the road to face a tough Michigan State team where they will look to win back a game in the storied rivalry ( http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=2595525).

Well that's pretty much all from me for this time. Back to reading Six Degrees because this internet stuff is pretty confusing.

CS-103

2006-09-13T16:42:00.000-07:00

Well this is my first expirience with blogs! I have just created this one for my computer science class here at Boston University. More posts to come.