News from Other

eBay and Buy accused of artificially inflating auction listing numbers

Publication date: 2008-06-16 more

Buyers and Sellers to explore possibilities at eBay Live 2008

Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

Pubcon/WebmasterWorld conference, here I come!

I arrive Wednesday afternoon for the 2008 Pubcon conference, and I’ll be staying until after the networking event on the last day, which is the heart of the event. It’s the heart because the networking event is held at a pub, and the original idea of Pubcon was that some of the best parts of [...]
Publication date: 2008-11-12 more

eBay.com.au - Protecting members with identity verification

Publication date: 2008-04-16 more

PayPal meltdown wreaks havoc on some ecommerce websites

Publication date: 2008-05-19 more

SEO Advice: Make a web page for each store location

If your company has a bunch of store locations, please don’t hide that information behind a search form or a POST. If you want your store pages to be found, it’s best to have a unique, easily crawlable url for each store. Ideally, you would also create an HTML sitemap that points to the web [...]
Publication date: 2010-06-03 more

Live-blogging the Nexus One phone

Added: - The official web page for the Nexus One is http://google.com/phone - There’s a YouTube channel for the Nexus One. - And here’s the official blog post about the Nexus One. I’m sitting in the Googleplex waiting to live-blog the Google Android event today. I’m on a seven day Twitter diet, but Chris DiBona is live-tweeting the event. [...]
Publication date: 2010-01-11 more

Webspam projects in 2010?

About a year and a half ago, I asked for suggestions for webspam projects for 2009. The feedback that we got was extremely helpful. It’s almost exactly the middle of 2010, so it seemed like a good time to ask again: what projects do you think webspam should work on in 2010 and beyond? Here’s the [...]
Publication date: 2010-06-30 more

PayPal Looks at Why Consumers Abandon Online Purchases

Publication date: 2008-06-02 more

Going from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 is currently in W3C Proposed Recommendation status and may be advanced to W3C Recommendation status before the end of this year. To prepare for this it
Publication date: 2008-11-07 more

eBay Fumbles, OnlineAuction.com Scores

Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

Authentic Jobs New Year Promo: 50% off

Most readers who, like myself, have been in the position of trying to find skilled people to hire during last year will probably agree that talent is hard to hire in the web industry right now. Most of the people you would want to hire seem to have good jobs that they're happy with already. Well, it doesn't hurt to extend your reach if you're hiring, so why not start 2008 by giving Authentic Jobs a try if you haven't already done so in your hunt for talent. You'll reach the best of the best when it comes to modern, standards-aware web design and development. Use the promo code BEREA08 and you will get a 50% discount if you place your job listing no later than January 15. The discount applies to both full-time and freelance listings, and you still have the money-back guarantee.Add 456 Berea Street to your Technorati favorites.Posted in Job openings.
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

How Not To Launch A Twitter Account

Recently someone registered a Twitter account name “mattcuttsmapxl,” which is very similar to my Twitter account name. The account was following many of the same people I follow, which is pretty annoying because people had to check whether it was me or not (it wasn’t). The account got suspended, but someone made a new account [...]
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Free search engine optimization tips for beginners

Jefferson Graham didn’t just write an article of free SEO tips — he also brought his video camera along. The result is a five minute video interview with more easy, free search engine optimization tips. Again, this is targeted at beginner SEO and small business SEO instead of advanced marketers. You can watch the video [...]
Publication date: 2008-06-30 more

Could eBay Be a Microsoft Takeover Target?

Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

eBay: Your user ID or password is incorrect - Resolved

Publication date: 2008-06-10 more

Grabbag questions, April 2009

I scheduled some time today to record video, so I opened up a thread for questions. Post your questions over on Google Moderator so that I can see which questions are popular. I
Publication date: 2009-04-23 more

73% of Ebay Van Tyres ?Potentially Unsafe?

Publication date: 2008-07-11 more

Auction Site OZtion - Geographic Limitations Explained

Publication date: 2008-06-09 more

Ztail Introduces First Interactive Pricing Guide for Everything, Helping Visitors Determine "What's It Worth?"

Publication date: 2008-05-21 more

EBay on the Prowl

Publication date: 2008-03-27 more

CEO Says His System Helps Defeat eBay Extortionists

Publication date: 2008-06-04 more

Bibit offers merchants PayPal option

Publication date: 2008-03-17 more

PlunderHere Auction Site an 'Up and Comer'

Publication date: 2008-04-07 more

You've been faked: How eBay's 'designer' bargains are just too good to be true

Publication date: 2008-04-09 more

SEO site review session from Google I/O 2010

A couple weeks or so ago, we did an SEO site review session at Google I/O 2010. The video from that session is now live: The video is about an hour long, but I hope it’s a pretty good use of your time if you’re interested in search engine optimization. Enjoy!
Publication date: 2010-06-05 more

Starting an eBay business - 5 essentials

Publication date: 2008-05-15 more

VistaPrint CEO to Present at eBay Developers Conference

Publication date: 2008-06-06 more

eBay issue discount coupons for tech categories

Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

eBay: Get Value Pack for 25

Publication date: 2008-04-16 more

Amazon.com to use Bill Me Later payment service

Publication date: 2008-07-10 more

Can eBay?s new regime tackle its credibility gap?

Publication date: 2008-04-03 more

Beware of id and name attribute mixups when using getElementById in Internet Explorer

It is probably old news to the JavaScript experts among you, but since I recently ran into this problem myself and pulled my hair in frustration before a coworker hinted at the solution I think it's worth mentioning: When using getElementById to get a reference to an element via the id attribute, Internet Explorer for Windows (and some versions of Opera) will also match an element whose name attribute contains the same value. This doesn't always cause any noticeable problems since in most cases you're not all that likely to have identical name and id values for different elements, but when it does happen it can lead to errors that are very hard to debug. Here is a simple example HTML document that is susceptible to this problem: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <html> <head> <meta name="description" content="A brief description of the content on this page."> <title>The name and id attributes in IE</title> </head> <body> <div id="description"> <p>A description of something.</p> </div> </body> </html> Now imagine that you want to use JavaScript to do something to div#description. For simplicity's sake, let's say you write the following script that hides the div element by setting its display CSS property to none when the page is loaded: function hideIt() { var obj = document.getElementById('description'); obj.style.display = 'none'; } window.onload = hideIt; That works as expected everywhere except in Internet Explorer, where nothing happens. The reason for that is that in IE, getElementById finds and returns the meta element whose name attribute has the value description before it gets to the div element. You can avoid this either by making sure that there are no name and id conflicts in your document or by using a script that fixes the problem by overriding IE's native getElementById method. If you were aware of this already, good for you. If not, I hope I saved you some frustration.Visit site to read or post comments…Add 456 Berea Street to your Technorati favorites.Posted in Browsers, JavaScript.
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

ChannelAdvisor Adds Over 170 New Retail Customers

Publication date: 2008-04-03 more

Happy

Most people that read my blog know that I really, really like Firefox. I put on a temporary Firefox tattoo a few months ago: Firefox 3 just came out today, and they’re trying to set a world record for most software downloads in 24 hours. So now is the time to get it! Tell your friends, [...]
Publication date: 2008-06-19 more

Yo ho ho! Happy Pirate Day, mateys!

I hope everyone be havin’ a great Talk Like a Pirate Day! It looks like Google added support fer Pirate in our user interface. I ‘ave t’ admit that I didn’ see that one comin’. Special thanks t’ th’ online pirate translator fer help wit’ this post, don’tcha know. May the “black spot” not darken your [...]
Publication date: 2008-09-20 more

Quick comment for pixelrn

I tried to leave a comment on pixelrn.com but the problem with talking about hacked sites is that you often end up using language that gets flagged as spammy. Here’s what I tried to say but the WordPress installation over on pixelrn wouldn’t let me: Hi Beth, I checked and it doesn’t look like you have [...]
Publication date: 2008-10-04 more

Digg adds nofollow to some links

Digg recently added nofollow to some links on their site: We
Publication date: 2009-09-03 more

StumbleUpon Still Standing Under eBay

Publication date: 2008-06-09 more

Get your search fix with two videos

I was going to wait until part 2 was posted, but I’ll point people to part 1 now. The video from the SMX Advanced keynote is now live, so you can watch the first 25 minutes of questions and answers. Read the intro here, or just watch the video: And Juliane Stiller from Google’s German Webmaster [...]
Publication date: 2008-07-25 more

CORESense Wine and Spirit Clients Gain Competitive Advantage in the Marketplace

Publication date: 2008-06-03 more

Alibaba.com Selects Blue Coat to Secure and Accelerate One of the World?s Largest Online Marketplace Sites

Publication date: 2008-04-08 more

Add Custom Search to any site in two minutes

By the way, you might have missed it at Google I/O, but the Custom Search Engine team has made it really easy to add custom search to any site. Google recently introduced Web Elements, which are simple snippets of code you can copy/paste into your site’s HTML. From the Custom Search Element web page, I copied [...]
Publication date: 2009-06-11 more

PayPal President Discusses Strategy, Safe Payments

Publication date: 2008-05-10 more

Paymate files eBay complaint with ACCC

Publication date: 2008-07-14 more

Crowd control at eBay

Publication date: 2008-06-16 more

eBay Sellers Gather In Chicago To Learn New Tricks

Publication date: 2008-06-16 more

Last call for

This is the last call for “noresult” pages. If you want to mention examples, please send them to us this week. Here’s how to do it.
Publication date: 2009-02-24 more

Amazon.com Rolls out New Seller Payments Page

Publication date: 2008-06-27 more

Okay, enough foolishness. Back to work.

Okay, I admit that my “I’m tired of April Fool’s” post was just a ruse. A couple people almost fell for the bait. I did a couple April Fools posts this year; one about getting a Firefox tattoo (it was a temporary stick-on tattoo) and one joke about how the iPhone has the magical power to [...]
Publication date: 2008-04-02 more

eBay Sets up Shopper Community to Conduct Market Research

Publication date: 2008-07-01 more

From handbags to diamonds, eBay a target, but safe

Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

SHENZHEN DEVELOPMENT BANK TEAMS UP WITH ALIBABA.COM

Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

Newegg Invites Third-Party Sellers to New Marketplace

Publication date: 2008-04-09 more

eBay Italy: ?0.01 listings, free Gallery, Best Match

Publication date: 2008-07-10 more

Birth of a Sales Tool: LinkedIn Meets eBay

Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

CompUSA Chooses PayPal for eCommerce Payments

Publication date: 2008-04-03 more

Use a background image in your CSS? Remember to specify a backup colour.

Whenever you specify a background image in your CSS, consider what happens if the image is missing. If there is text on top of the image, is it still readable? If not, specify a colour for the browser to use instead of the image so the text becomes readable again. Why would an image be missing? A few possibilities are broken images, network problems, and user settings.Read full postPosted in Accessibility, CSS, Usability.
Publication date: 2009-12-03 more

Cufón and screen readers

Cufón has been talked about a lot recently, and it looks like a potential alternative to static images or sIFR in situations when you absolutely must use a typeface that is not
Publication date: 2009-05-28 more

Why Googlers should read Anil Dash

Anil Dash wrote a great piece about Google recently, and I think all Googlers should read it. Anil makes several good points, including this one: I doubt Google’s internal self-image as an organization has changed to reflect this new reality. “We’re not like some giant company with flashy TV ads
Publication date: 2009-07-13 more

Use the th element to specify row and column headers in data tables

When using HTML tables to mark up tabular data, remember to use th elements for cells that provide header information for rows or columns. In addition to using th elements for header cells, you should also use the scope or headers attributes to tell user agents, primarily screen readers and other assistive technology, which header cells provide header information for any given data cell. Explicitly associating header cells with data cells isn
Publication date: 2009-10-28 more

Turn Firefox into a screen reader with Fire Vox

I've sen Fire Vox mentioned plenty of times but have never had any luck getting it to work on my Mac. Until now, that is. Not sure what I've been doing wrong the other times I have tried it, but the other day I gave it another shot and it worked without any problems. For anyone who hasn't heard of Fire Vox, it is a free, open source screen reader extension for Firefox that works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Among other things it has support for WAI-ARIA and the CSS3 Speech Module, and is a good alternative to VoiceOver if you're on a Mac and need a screen reader for web browsing (or testing). One thing that had me a little bit confused at first is that, at least as far as I can tell, you need to tab into a freshly loaded page before the "Auto Read" option (Ctrl + Shift + a) will work. Read Next (Ctrl + Shift + f) and Read Previous (Ctrl + Shift + d) work even if the focus is still in the location bar. Not sure if that is intentional or not, but if you load up a site and nothing happens when you press Ctrl + Shift + a to have Fire Vox read the entire page, try using tab or (Ctrl + Shift + f) to move keyboard focus to the loaded page first. For developers Fire Vox makes it easy to check how their sites work in a screen reader. Sure, it's just one of several available screen readers, but this one is free and cross-platform. In other words there is no reason for you not to have it installed, so grab a copy right now.Posted in Accessibility, Browsers.
Publication date: 2008-09-24 more

Användbarhetsboken

If you can read Swedish and are interested in usability there is now a free online book on the subject. Tommy Sundström, author of Användbarhetsboken (
Publication date: 2009-09-17 more

When your USB thumb drive doesn

Start->Run and type “diskmgmt.msc” then right-click the drive and select “Change drive letter and Paths” and change the drive letter to something completely different like T: or W:. Hat tip to Java Jane.
Publication date: 2008-06-02 more

City wants its cut from Stubhub, eBay tickets

Publication date: 2008-05-21 more

More about generic TLDs in (say) UK results

Some folks that I respect were giving me a bit of a hard time because they felt like I punted on this webmaster video: So let me take another stab at the question, and tell me what you think. There’s a couple effects going on: - first, we’ve been making changes that make it much more likely [...]
Publication date: 2009-08-21 more

eBay.ca - 50 cent listing day for Fixed Price format

Publication date: 2008-05-08 more

Hang Tight, More eBay Feedback Changes Coming

Publication date: 2008-05-10 more

Good workout music?

Okay, so I registered for a sprint triathlon (400m swim, 11 mile bike, 3.1 mile run) in August. Maybe that will turn out to be a really stupid idea, but I’m going to see if I can at least finish. So I need some good workout music, because my current tunes are getting tired. [...]
Publication date: 2009-07-27 more

Accessibility issues on Vancouver Olympics websites

Being a pretty big fan of many winter sports I have spent most evenings of the past two weeks in front of the TV, watching the action from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. With excellent live TV coverage from the games I had no reason to visit either the Vancouver2010.com or the CTVOlympics.ca website to find more info about the games. But one person who has visited and taken a closer look at those sites is Joe Clark. What he found is that the Vancouver Olympics Web sites are inaccessible to disabled people.Read full postPosted in Accessibility, Web Standards.
Publication date: 2010-03-02 more

Is it safe to buy plant on eBay?

Publication date: 2008-06-03 more

Tips for Increasing eBay Sales

Publication date: 2008-05-21 more

Online Markets Take The Yard Out of Sales

Publication date: 2008-06-05 more

Submit video questions for December 2009

It’s that time again! Tomorrow afternoon I
Publication date: 2009-12-03 more

Alibaba.com Japan plans to double work force

Publication date: 2008-05-26 more

eBay.com.au: No insertion fees for 10 days when you start your item at 99c or less

Publication date: 2008-07-11 more

eBay spent $545,000 to lobby in first quarter

Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

noindex test

Pay no attention this to page with a noindex tag. I just want to check on how Yahoo/Live/Ask treat pages with noindex meta tags.
Publication date: 2008-10-27 more

Be careful with non-ascii characters in URLs

One thing that is rather common, especially on websites whose content is not in English, is URLs that contain unencoded characters such as space,
Publication date: 2010-06-14 more

Best Yogurt in Silicon Valley?

Hi, my name is Matt, and I have a yogurt problem. It started last month when I discovered the joys of Pinkberry yogurt on my trip down to Los Angeles for SIGGRAPH. Pinkberry is different from “normal” yogurt like TCBY because it has a tart (or slightly sour) taste. If you’re living in middle America with [...]
Publication date: 2008-09-15 more

The order of link pseudo-classes matters

Common knowledge to most who have been working with CSS for a few years, but perhaps not something that relative newcomers have come across yet: the order in which you define the different link states affects the end result. I prefer the following order: :link, :visited, :hover, :focus, :active. Eric Meyer explains why the order matters and why he also prefers defining the states in this order in Link Specificity, Ordering the Link States, and Who Ordered the Link States?.Posted in CSS.
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Small Publishers Feel Power of Amazon?s ?Buy? Button

Publication date: 2008-06-16 more

Sell Now organizes eBay listings

Publication date: 2008-05-06 more

ebay.ca - Now Available: Canada Post-eBay Flat Rate Box With Limited-Time Introductory Flat Rates

Publication date: 2008-05-16 more

eBay Live and Let Die

Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

A word about metrics, part III: market share of Google Docs?

I’m not sure what Google Docs market share is, but I thought it would be interesting to mention a couple data points and add a new data point. Data point #1: Compete. Compete just estimated that 4.4M visitors stopped by Google Docs in September, which is just a hair below 2.4% of the U.S. online population, [...]
Publication date: 2008-11-17 more

eBay Announces Marketplaces Executive Changes

Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

Two search tidbits

At SMX a couple weeks ago Eric Enge and I did a 20-25 minute interview. The interview transcript is now out in case you want to read through it. We discuss some of the ways to get links that are likely to stand the test of time: Those links are typically given voluntarily. It is an [...]
Publication date: 2008-06-19 more

2008 Best in Stores Contest ? Enter to win $1,500 and a trip to eBay Live!

Publication date: 2008-03-22 more

What are the best iPhone applications?

Here are some of the applications that I’m trying out right now: What applications do you like on the iPhone 3G?
Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

EBay Files Suit Against Dilution Of Its Minority Stake In Craigslist

Publication date: 2008-04-24 more

Do you think a WCAG 2.0 technique can be improved? Let the W3C know.

While going through Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, I have noted that some of the Techniques for WCAG 2.0 could be improved, at least in my opinion. In some cases it
Publication date: 2009-06-17 more

30 day challenge begins: biking to work

The overwhelming winner in my 30 day poll was “Bike to work” so that’s what I’m doing during the month of July. In the third week of July I’ll be out in Boston to speak at SIGIR, but any time I’m heading into the Googleplex during July, I’m planning to bike there. Is there something good [...]
Publication date: 2009-07-01 more

COO Of Star Group Joins Alibaba

Publication date: 2008-07-04 more

eBay Australia cheap listing days for Computers

Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

eBay Tells Sellers, Shape Up or Ship Out

Publication date: 2008-04-26 more

eBay Live Chicago 2008 Marketing Keynote Speakers Jay Berkowitz, Seth Godin, Jeffrey Gitomer and Andy Sernovitz to Share How to Sell Things on eBay

Publication date: 2008-06-13 more

Recently discovered web developer-related Firefox add-ons

I have recently discovered a few Firefox extensions that can be quite useful when building websites. They are likely old news to many, but I figure there are at least a few others who have not come across them. ColorZilla is a handy extension that makes it easy to grab colours from the web page that is currently open in the browser. It sure beats having to open a screen shot in Photoshop just to find a colour code for something. ColorZilla does some other useful things as well, so it is not just a colour picker. Firefox Accessibility Extension adds features that are useful to people with disabilities and helps developers evaluate accessibility. Screengrab! among other things lets you take screen shots of what is inside the browser viewport, without the browser chrome. I could have used this recently when I was taking a whole bunch of screen shots of various websites for an upcoming course on web development. Unfortunately I didn't know about it then so I used the built in screen shot functionality in Mac OS X and cropped the images to get only the browser viewport. Oh well. WAVE Toolbar lets you run the WAVE web accessibility evaluation tool inside Firefox, without sending any information to the WAVE server. Perfect if you're like me and spend a lot of time working on password-protected sites. Posted in Accessibility, Browsers.
Publication date: 2008-10-15 more

EBay launches international ad division

Publication date: 2008-07-29 more

Former Ebay CEO Urges Action on Small Business Issues

Publication date: 2008-06-13 more

Live-buzzing Day 2 of the Google I/O keynote

Okay, today I’m going to try something different again. I’m going to try live-buzzing the keynote of Day 2 of Google I/O. You can follow the live-buzz right here. I’m going to update the buzz as news comes out; if you’re following on the web instead of on Buzz, you might need to hit reload to [...]
Publication date: 2010-05-20 more

eBay: Have Good DSRs, Specified Shipping, and a Low Starting Price? Pay 1

Publication date: 2008-03-25 more

Bookselling Marketplace AbeBooks Aquires Chrislands

Publication date: 2008-04-11 more

Start an embedded YouTube video at a certain timestamp

In a previous post I covered how to link to a specific timestamp in a YouTube video. The short version looks like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjDw3azfZWI#t=31m08s The “#t=31m08s” takes you to 31 minutes and 8 seconds in a video. I just found out that you can also start embedded videos at a certain timestamp. To do it on an embedded [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-04 more

eBay: A Message from John Canfield ? eBay Security News

Publication date: 2008-04-16 more

China's Alibaba says it has expanded into Taiwan

Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

Blogger Play

http://play.blogger.com/ is really addictive. It’s a slideshow of pictures that are currently uploading to blogger. I remember the first time I realized that the nightly TV news would never play re-runs; if you missed the show that night, you wouldn’t see it again. This new feature has the similar feel: there’s a river of pictures [...]
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

eBay Responds in Google - PayPal Showdown

Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

Merchants give eBay an earful at its annual gathering

Publication date: 2008-06-26 more

DOMAssistant bundle for TextMate

Like many other Mac users I do most of my coding in TextMate. It has tons of really nice features, one of which is its extensibility – if you need support for a coding language that isn't included with TextMate, you can add it yourself. Well, I've been using Robert Nyman's DOMAssistant JavaScript library quite a bit lately, and TextMate doesn't support DOMAssistant's methods and syntax. I was getting a bit annoyed at knowing that I was doing a lot of unnecessary typing because of this, so I decided to create a TextMate bundle for DOMAssistant. Armed with my copy of TextMate, James Edward Gray II's excellent TextMate: Power Editing for the Mac, and the DOMAssistant documentation, I started hacking away. This was the first time I took a closer look at adding support for a language in TextMate, but it turned out that it really isn't that difficult. After a few hours of work, the result is a DOMAssistant TextMate bundle with tab triggered snippets for all methods, a code completion dictionary, and documentation links for all DOMAssistant keywords. Google Code project: textmate-domassistant Direct download link: DOMAssistant-tmbundle-1.0.zip If you use TextMate and DOMAssistant I think this will save you a few keystrokes :-). Suggestions for improvement are welcome. Remember that this is my first TextMate bundle, so please be gentle.Visit site to read or post comments…Add 456 Berea Street to your Technorati favorites.Posted in Coding, JavaScript, Mac, Productivity.
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Life After eBay: An Interview With Meg Whitman

Publication date: 2008-05-13 more

eBay: Making It Easier to Recover Listings

Publication date: 2008-03-27 more

eBay pulls 3G iPhone ads?

Publication date: 2008-06-16 more

Please don

The title pretty much says it all. A while ago, someone saw my call for good summer vacation reading and the resulting pile of Amazon books that I bought, and they sent me a couple free books, maybe to get a review or a mention. I appreciate the creativity, but please don’t send me any [...]
Publication date: 2008-04-14 more

Reported Dollar Loss From Internet Crime Reaches All Time High

Publication date: 2008-04-08 more

Ideal conference badge

I don’t even know how many conferences I’ve been to in the last decade, but it’s probably 30-40. In that time, maybe 2-3 conferences have really nailed the conference badge for attendees. Here’s what the ideal conference badge should look like, in my opinion: I’ll walk you through the important features of this badge: - Each attendee’s [...]
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Paypal & Ebay To Rule The World: Part Three - Still Think Ebay Is Just A Venue?

Publication date: 2008-06-16 more

Short article of free SEO tips

Jefferson Graham of USA Today stopped by the Googleplex a little while ago and we talked about SEO tips for business owners that want to run their business, not live and breathe search 24 hours a day. The result is an article of search engine optimization (SEO) advice that you could hand to any friend [...]
Publication date: 2008-06-23 more

iPhone has a hidden SATA interface

I recently discovered something really wild: the iPhone has a secret SATA interface. Using the SATA interface, the iPhone is much easier to hack because it looks just like a hard drive to a computer, so you can replace individual executables and symlinks with no effort. Readers know that I’m a bit of a storage [...]
Publication date: 2008-04-02 more

Liquidity Services, Inc. to Acquire UK-based Geneva Group

Publication date: 2008-04-16 more

uShip Announces 100,000th Transportation Service Provider (TSP)

Publication date: 2008-05-07 more

ACCC plans to reject eBay's PayPal push

Publication date: 2008-06-13 more

Other News from eBay Live! 2008 - New Item Page

Publication date: 2008-06-23 more

eBay pays the price for PayPal debacle

Publication date: 2008-07-07 more

Straight from Google: What You Need to Know

I just gave a talk at WordCamp San Francisco 2009. Thanks to Matt Mullenweg and the Automattic folks for a great time! I think there will be a video up soon, but if you want to browse the slides in the mean time, here they are: You can also download the talk in PowerPoint format.
Publication date: 2009-05-30 more

India ranks third in Asia Pacific for eBay

Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

Wordle for Nancy Grace TV Show

I recently completed a huge “Media and Journalism” project: I transcribed over 500 hours of the Nancy Grace TV show on CNN. It took a long time, but here is an exhaustive Wordle tag cloud of all the words used in those 500+ hours of television: It appears that all 500+ hours consist of those six [...]
Publication date: 2009-03-22 more

New accessibility overview on the W3C website

The new W3C website has a new and very good summary of the why, what, and how of Web accessibility.Read full postPosted in Accessibility, Web Standards.
Publication date: 2009-11-04 more

Microsoft's Live Expo Scheduled To Be Executed

Publication date: 2008-06-10 more

Reply.com launches auction-based lead platform

Publication date: 2008-05-23 more

Moving the locked top panel in Ubuntu/GNOME

A new version of Ubuntu (Intrepid Ibex) is coming out this week, so I’m trying out the release candidate. Here’s an annoyance I hit and how to solve it. I keep a list of steps to perform after installing Ubuntu, and one of my steps is Drag the bottommost taskbar/panel to the right and the topmost [...]
Publication date: 2008-10-29 more

TextMate productivity tips

If you saw my post about the DOMAssistant bundle for TextMate, you will already know that my favourite coding tool at the moment is TextMate. If you missed that post, well, now you know. For anyone who is new to TextMate or considering trying it out, I thought I
Publication date: 2008-11-26 more

Alibaba offers free online ad service

Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

State of the Index, November 2009

Last week I was in Las Vegas for PubCon, a conference for publishers, and I wanted to share the slides from my main presentation: When I get a chance, I’ll also re-create the talk on video and share the video with you, but in the mean time Lisa Barone did a nice live write-up and coverage [...]
Publication date: 2009-11-18 more

eBay Announces Star Developer Awards

Publication date: 2008-06-17 more

eBay Policy Updates

Publication date: 2008-05-21 more

An eBay story ... from a collector and dealer

Publication date: 2008-05-31 more

Trying (and failing) to get Ubuntu to work

I really want to run Ubuntu, but it shouldn’t be this hard. Plugging in an SD card reader that I picked up from Best Buy shouldn’t cause a hard freeze of my system (on both Gutsy Gibbon and Intrepid Ibex): The card reader works fine in Windows. At this point, I’m honestly thinking about crashing the [...]
Publication date: 2008-11-23 more

Open hidden folders in the Mac OS X Finder

This is one of those simple tips that makes you think
Publication date: 2010-03-18 more

Opinion poll: do you like webmaster videos?

If you don’t follow me on Twitter, you might not know that for the last few months we’ve been posting daily free webmaster videos on our webmaster video channel. That YouTube channel has over 100 videos on it now. We just finished up the most recent round of videos, and now the question is whether to [...]
Publication date: 2009-07-14 more

Signs of Los Angeles

I have a pet theory that you can tell a lot about a city by paying attention to its signage. So I like to keep my eyes open when I’m in a new place and take pictures of things that strike me as especially interesting. When I was down in Los Angeles, here are a [...]
Publication date: 2008-10-27 more

Three tips for

This is my personal blog. I don’t run my draft posts by Google’s PR or legal team, other than maybe 2-3 times when I thought a post might have legal implications. But I have learned a few hard-won lessons. So, when someone recently asked me for tips about talking to the public, I couldn’t resist. [...]
Publication date: 2008-08-25 more

Talking to a Wiimote in Ubuntu 8.10

To add Wiimote support on Ubuntu 8.10, start by running the command “sudo apt-get install wminput wmgui lswm” to install the CWiid library and associated software. If you’re using a desktop machine, you probably don’t have Bluetooth capability. If you run the program “lswm” and see the message “No Bluetooth interface found” then you need to [...]
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

eBay Sellers Can Now Instantly Check Their Sales With Their Cellphone Using New AuctionTNT.com Tool

Publication date: 2008-05-13 more

Recent piece by Sanford and Brown

(I work for Google, but this is my personal opinion.) Last week I was on vacation down in Florida and I had a chance to tour Thomas Edison’s winter vacation home. The tour guide told us that Edison wired his house and switched on electrical lighting in 1887. Then the tour guide leaned in and quietly [...]
Publication date: 2009-05-20 more

Using the Web with a refreshable Braille display

Chances are that you have either seen someone use a screen reader to access the Web. You may even have tried one yourself. Braille displays, however, are not as commonly seen, and since you need more than just software to use one it just isn
Publication date: 2009-06-12 more

Android barcode scanner in 6 lines of Python code

After my last video about using a barcode scanner to add and search books in your library, I was feeling pretty happy. Bar code scanners are pretty cheap--mine cost about $65. But then Google released the Android Scripting Environment (ASE) and it turns out that you don’t even need a bar code scanner. Instead, you [...]
Publication date: 2009-06-10 more

Learn more about robots.txt

We made a video about how Google handles the robots.txt file. You can watch it if you want: This answers a couple questions such as: - Why is my url showing up in Google when I blocked it in robots.txt? Did you fetch that url? - How do I make that url disappear from Google? I hope the video [...]
Publication date: 2009-10-07 more

Try Gallery Plus for 10

Publication date: 2008-06-25 more

eBay Motors sells three millionth vehicle

Publication date: 2008-04-18 more

Daylight saving confusion continues on eBay

Publication date: 2008-04-03 more

Five years of Authentic Jobs

This month Authentic Jobs turns five years old. I
Publication date: 2010-09-08 more

Browser Market Share?

I hadn’t looked at my browser marketshare in a while, so I fired up Google Analytics: Rough browser numbers are Firefox 57.58% IE 26.07% Safari 6.48% Chrome 5.11% Opera 2.35% Mozilla 1.44% SeaMonkey 0.48% Mozilla Compatible 0.18% Konqueror 0.13% Camino 0.04% OneStat says that they see 0.54% share for Google Chrome. Net Applications provides an hour-by-hour graph, which is nice, but they hardwired it to look for the string “Chrome 0.2″ when Chrome is on version 0.3 [...]
Publication date: 2008-11-26 more

eBay opens a Punjab outlet

Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

Sergey starts a blog!

I’ve checked with folks at Google and they confirmed that http://too.blogspot.com/ is Sergey Brin’s blog. The name “too” reflects Sergey’s additional life outside work. One of his first posts is about the fact that he might be more likely to develop Parkinson’s Disease when he’s older. That’s based on data from 23andMe, the personal genetics [...]
Publication date: 2008-09-19 more

The WCAG Samurai Errata are now available

It took nearly two years, but two days ago on 26 February 2008, version 1.0 of the WCAG Samurai Errata for WCAG 1.0 were finally published. As stated in the Introduction, this version is also likely to be the final version. A quick summary for anyone who is not familiar with the WCAG Samuari or their WCAG 1.0 errata: The WCAG Samurai consisted of a group of accessibility and standards-aware web developers brought together by Joe Clark in 2006. The group's goal was to create a document that provides corrections and updates for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0. The reason to provide corrections is that since WCAG 1.0 was originally published by the W3C in 1999, both web browsers and assistive technologies have evolved. At the same time, accessibility-aware web developers have learned and invented a lot of techniques for building accessible websites. Developers have also learned that some of the techniques that were useful in the past are no longer needed or even cause problems for users. The WCAG Samurai errata thus removes, rephrases, and adds information that makes WCAG 1.0 more applicable to today's Web. You might also want to read Joe Clark's WCAG Samurai errata released, where he talks a bit more about the errata and the development process used. So do the WCAG Samurai Errata actually contain any improvements? Yes, definitely. I don't agree one hundred percent with every word in the errata, but all in all I think they make a lot of sense and match what I strive for in my daily work. Note that you can't use the WCAG Samurai Errata as a standalone document. It should be used in combination with W3C's WCAG 1.0.Visit site to read or post comments…Add 456 Berea Street to your Technorati favorites.Posted in Accessibility.
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Unobtrusive JavaScript is not necessarily accessible JavaScript

Plenty of JavaScript demos and tutorials that you come across on the Web note that they are implemented using unobtrusive JavaScript. While that is great and should always be encouraged, some people seem to believe that unobtrusive JavaScript equals accessible JavaScript. That is not always the case. Unobtrusive JavaScript is normally mentioned to emphasise that a script uses progressive enhancement to cater for people who use a browser without JavaScript support. But that does not mean that a script is accessible, since two key accessibility issues tend to be overlooked
Publication date: 2010-01-27 more

eBay: Did listings change make a difference?

Publication date: 2008-04-16 more

Malaysians See eBay As Platform To Sell To The World

Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

New W3C website launched

In March 2009 the W3C launched a beta version of their main website, looking for feedback and contributions. On October 13, the new World Wide Web Consortium website was launched. I like it so far. Visually it
Publication date: 2009-10-19 more

I

I’ve decided to skip April Fool’s Day this year, and I’ll tell you why: I’m April Fools’ed out. I’ve done a bunch of April Fools jokes in the past, and this year I’m just too tired to do it. Plus I’m worried that if I escalate the jokes much further, things will get out of [...]
Publication date: 2008-04-02 more

Google and Big Ideas

I love Om Malik and respect him greatly. I’m hoping to corner him for lunch sometime to pick his brain on ways that Google could improve. But today he happened to do a tweet that caught my attention just as my morning caffeine was kicking in. Om said “I think google has no big ideas. [...]
Publication date: 2009-02-04 more

Six Annoyances in Hardy Heron Ubuntu

(I’m going to publish this in rough draft format. I want to get the post live while lots of Ubuntu developers are thinking about Intrepid Ibex.) I’m a huge fan of Ubuntu Linux. I’ve used many flavors of Linux over the years, and Ubuntu is my favorite by far. So it pains me to write this. [...]
Publication date: 2008-05-20 more

Remember non-vendor-prefixed CSS 3 properties (and put them last)

Everybody wants to use CSS 3 now that even Internet Explorer will support parts of it once IE 9 is out. But since parts of CSS 3 are still subject to change, most browsers use a vendor prefix for many CSS 3 properties to signal that their implemenation is
Publication date: 2010-09-02 more

eBay Flip Flops on BayEstimator Tool for Optimizing Best Match

Publication date: 2008-04-24 more

Gunvendor.com Emerges From eBay?s Anti-Firearms Auction Policy

Publication date: 2008-05-23 more

Help me pick my new 30 day challenge

Okay, I’ve finished roughly a year of 30 day challenges, and now I’d like your help picking new ideas. So far, I’ve done: - 30 days with no TV (May) - 30 days of 10,000 steps each day (June) - 30 days biking into work (July) - reading 15 books in 30 days (I only made it to 12) [...]
Publication date: 2010-06-01 more

Download, slice and dice podcasts on Linux

I’m trying to replace my Windows applications with Linux applications. On Windows, I use I use Juice to download podcasts as MP3s. Recently I decided to switch over to Linux for receiving podcasts. After looking around at various podcast catchers (especially ones that ran on the command-line, so that I could automate them with a [...]
Publication date: 2008-03-24 more

eBay: A Message From Lorrie Norrington ? Updates for Sellers

Publication date: 2008-03-22 more

Use the p element to create paragraphs

When creating paragraphs of text in HTML, some WYSIWYG editors and people use double br (line break) elements to separate the paragraphs visually: This text is the first paragraph. <br> <br> This text is the second paragraph. While this method often provides the desired visual result there is a better way
Publication date: 2009-03-16 more

eBay.com.au: Catch yourself a bargain hunter with no insertion fees 26-29 June

Publication date: 2008-06-26 more

Headings and document structure conclusions

There appears to be no single solution to heading structure in HTML that fits all situations, but as I see it there are two choices.Read full postPosted in (X)HTML, Accessibility.
Publication date: 2009-11-11 more

Happy 5th birthday, Firefox!

Thank you, and other modern browsers like Safari and Opera, for changing the Web.Read full postPosted in Browsers.
Publication date: 2009-11-10 more

Google SEO Report Card, SMX West, plus new features

(I’m traveling, but lots of good stuff from the recent SMX West search conference is now live — plus some new stuff — so I wanted to talk about it.) At the SMX West search conference I did an Ignite talk about Google’s SEO audit that it did on itself. This was part of a global [...]
Publication date: 2010-04-16 more

eBay Subsidiary Marktplaats.nl Grows Its Business with Sun Microsystems' MySQL Database

Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

Daffodil Hill weekend

This weekend my wife and I drove up to Daffodil Hill in Eastern California. Daffodil Hill is six acres of daffodils (my favorite flower) and it’s only open for a few weeks in the springtime. It’s free — just drive right up, park, and walk around. It looks like this: And if you get really close [...]
Publication date: 2008-03-26 more

Wigix Announces Board Appointments

Publication date: 2008-07-11 more

EBay Users Set to Question CEO on Changes

Publication date: 2008-06-25 more

Reveal new window links and links to non-HTML files with a user stylesheet

As I stated in Make Safari open targeted links in new tabs instead of new windows I find links that open in new windows highly annoying. One reason that new windows can be so intrusive is that most browsers don
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Gaping hole costume for Halloween 2009

This year for Halloween I tried to do a see-through hole in your body costume: It worked okay, but not great. The biggest problem was that I didn’t have a gadget lying around the house that could output live composite video. Both my normal video camera and my digital camera had exhausted batteries that wouldn’t recharge, [...]
Publication date: 2009-11-01 more

eBay to Meet with Australian Users over Controversial PayPal Policy

Publication date: 2008-04-13 more

eBay is most searched for brand

Publication date: 2008-04-18 more

Amazon Resumes Test of Feedback Page

Publication date: 2008-04-09 more

WordCamp 2007 talk: Whitehat SEO tips for bloggers

By the way, if you enjoyed my Straight from Google: What You Need to Know talk from WordCamp 2009, you might also enjoy my WordCamp 2007 talk: Whitehat SEO tips for bloggers. For convenience, I’ll include the video below: And here are the slides from the 2007 WordCamp talk: Not everyone has seen this talk, so I hope [...]
Publication date: 2009-08-24 more

Web Inspector adds Timeline and Audits panels

The latest set of improved and new features to the WebKit Web Inspector are really great. I mean really great as in
Publication date: 2010-04-19 more

IronPlanet's next Australian online auction to be held on March 13, 2008

Publication date: 2008-04-09 more

On eBay: Let the bidder beware

Publication date: 2008-06-18 more

Tough Times for eBay Entrepreneurs

Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

Why Google won

(This is just a post from my personal perspective, but I hope it’s helpful.) Every few weeks or so, someone contacts me and says “Hey Matt, there’s page out on the web about me that I really don’t like. Is there any way to remove it from Google’s index?” People don’t usually say it like that. [...]
Publication date: 2009-03-03 more

Craigslist answers eBay allegations in court

Publication date: 2008-05-19 more

EBay, GE Money Expand PayPal Credit To EBay Site

Publication date: 2008-05-16 more

French ruling on counterfeit goods could have far-reaching effects for eBay

Publication date: 2008-07-08 more

Happy 4.04 Day!

Today is April 4th, which means that it’s 4.04 day — even in Europe where they switch their months and days around. That means it’s a perfect day to learn what a 404 status code is. Essentially, a 404 is a way for web server to return a “Page Not Found” error when a browser [...]
Publication date: 2009-04-04 more

EBay opens building with largest solar roof in San Jose

Publication date: 2008-05-10 more

On eBay, A Little Less Conversation

Publication date: 2008-04-11 more

Christmas break

When I started blogging again in September after my three-month parental leave I wasn
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

30 day challenge update: meditation!

It’s time for an update on my 30 day challenges. Here’s what I’ve done the last few months: June: I didn’t respond to email after 10 p.m. and I read the New Testament of the Bible. Both were interesting in different ways. It turns out that 10 p.m. is a pretty good time for me to [...]
Publication date: 2010-09-02 more

AuctionBytes Interviews Google Checkout's Prem Ramaswami

Publication date: 2008-05-13 more

eBay's StubHub Lowballs Sports, Concert Tickets

Publication date: 2008-06-12 more

A peek behind the curtain at Google

Udi Manber talks about search at Google in a recent post on the Google blog. If you’re interested in search or search engine optimization (SEO), the post is definitely worth a read. Udi discusses items from big (Google revamped how it computes PageRank in January) to small (in Hebrew, an acronym like IBM would be [...]
Publication date: 2008-05-21 more

Review: Stud-4-Sure stud finder

I wanted to do a few short blog posts about products that I really like and that work well. First up is a stud finder that I found. It’s called the Stud4Sure stud finder (not an affiliate link). It’s more accurate than fancy electronic studfinders and much more accurate than knocking on the wall. This little [...]
Publication date: 2008-06-13 more

Line wrapping text in legend elements

In some cases you should Use the fieldset and legend elements to group HTML form controls. One problem that may lead to though is when the legend text is too long to fit the width of its containing fieldset element. It could be because the legend text is simply too long, because a long text is needed, or because the fieldset is in a narrow column. The end result is the same
Publication date: 2009-05-19 more

Book review: Freedom, by Daniel Suarez

I recently got to read Freedom, the new book by Daniel Suarez, and can highly recommend it. If you haven’t read Suarez’s earlier book Daemon then you should read that Daemon first. If you have read it, Suarez picks up where the first book ended. Daemon and Freedom are set in a future tantalizingly close to [...]
Publication date: 2010-01-04 more

PESA eBay Group, A Nonprofit of Convenience

Publication date: 2008-04-09 more

CheckMEND Service Addresses Online Auction Sites' Problems

Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

Innovate or Die: eBay at a Crossroads

Publication date: 2008-06-13 more

State of the Web 2008 findings

In the beginning of January the report from the State of the Web Survey 2008 was published. The survey is not strictly scientific since those who participated are people who happen to monitor the sites that linked to the survey, which was open during the first three weeks of December. Regardless of their validity, statistics can be entertaining. Here are some highlights from the report: The number of Mac and Windows users are almost equal
Publication date: 2009-01-30 more

Boosters turning to online auctions

Publication date: 2008-03-27 more

Accessibility does not prevent you from using JavaScript or Flash

A common misconception is that in order to make a website accessible you have to abstain from using JavaScript or Flash. Almost every time I hold a workshop on Web standards and accessibility there is at least one participant who believes that accessibility limits what they can do on the Web by telling them to stay away from anything that isn't pure HTML.Read full postPosted in Accessibility, JavaScript.
Publication date: 2010-05-31 more

Giving up Twitter for three more weeks

Quick summary: I’m giving up Twitter for 30 days. I normally tweet about the webmaster videos that we make. Please follow googlewmc on Twitter if you want to find out about new webmaster videos. For the last few months I’ve been doing 30 day challenges: - In May 2009, I walked 10,000 steps a day. - For June [...]
Publication date: 2010-01-09 more

What are the Ebay Seller Tool Websites Really Doing with Buyer Information?

Publication date: 2008-03-22 more

Canadian fiddler looks for quick payday via eBay

Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

Overstock.com Says PayPal Yields Triple Expected Volume

Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Looking into latest live metrics

(Doing the “type up a quick blog post” thing. Let me know if I had any typos.) Thanks to everyone that contacted me in the last few minutes and hours about changes in our search products and quality; we’re seeing the impact in our metrics as well. I hear your feedback loud and clear–no need to [...]
Publication date: 2009-04-02 more

A clash of 'world views': part owner eBay vs. Craigslist

Publication date: 2008-05-12 more

Using shipping with the Google Checkout shopping cart

Publication date: 2008-06-16 more

Multiple form labels and screen readers

Just about every website needs some forms. Sometimes there are many of them, sometimes just a single contact form. Regardless of their number, they need to be usable and accessible, which can sometimes be a little more work than it would be if theory and practice aligned a little better. Say you have a simple form with an input field whose value needs to be validated, either by a JavaScript running in the browser or by a script on the server (preferably both). When the data entered by the user does not match what is expected, you need to notify the user somehow. For sighted users this is generally not a problem. If you output some text stating what the problem is and highlight it visually, most people will notice it. For screen reader users it's a little more tricky though. To make sure that the screen reader associates the message with the correct input field, the text should be in a label element that is explicitly connected to the field. No problem so far actually, but then the designer tells you that it has to look differently. The validation message should be below the input field instead of next to the label text. Or it should be next to the input field, or some other location not directly adjacent to the label text. You start fiddling with extra markup, absolute positioning, negative margins, and end up with something that seems to work reasonably well. Until you resize the text, at which point things get misaligned. You may be able to find a half-good solution that works within certain constraints, but if you've been down this road you probably get the point. Positioning error messages this way is fragile. It would be so much easier if you could just put the error message in a second label element associated with the input field. Well, it turns out you can do that. From The LABEL element in the HTML 4.01 specification: The LABEL element may be used to attach information to controls. Each LABEL element is associated with exactly one form control. The for attribute associates a label with another control explicitly: the value of the for attribute must be the same as the value of the id attribute of the associated control element. More than one LABEL may be associated with the same control by creating multiple references via the for attribute. Sounds great, doesn't it? A quick check in graphical web browsers shows that they associate multiple labels with the input field (as evidenced by the input field gaining focus when either label is clicked). But what about screen readers? It would be so useful if this would work... Unfortunately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, it looks like it doesn't quite work as well as you'd hope. I mentioned this briefly in Use the label element to make your HTML forms accessible, but I think it's worth bringing up again since full support for multiple labels would help us make forms more accessible to screen reader users while keeping visual designers happy. I am far from an expert user when it comes to screen readers, but I've done some limited testing with mostly disappointing results. Apple VoiceOver does not recognise more than one label element associated with a form control and reads only the label that comes first in the document's source order. JAWS and Window-Eyes both do the opposite and read only the last label when an input field gains focus. The only screen reader of those that I tested that does handle multiple labels is Fire Vox. The exact results may obviously depend on user configuration and reading modes, and there may be other screen readers that get it right, but these results indicate that screen reader behaviour is too inconsistent for multiple labels to be a reliable technique. A couple of years ago, Bob Easton set up a multiple label test case that reveals similar results, discussed in Speaking form labels - Summary. Sorry to write at such length about something that appears to have no practical use. I just wanted to highlight a case where I think screen readers following the HTML specification more closely would help web developers to increase the accessibility of HTML forms they don't have full visual control of.Posted in (X)HTML, Accessibility.
Publication date: 2008-10-01 more

Judge Shoots Down Universal's Bogus Infringement Allegations

Publication date: 2008-06-13 more

Building accessible forms with WCAG 2.0

Recently I
Publication date: 2009-05-22 more

Void (empty) elements and self-closing start tags in HTML

The syntax for void elements and self-closing tags is something most web authors get right. However, there are two types of mistakes that I see every now and then: using end tags on void elements and using self-closing start tags on elements that can have content.Read full postPosted in (X)HTML, HTML 5, Quick Tips.
Publication date: 2010-05-21 more

eBay calls for end to grey import laws

Publication date: 2008-06-25 more

eBay DevCon 2008 Registration and Star Developer Noms are Open!

Publication date: 2008-03-24 more

Stupid Google Tricks: How often do you cut your hair?

The other day I realized that I enter my haircut appointments into Google Calendar, so I can search for “haircut OR (the place I get my hair cut)” and see when I’ve gotten my hair cut: Then I was reading Google Apps Hacks and Hack 25 caught my eye: “Show the difference between two dates”. A [...]
Publication date: 2008-05-16 more

Selling on eBay: 12 tips to help you earn more

Publication date: 2008-04-04 more

Legislation Targets eFencing on Sites Like eBay

Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

How to read Persian (Farsi)

Google just added machine-translation of Persian (Farsi): This means you can now translate any text from Persian into English and from English into Persian
Publication date: 2009-06-19 more

Making eBay Your Business Ally

Publication date: 2008-06-25 more

eBay exec: It's all about the platform

Publication date: 2008-03-22 more

Amazon.com Acquires Fabric.com

Publication date: 2008-06-26 more

MySQL and Perl trouble when moving from a PowerPC to an Intel Mac

The Migration Assistant utility in Mac OS X can be a huge time saver when you buy a new Mac and want to move all your stuff from the old machine to the new one. However, there are a few things to watch out for. One issue I ran into when using Migration Assistant to move from a PowerPC-based Mac to an Intel-based one is that it will copy MySQL and Perl. In my case that meant mysql-standard-4.1.21-apple-darwin8.6.0-powerpc and Perl 5.8.6. Depending on how you use MySQL and Perl this may or may not be a problem. I
Publication date: 2009-04-03 more

Five fun smartphone tips

Tip #1: See what you’re ordering. You’re at a restaurant and looking over the menu. But you don’t know the difference between a turkey bolognese and a turkey piccata. What to do? Fire up your iPhone, Android, or other smartphone and go to images.google.com and do a search for turkey bolognese. In just a few [...]
Publication date: 2008-09-29 more

In search of the real deal

Publication date: 2008-07-02 more

Software group files lawsuits against eight eBay sellers

Publication date: 2008-03-22 more

eBay Sellers Scrutinize Buy.com Listings

Publication date: 2008-06-13 more

Google CheckOut: Sergey, You Can't Be Serious

Publication date: 2008-06-28 more

On vacation for a week or so

Just to let you know, I’m on vacation for a week or so. If you send me email or tweet in my direction, don’t expect a reply for a while.
Publication date: 2009-05-08 more

eBay.com postpone new links policy

Publication date: 2008-07-14 more

WebKit Web Inspector improvements

The web developer tool for Safari and other WebKit-based browsers has just received a number of improved and new features worth checking out.Read full postPosted in Browsers, Coding.
Publication date: 2009-11-12 more

eBay Changes the Rules of the Game, Again

Publication date: 2008-05-21 more

More material for web site owners

Here’s some more stuff you should know about. - I did a monster-long interview with Eric Enge. I think the interview lasted an hour or something like that, and we covered several areas in depth. - Next, take a break and go read this post by Rhea Drysdale. Heck, maybe send her a donation by Paypal (Added: [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-16 more

The eBay PowerSeller Business Practices Guide on Boosting Sales and Managing a PowerSeller Business

Publication date: 2008-07-01 more

Make more web content readable with Readability

Ever find yourself reluctant to read stuff you really would like to read if it wasn
Publication date: 2009-08-25 more

Ways to help Haiti

Lots of people are thinking about ways to help Haiti after their horrible 7.0 earthquake. Google recently introduced a page with a large number of resources for the Haiti earthquake, including the ability to donate money. Also, a bunch of Googlers have worked to bring updated satellite imagery to Google Earth. You can also click to see [...]
Publication date: 2010-01-15 more

Skip links need to be at least temporarily visible

Many sites use skip links as a way of helping people who do not use a mouse to quickly jump to the main content. It can be very useful, which I notice myself as I often use my keyboard to navigate instead of the mouse. One problem that I run into on some sites is that the skip links are hidden. It
Publication date: 2009-09-29 more

Crgslst: The Endangered, Sexy Craigslist Search Tool

Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Welcome to The 10 Day Squidoo eBay Challenge!

Publication date: 2008-06-09 more

Live-blogging the Google Chrome OS event

I’m sitting in a room at Google waiting to hear more about Google Chrome OS. You can watch the webcast along with me if you like. For starters, here’s what Google announced about Chrome OS back in July. At that time, Google called out “speed, simplicity and security” as the key ideas behind Chrome OS. Google [...]
Publication date: 2009-11-20 more

Overstock.com Adopts Fur-Free Policy

Publication date: 2008-07-29 more

My eBay Script - MeS version 1.5 Just Released

Publication date: 2008-05-08 more

Massive Changes Anger EBay Users Worldwide

Publication date: 2008-06-09 more

eBay fights back over ACCC's PayPal proposal

Publication date: 2008-06-16 more

DOM Assistant updated to 2.5, adds CSS selector support

Last week I posted a brief article about what you might want to think about when Choosing a JavaScript framework, and mentioned Robert Nyman's DOM Assistant as one of the JavaScript libraries that I have used in production. It's been just three months since Robert released version 2.0 of his library, but since then he has been working hard on improving DOM Assistant even more. And that hard work has led to this week's announcement: DOMAssistant 2.5 Released - CSS Selector Support, New AJAX Methods And More Goodies Added!. If you read Robert's post you will notice that there are plenty of new features and performance tweaks, but the most useful addition to me is definitely support for CSS selectors. As anyone who has used a library/framework that has support for CSS selectors will testify, it is often a lot quicker to write a CSS selector that matches the elements you want to work with than doing it "by hand". So thanks for adding that feature, Robert. I'm sure I will be using it a lot. For a few months I've been using DOM Assistant 2.0 almost daily, and I have been happy with what it does. Unfortunately I have only had limited time to beta test version 2.5, but I'm looking forward to putting it to the test once I manage to find some time. Anyway, if you're interested in a comparatively lightweight JavaScript library that focuses more on helping you out with the tedious parts of scripting than adding cool effects and UI widgets, give DOM Assistant a try. And please, no "my library is better than yours" trolling. There are many libraries to choose from, and to each his own. No need for a war.Visit site to read or post comments…Add 456 Berea Street to your Technorati favorites.Posted in JavaScript.
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

My Halloween 2008 Costume

For Halloween this year, I decided to be Rick Astley. With a little bit of hair spray, spray-on hair color, and some make-up for a widow’s peak, it looks like this: What fun. To make the costume complete, I took my Android G1 phone and bought a copy of Never Gonna Give You Up from Amazon [...]
Publication date: 2008-11-01 more

Clickable transcript of my Canonical Link Element talk

Recently I’ve been playing with linking to specific parts of a video and incorporating YouTube subtitles. Then I realized that you could do a neat trick. YouTube allows you to create closed captioning with a simple text file that looks like this: 00:00:07.000 Hi everybody. Welcome back to another video. We’re doing this thing where when we [...]
Publication date: 2009-03-11 more

Setting up Your Own Shop with Shopify.com

Publication date: 2008-07-07 more

eBay and TRUSTe PARTNER TO IMPROVE SAFETY OF DOWNLOADABLE SOFTWARE

Publication date: 2008-07-01 more

Registration Opens for Online Market World 2008 Conference

Publication date: 2008-06-10 more

eBay to argue case for PayPal at ACCC conference

Publication date: 2008-06-26 more

JavaScript Tools bundle for Textmate

In my post about TextMate productivity tips I didn
Publication date: 2009-01-28 more

Telling organisations that their websites are inaccessible

When you encounter a website that has accessibility problems, it can be a good idea to contact the organisation behind the website to let them know about the problem and encourage them to fix it. To help make this a little easier, the W3C WAI has published a draft document called Contacting Organizations about Inaccessible Websites. The document contains tips, discusses different approaches, and includes a few sample e-mails to show you what a message describing an accessibility problem can look like. Shawn Lawton Henry talks about the initiative a bit more in Take a few minutes to encourage web accessibility. You can make a difference. on the W3C Blog.Read full postPosted in Accessibility.
Publication date: 2010-01-13 more

How eBay is Embracing Social Media in the Workplace

Publication date: 2008-06-16 more

Help screen reader users by giving data tables a summary

When sighted users encounter a data table, they can scan it to get an understanding of the data it contains. They can quickly skip from the first row to the last and from one column to another and so on. For people using a screen reader or other non-visual browser, this is a much more time-consuming task since they read the table cell by cell, row by row, and have to more or less keep all of it in memory. To help users of non-visual browsers understand and navigate data tables, you can use the summary attribute to provide a description of the purpose of the table and describe its structure. The summary attribute is not displayed in graphical browsers, so the information you put there should be written for non-visual users. Describing a table with a summary attribute is particularly useful for more complex tables. For simple tables it may not be necessary as enough info may be provided in the caption element. Further reading: Accessible Data Tables, summary for Table Purpose WCAG 2.0, H73: Using the summary attribute of the table element to give an overview of data tables This post is a Quick Tip. Background info is available in Quick Tips for web developers and web designers.Posted in Accessibility, Quick Tips.
Publication date: 2009-06-05 more

Readable

A month ago I posted a tip about the Readability bookmarklet which can be used to make websites easier to read. After that I was made aware of another option: Readable. The Readable setup page offers more customisation options than Readability does, which is useful. One of the options is to use Better Web Readability, a CSS framework intended to make web content easier to scan and read. Just like Readability, Readable doesn
Publication date: 2009-09-25 more

uBid.com Holdings, Inc. Announces New Business Focus to Serve Growing Excess Inventory Markets

Publication date: 2008-04-26 more

Designing Web Navigation (Book review)

What? An entire book just about designing navigation on the Web? Yes, that's right. And if you think about it for a while you'll probably realise that there is a need for a book on that subject. Heck, considering the number of sites out there that are incredibly hard to navigate, there is room for plenty of books that explain how to create Web navigation that works. And you're very likely to have run into problems more than once when trying to figure out how to make a website or Web application easy and intuitive not only for yourself, but for your own or your client's end users, to find their way around. Designing Web Navigation by James Kalbach aims to help you master the fundamentals of navigation design. While there is no guarantee that you will master the subject, reading this book will definitely give you a lot of insight into the problems that you encounter in navigation design as well as possible solutions to those problems. The way Designing Web Navigation is structured makes it usable not only as a book you read from cover to cover, but also as a reference to keep handy for the next time a tricky navigation problem shows up. It can also give you arguments to use in discussions with clients or other team members when there is something that doesn't feel quite right about the solution somebody is suggesting but you can't put it into words. In fact, it may also make you look at the problem from a different angle and realise that maybe your solution isn't the best one. The author starts the first part of the book by explaining the foundations of Web navigation. Those foundations include why we even need navigation in the first place, how we use Web browsers to interact with websites, the most common types of navigation on the Web, and how we can label navigation to make it easy to understand. The second part of the book is called "A Framework for Navigation Design", and is focused on providing you with a systematic approach to designing Web navigation. It does that by describing a number of phases that you will often move through while turning a concept into a working navigation system. In the third and final part, James Kalbach takes a closer look at navigation in special contexts, such as before and after searching, in social tagging systems, and how Web applications can be navigated. Throughout the book there are many references to accessibility and internationalisation issues that can be caused by some types of navigation. It's great to see that those two very important aspects of Web navigation aren't overlooked here as they are in many other places. Overall this is a great book that I enjoyed reading. The examples and references are current and credible. One area that has room for improvement is the layout and typography, which I think could be more usable. Line-length is a bit too long for the book to be a really comfortable read, and page numbers are smaller than the text on websites designed by ad agency art directors. But don't let that discourage you from picking up a copy of this book. My impression is that there is a lot of research behind this book, and I think all web designers and front-end developers can learn something from it. Designing Web Navigation Author: James Kalbach ISBN-10: 0596528108 ISBN-13: 978-0596528102 Visit site to read or post comments…Add 456 Berea Street to your Technorati favorites.Posted in Reviews, Usability.
Publication date: 2008-03-20 more

Browser Plugin Allows PayPal Payments at Any Site

Publication date: 2008-06-06 more

Tiffany loses legal fight against eBay over counterfeit goods

Publication date: 2008-07-15 more

Book Review: Anathem

I have a sneaking suspicion that hanging out on Twitter is causing my attention span to grow shorter and shorter and … wait, what was I talking about? Oh, short attention span, right. So as penance for all that microblogging, I decided to set myself a thick book to read. I chose Neal Stephenson’s Anathem. I’ve [...]
Publication date: 2009-03-03 more

Top Australian Seller NARU, Reacts to eBay Feedback Changes

Publication date: 2008-05-23 more

My 2008 predictions

Danny Sullivan had a big day today. He announced that he’s moving back to California from England this year, and he bought a Mac yesterday. I’m not sure which surprises me more, but it’s probably the Mac thing. I really thought Danny would be the last search/SEO person converted from a PC to a Mac. [...]
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Internet Explorer 8 announced, passes the Acid2 test

A couple of weeks ago, after a long time of silence on what will come after Internet Explorer 7, it was revealed on the IEBlog that the next version of Microsoft's web browser will be Internet Explorer 8. The name isn't too much of a surprise I'd say, but it's good to find out that the IE team still exists and are still working on IE. But a couple of days ago much more significant news came from the same source: internal builds of IE 8 now pass the Acid2 test. The significance of the Acid2 test may not be obvious to everyone, but in practice this means that IE 8 will support display:table and generated content, among other things. I know that I sometimes complain about IE. I also think I have the right to do so, since over the years I have spent countless hours working around bugs in IE. But I think this is great news. Fantastic. Beyond what I had hoped. Thanks for continuing to work on improving standards support in IE. I hope you can deliver something that is at least as good as the competition with IE 8. Now where's the Mac version? IE is the only major browser that is only available on a single platform. If Apple, Mozilla, and Opera can all make their web browsers available on multiple platforms, why can't (or won't) Microsoft? Or should we be happy that it is only available for Windows? Perhaps if IE was available for multiple platforms we would be seeing more sites that tell us that we have to install IE before they will let us in? I know a lot of developers who are locked into using only Microsoft technology would love that.Visit site to read or post comments…Add 456 Berea Street to your Technorati favorites.Posted in Browsers, Web Standards.
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

EBay denies PayPal-only plan for U.S.

Publication date: 2008-06-09 more

Overstock.com Adds PayPal Pay Later

Publication date: 2008-06-26 more

Could Twitter become the next PayPal?

Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

Amazon announces Changes to Marketplace order numbers

Publication date: 2008-03-24 more

eBay revenues defy worldwide army of bitter users

Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

PayPal Clarifies Language in New Policy Update

Publication date: 2008-06-18 more

Why eBay tried to screw Aussie users

Publication date: 2008-07-08 more

Nilaam Launches Pakistan's Very Own eBay

Publication date: 2008-03-22 more

Minimise file size with the YUI Compressor TextMate Bundle

It
Publication date: 2010-08-26 more

IronPlanet partners with Agco to sell equipment in online auctions

Publication date: 2008-06-03 more

A short note about real-time search

This is just a quick blog post to share some info about Google’s real-time search based on the earthquake that shook the Bay Area this morning. I didn’t feel the earthquake myself, but the real-time folks looked at how we did. Here’s what they found: Overall, realtime search triggered in under two minutes from the earthquake [...]
Publication date: 2010-01-08 more

Twitter added nofollow to

Yesterday John Battelle emailed me to ask about Rae’s post. This will be a little inside baseball to some people who don’t live and breathe search and Twitter, but I figured I’d take what I emailed to John, add some pictures, and post it here. Here’s the email: Sorry for the delay in replying; I’m really [...]
Publication date: 2008-09-06 more

Where to find me, first half of 2009

Here’s the speaking/travel that I’m expecting to do in early 2009: January 17-22, 2009: My wife and I journeyed to Washington D.C. to see the Presidential inauguration. It was very cold. February 4-7, 2009: I just attended the TED conference down in Long Beach. It was pretty amazing. I got to pick Bill Gates’ brain on his [...]
Publication date: 2009-02-10 more

Reverse chronological order comments

Maybe I
Publication date: 2010-03-12 more

eBay Live Chicago 2008 Marketing Keynote Speakers Jay Berkowitz, Seth Godin, Jeffrey Gitomer

Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

How to Unlock the Amazing Secret of Unlimited Productivity

All of us could use some help increasing our productivity. So I’m going to share one of my best productivity secrets. This secret can literally CHANGE YOUR LIFE!!! Are you ready? Step 1. Buy a productivity book. Any productivity book will do. I use a book called “The Now Habit.” It doesn’t matter what book you order [...]
Publication date: 2009-09-17 more

eBay.com.au - Upcoming Feedback Changes ? Scheduled for 12 May

Publication date: 2008-05-13 more

eBay - International Site Visibility Listing Upgrade

Publication date: 2008-05-22 more

Internet Explorer market share now below 60 percent

It
Publication date: 2010-05-18 more

eBay: Expand Your Business Overseas! Add the International Site Visibility Listing Upgrade for 5

Publication date: 2008-07-02 more

Stupid Digg + a kitten

Sorry that the blog was down for a few hours. Yesterday I did a throwaway post that somehow ended up getting 3800+ diggs or so. I didn’t have WP-Cache or Supercache turned on, so my blog melted to a little puddle of fail. “Matt, you idiot! How you could run a modern WordPress blog [...]
Publication date: 2008-10-11 more

Gesture-based VoiceOver on the iPhone and iPod touch

When Apple announced the iPhone almost three years ago, I posted some thoughts about the lack of a real physical keypad and how that would make it difficult to make the iPhone accessible to people who are visually impaired. One of the ideas I had was to somehow give the user audio feedback. Well, Apple fortunately did a lot better than that
Publication date: 2009-10-07 more

Write to a Google Spreadsheet from a Python script

Suppose you want to write to a Google Spreadsheet from a Python script. Here’s an example spreadsheet that you might want to update from a script: I did some searching and found this page, which quickly led me to the Python Developer’s Guide for the Google Spreadsheet API. There’s a simple “Getting started with Gdata and Python” [...]
Publication date: 2009-02-11 more

Selling Domain Names on eBay

Publication date: 2008-05-12 more

National Auctioneers Day - Saturday, April 19, 2008

Publication date: 2008-05-07 more

Authentic Jobs refreshed

Job listing site Authentic Jobs has been redesigned, realigned, retooled and relaunched.Read full postPosted in Job openings.
Publication date: 2009-11-04 more

Arrrrr you prepared for Talk Like a Pirate Day with pirate fonts?

Are you ready for Talk Like a Pirate Day? It’s September 19th (same date every year), so it’s coming up fast. I recently stumbled across some really nice pirate fonts online. This one is called Windlass, for example: Hat-tip to KPAO! which is a fun blog. Every time I start looking at fonts, I always surface 3-4 [...]
Publication date: 2008-09-08 more

IE 8 still does not resize text sized in pixels

As most accessibility and usability aware web professionals know, Internet Explorer does not by default allow the user to increase the size of text whose size has been specified in CSS pixels. Some believe that is in fact the correct behaviour, while others (me included) think IE should do what all other browsers do
Publication date: 2009-02-24 more

Installing Android development environment on Ubuntu 9.04

I wanted to play with writing Android apps on my home Linux computer, which is currently running Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope). These are mostly notes for myself, so don’t feel guilty if you skip this post. - Make sure your system is up-to-date: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade - Install Java sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk - [...]
Publication date: 2010-01-31 more

Infopia Launches Newest Version of its eCommerce Platform

Publication date: 2008-04-24 more

9 tips for the Google Mobile App for iPhone

Here are some tips to help you get the most out of Google’s new Mobile Application for the iPhone. To get Google Mobile App on your iPhone, go to the App Store and search for “Google Mobile App,” or click on this link to install from a computer. If you have an older version of Google [...]
Publication date: 2008-11-19 more

Behavior Launches New Design for Red Roller's Easy-to-Use One-Stop Web-Based Shipping Service

Publication date: 2008-07-24 more

Learn More about the Canonical Link Element

A week or so ago I did a post about the canonical link tag, including a pointer to a 3-4 minute video about the tag. If you enjoyed that video but wanted to learn more, last week I sat down and recreated the presentation that I did at SMX West. You can watch the “director’s cut” [...]
Publication date: 2009-02-25 more

Jeremy leaves Yahoo!

Jeremy Zawodny is leaving Yahoo!. That’s pretty huge news. Wihle Jeremy and I have playfully jousted in the past, I have nothing but respect for Jeremy — to the point where we joked for April Fool’s Day a couple years ago about switching blogs. I’ve enjoyed being on search panels with him before, and he’s been [...]
Publication date: 2008-06-13 more

Auctions on eBay: A Dying Breed

Publication date: 2008-06-03 more

39 Android Apps that I love

Here are the Android Apps that I currently love. It’s not a complete list, but it’s a pretty good start. Music and sound apps Subsonic: stream music from your home computer to your phone Listen: save and play podcasts like This Week in Google Tuner – gStrings: a great guitar tuner Pandora Radio: stream customized music based on artists you [...]
Publication date: 2010-05-03 more

Andy Sernovitz Advises eBay Sellers on Word of Mouth Marketing

Publication date: 2008-07-07 more

Doctype switching for IE 8

So. A few weeks have passed since the version targeting Microsoft will introduce in IE 8 was made official and I posted my initial thoughts in Standards mode is the new quirks mode. I've had time to read many articles and hundreds of comments that discuss version targeting, and have thought some more about what it means and what I think about it. After that thinking, my initial reaction holds: I don't buy it. It doesn't matter how many arguments in favour of version targeting I read, it still seems so utterly and completely wrong that standards aware web developers will have to opt in to opt out. I think version targeting as it has been presented is an incredibly bad idea to force upon the minority of people in the web industry who have a clue and work hard to stay updated. If the switch was reversed, i.e. you'd have to insert the meta element if you wanted IE 7 rendering, it would make a lot more sense to me. If your site breaks in IE 8 and you can't or won't fix it, just insert a meta element and the problem is gone. The argument against reversing the switch is that the clueless are too clueless to ever find out that there is an easy way for them to force IE back to IE 7 rendering. That may be true, but why should we let people who refuse to keep their skills updated get away with it? Make doctype switching stricter An idea that makes much more sense than forcing standards aware developers to opt in to opt out was put forward in WaSP Round Table: IE8's Default Version Targeting Behavior. The idea is to keep using the doctype to switch modes, but require a strict doctype with a full URL for standards mode. I like that. I don't have any statistics to back it up, but my gut feeling is that most of the sites that accidentally trigger standards mode today (and would be most likely to break in IE 8) have either a transitional doctype or an XHTML 1.1 doctype. So unless there are statistics that prove that theory wrong, why not simply let the absence of a strict doctype (HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0) be what makes IE 8 pretend it's IE 7? I believe that many of the people who argue against the version targeting switch would say "Yeah, that seems like a good idea, let's do that." I know I would. Realistically though, I doubt it matters what you or I think or say. In the end we'll all have to do whatever Microsoft tells us to do. Either that or keep pulling our hair out while dealing with CSS and DOM bugs in IE 7 forever.Visit site to read or post comments…Add 456 Berea Street to your Technorati favorites.Posted in Browsers, Web Standards.
Publication date: 2008-03-14 more

Ben Gomes on Google

This summer several people in Google’s quality group have pulled back the curtain on how people think about search quality at Google. We’ve had Udi Manber give an overview of search quality and the groups that work on it. Then my office-mate Amit Singhal discussed some of our principles of core ranking. Amit followed that [...]
Publication date: 2008-08-02 more

eBay.com Listings Up 23 Percent, Says Citigroup

Publication date: 2008-04-26 more

ACCC Says eBay PayPal Requirement Not a Concern

Publication date: 2008-07-09 more

eBay: New Flexibility to Edit Shipping Details for Multi-Quantity Items

Publication date: 2008-06-16 more

RedRoller Appoints New CEO

Publication date: 2008-03-24 more

Expect Caffeine after the holidays

Back in August we mentioned a developer preview of Caffeine, which is new technology that improves our indexing infrastructure. The feedback on Caffeine has been very positive, so we’re ready to move from the developer preview to the next stage of the roll out: going live with Caffeine at one data center. This means that [...]
Publication date: 2009-11-10 more

Firefox Myibay eBay Bid Sniper

Publication date: 2008-04-28 more

eBay.co.uk - New Requirements for business sellers from 1st May

Publication date: 2008-04-16 more

PayPal mandatory, says eBay Australia

Publication date: 2008-04-11 more

Specify a text colour for img elements

When an image specified with an img element is missing from a web page, some browsers display the alt text instead. Why not all browsers do that is a separate topic which I talk a bit about in Safari, WebKit and alt text for missing images. I think most people will agree that it is a good thing for web browsers to display the contents of an image
Publication date: 2010-02-11 more

My Halloween 2008 Costume: Rick Astley

digg_url = 'http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/my-halloween-2008-costume/'; For Halloween this year, I decided to be Rick Astley. With a little bit of hair spray, spray-on hair color, and some make-up for a widow’s peak, it looks like this: What fun. To make the costume complete, I took my Android G1 phone and bought a copy of Never Gonna Give You [...]
Publication date: 2008-11-01 more

More on Selling Book Lots on EBay

Publication date: 2008-04-13 more

eBay to ban email communications from August

Publication date: 2008-07-14 more

A real shopping experience beats eBay anyday

Publication date: 2008-07-02 more

PayPal Canada Appoints Country Manager

Publication date: 2008-07-29 more

Overstock joins Amazon in suing N.Y. over online taxes

Publication date: 2008-06-04 more

Vendio Lifts the Veil on eBay Competitor Strategy

Publication date: 2008-05-23 more

Bad Experience with U.S. Airways Dividend Miles

I’ve been having an ongoing bad experience with U.S. Airways over their Dividend Miles. I’d accumulated about 15,000 miles with them and the miles were about to expire. I didn’t have any trips coming up, so I looked for a way to redeem those frequent flyer miles before they expired. U.S. Airways provided a way [...]
Publication date: 2009-09-14 more

ebay.co.uk: Sell more for less ? Insertion fees are 5p on 3rd April

Publication date: 2008-04-03 more

ECO International Acquires eBay Drop-off Store turned Liquidator

Publication date: 2008-07-21 more

XHTML Media Types Working Group Note updated

The W3C Working Group Note XHTML Media Types - Second Edition contains updated guidelines for the use of different media types with XHTML documents
Publication date: 2010-01-30 more

Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro

I’m leaving Tuesday to try to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. If you want to show your support, please donate at charity:water. Anyone who wants to give is welcome. Mt. Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in Africa, at 19,340 feet (5895 meters). It’s hard to climb Kilimanjaro, mainly because of the altitude. I’ll be completely without [...]
Publication date: 2010-08-02 more

EBay Motors Launches Site Devoted to Certified Vehicles

Publication date: 2008-06-13 more

Hidden Google Gem: Google Mobile App

We recently recorded a video of one of my favorite “hidden gems” at Google: the Google Mobile App, which does voice recognition to make searches easier on a mobile phone. It’s available for the iPhone, Android phones, BlackBerry, Nokia S60, and Windows Mobile. In the video below, I ran the Google Mobile App through its [...]
Publication date: 2009-09-12 more

eBay Motors ?Need for Speed? Insertion Fee Sale: 20 Cents in Certain Categories Through June 26th

Publication date: 2008-06-26 more

Traveling => Light posting

I’m not-in-California for a few days, so expect light posting. If you want to try to guess where I’m visiting, I may start posting “Where is Matt?” hints on my Twitter stream for people that want to play along. While I’m gone, enjoy the Android coverage. Even though I love my iPhone, I think lots of [...]
Publication date: 2008-09-25 more

Peel Out! Shipping Label Sheets ? for Paypal

Publication date: 2008-07-16 more

How to spot a fake on eBay

Publication date: 2008-07-03 more

Will eBay Go Shopping?

Publication date: 2008-06-05 more

Add Pizzazz to Your eBay Photos with Bling It Software

Publication date: 2008-06-02 more

A New Card Swipe Device Could Move PayPal Closer to POS Payments

Publication date: 2008-06-20 more

Alibaba plans to launch B2B computer

Publication date: 2008-05-13 more

Write HTML and CSS quicker with with Zen Coding

A pretty neat plugin for TextMate (and a few other text editors) that I have started using is Zen Coding. I
Publication date: 2009-09-22 more

eBay?s New and Improved Checkout

Publication date: 2008-03-16 more

Experts: Tiffany Case Loss Could Alter EBay's Business Model

Publication date: 2008-03-22 more

Seller Circle Launches Social Networking Site for eBay Sellers

Publication date: 2008-03-22 more