Date: Fri 25-Jun-1999

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

iinfo-eBay-Brand-The-Oracle

Full Text:

INTERNET INFO FOR REAL PEOPLE: Electronic Warfare on eBay

By Bob Brand

The 22 hours when eBay's auction website went dark in June cost the company $5

million as reported in a recent article in Internet Week. The fact that there

are currently two million (and growing) items available for sale illustrates

the extent of eBay mania. All serious web-surfers visit eBay sooner or later.

The eBay characteristic of a specific time deadline is not found in "Going,

Going, Gone, Sold!" auctions. In fact, other cyber-auctions (such as the

Amazon auction) extend the time limits (usually by 10 minutes) after the last

bid. Sniping, a technique whereby a last second bid gets placed, is now a part

of the eBay experience. Active eBay bidders have been snipers, "snipees," or

both. This practice has become-high level electronic warfare with the

introduction of software like The-Oracle.

Highly active eBay bidders often have multiple bids ongoing in various stages

of progress. In fact, keeping track of numerous transactions becomes a

challenge even to the most experienced mouse pusher. A Canadian company,

COMNETORG Consulting Services, offers a product named The-Oracle that performs

this task effortlessly.

My Experience

I contacted Dave Pellerin, The-Oracle's developer. The program arrived on CD

ROM. (Pellerin explained that most people download the software from the

website. Payment is made via credit card.) After inserting the CD into the

drive, "E:setup.exe" loaded The-Oracle on the hard drive. It required 4 MB

free disk space. The software produced a gray "top hat" desktop icon. A click

on the icon produced a "tracking" screen.

Follow eBay bids with a mouse click on the small top hat icon found in the top

left corner of the screen. When the drop-down menu appears, enter a nine-digit

eBay auction number. Remember that the computer must be connected to the

Internet via an ISP (or AOL) for accurate tracking.

The-Oracle displays item number, description, the number of bids, seller, high

bidder, date/time when auction ends and time remaining in the auction.

Updating is continuous. Also included is a "snipe amount" field. Placing the

mouse pointer on the tracked item with a right mouse-click produces the setup

menu. Simply click the "snipe" option, enter the amount you wish to "auto-bid"

and time (in seconds) before the end of the auction when bid should be placed.

The software takes over the process.

Timing Is Everything

eBay users who have experienced furious last second bidding know about the

difficulty in placing bids just prior to the close of the auction. Here is

where The-Oracle shines. Keyboard bidders will probably lose to a bidder using

snipe-enabled software in furious sessions. It should be noted that The-Oracle

must have the clock on the bidder's PC precisely synchronized with the eBay

clock. Pellerin has neatly solved this dilemma. Simply click "Extras" Clock

Synchronization. Then click "Check Clock Against eBay." Done.

When using eBay, bidders are instructed to enter the highest price they are

willing to pay for an item. In reality, many people just "inch up" the bid

from the current offer. This procedure makes software snipe attacks effective.

Although The-Oracle software is not a perfect solution for winning all bids,

it is a very powerful tool indeed. At a cost of $14.95, it can provide an edge

in tightly fought bidding wars. For those people who have suffered the

annoyance of having been outbid in the last seconds of a bidding war,

The-Oracle might be the solution. Highly recommended.

The Impact of eBay

The popularity of the auction process on eBay has spawned many similar sites

around the Internet. This trend is not expected to change any time soon. The

eBay characteristic of a specific time duration transaction has its

detractors. Extending the time of an auction based on the timing of last bid

placed would end sniping. If you are constantly losing close bids, you might

consider joining rather than fighting. The-Oracle would be a good choice.

URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) of interest:

http://www.ebay.com/

http://www.the-oracle.com

(This is the 160th of a series of elementary articles designed for surfing the

Internet. Next, Your Own Domain Name is the subject on tap. Stay tuned. Until

next week, happy travels through cyberspace.

Previous issues of Internet Info for Real People can be found at

http://www.thebee.com. Please e-mail comments and suggestions to

rbrand@JUNO.com or editor@thebee.com.)