3/10 pagerank after update and eBay's new w00t clone.

I'm pretty happy with my new pagerank on http://whats-hot-weekly.com. I was coasting along with a pagerank of 0, and after Google's recent update to pagerank, I'm up to a 3. I know most people couldn't care less about my pagerank. I was just surprised at the jump.

In other news, eBay has started a new "idea" called daily deals. They feature a very low priced items each day and sell a limited amount of them. This is like woot.com for those who may be familiar. It's a good idea but like I said, "It's been done." They are promoting it pretty heavily. I'm guessing that means someone in upper management came up with the idea and thinks it'll be the saving grace of eBay.

eBay should have stuck with what worked for them. They are THE auction website on the net. No one else even comes close. However, they are trying to be more like Amazon.com. They are trying to steer away from the "flea market" atmosphere. That's why you see so many "Buy it Now" auctions and classified ads on eBay these days. Now, with the Woot remake they are again trying something new.

Their auction model is what makes them eBay. They should focus on making eBay the best auction site again and create another site if necessary for "buy it now" and classified ads.

At any rate, I wish them luck with the woot concept. If you want to see what it's all about, check out the front page of whats-hot-weekly.com. I added a banner on the page to show the daily deals.

Vintage 1957 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop

Being the guitar nut that I am, I love to look at vintage guitars. I'm also a Les Paul nut, as long as it's a full-fledged Gibson. Of course, vintage Gibson guitars are extremely expensive. If you are lucky you may catch a good deal on vintage guitars at whats-hot-weekly.com. Recently I saw a 1957 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop for around $1600. It hadn't reached its reserve but hey it felt good to see it at that price :)

Tickets Tickets

I'm not sure of the legality behind it all, but eBay is full of tickets. People sell everything on eBay. Apparently scalping has become a lot easier because of it. There are tons of hard-to-find tickets on there and whats-hot-weekly.com makes them easier to locate :)

Zippo Pipe Lighters

I've recently taken up pipe smoking. I quit smoking cigarettes last September. I realized that I still wanted to "smoke" but I don't want to actually inhale. So I just puff on my pipe to relax. Of course, I get a bit of nicotine from it but it really isn't as habit forming.

So I decided I needed a good lighter. Seasoned pipe smokers will tell you that butane lighters burn too hot and aren't good for lighting a pipe. Your best bet is to go with a zippo pipe lighter. These are great for lighting a pipe because they are specially designed with a hole in the side. This allows for easier pipe lighting.

I did a quick search at whats-hot-weekly.com and sure enough, ebay is full of them. I'll probably grab one of the cheap, plain metal zippos. I've lost probably $500 worth of zippos in my life.

What's Hot Weekly Advantages

There are other sites that do close to the same thing that whats-hot-weekly.com does. but those sites are limited. The number one ranked result on google for "most watched on ebay" is ebay pulse. eBay pulse only shows the top ten results. Whats-hot-weekly.com shows the top 100.

Another highly ranked site is watchcount.com. This site doesn't even allow you to drill down into the subcategories. I have a good suspicion why. I worked on the menu system longer than any other part of whats-hot-weekly.com. The menu is XML driven. Categories are updated bi-weekly at present rate. I store the categories in a MySQL database. This allows me to make less calls to the eBay API. It also makes the app a bit faster.

Watchcount.com also only shows the top 20. Again, whats-hot-weekly.com shows the top 100.

I put a lot of effort in creating local web services for the item lookup and category lookup. This allows the app to be fully dynamic. All data is transferred in XML format. I plan to expand on many areas of the app over the next few months.

Great deal number one.

Here is the first great deal I found using my new whats-hot-weekly.com application. I mentioned this on my first post but I thought it would be good to show the actual product I was talking about. This most popular item on ebay is in the Computers and Networking category. The actually eBay category ID is 58058.

These are transparent to the user through the use of the dynamic menu on the left of whats-hot-weekly.com. This menu isn't on the static version of the site yet. However, they can still be used by affixing the category ID to the end of the url.

For instance, to create a static page for the computers and networking category, all one has to do is use this URL:

http://whats-hot-weekly.com/static.php?catID=58058

This is pretty simple. catID is used as a POST variable. The only problem is that the user would have to know the category number. I personally find this by using the firebug extension in Firefox and using it on the main site of whats-hot-weekly.com.

On to the actual subject here, the deal. The deal is a $1 Web Cam. This webcam would be great for Skype and other video conferencing software.

I'll keep an eye out for other great deals, but why wait for me. The tool is free.

What's hot weekly

In case you haven't heard, I just released a great new tool for finding the best deals on eBay. This tool allows you to search by category or keyword. I wrote most of the site in javascript. It is ajax driven, which really just means that the data loads without a page load.

There is also a static version of the site. I wrote this so users could link to specific searches.

There are many uses for this type of site. For instance, you could look for the best deals, which I already stated. You could also look for what everyone is interested in. This could give you a good idea of what items would sell the best on ebay.

I found some great deals using the tool. There is a webcam going for $1 in the computers & networking category. The last I looked it had over 8000 sold.

The app shows the number of watchers, the number of bids, and the current bid price. For "buy it now" auctions, the bid count will be the number of items sold in the auction.

I hope you enjoy, whats-hot-weekly.com. Check back in the future for updates on the development process.