Disqus - Latest Comments for Alan Lewis

Re: Fun Finds

Alan Lewis — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 21:07:46 -0000

Thanks for the Chris Anderson talk link. It was a great talk, and the book is good too.

Alan Lewis

eBay Technical Evangelist

Re: KFC Guitar Hero 4 Meal Deal is a Marketing Winner

Alan Lewis — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 23:58:30 -0000

You shameless Google traffic whore :-). Now you are the number 2 and 3 links. Does KFC have an affiliate program you are taking advantage of or something?

Re: eBay stores offers RSS

Alan Lewis — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 11:24:46 -0000

Regarding the feed error:

The feed link is bad in Scoble's post. Here is what it should be: http://rss.api.ebay.com/ws/rssapi?FeedName=Stor...

Re: eBay stores offers RSS

Alan Lewis — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 12:50:32 -0000

Robert just fixed the link in the post for me. Thanks!

Re: Brrreeeport crazy and more search engine lies

Alan Lewis — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 11:22:55 -0000

A normal google.com search claims 22,300 results, but the actual number is 364. If you go to page 37 (as of 8:20am PST) you'll see this:

"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 364 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."

When you run with the omitted results included, you'll see that most of the omitted results show exactly the same content -- its only the URL that is slightly different. Maybe if G and the other search engines would show actual search result numbers instead of clearly misleading ones I wouldn't have to suffer through yet another obnoxious news report where the reporter says something like "Google found 14 gazillion hits for 'xyz'" when I know that is just fiction.

Re: Adobe ships Apollo public alpha

Alan Lewis — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 10:56:59 -0000

I'm the product manager of the eBay Apollo product (code named San Dimas). Of course I'm very excited that Apollo is released and I can finally talk publicly about it.

"All I can say is my jaw hit the floor after watching the eBay demo of it" - thanks, Sam!

"I think Apollo is smart and a pretty platform but we are unlikely to switch from the internet to it because it is a single vendor platform and we are not going to make that kind of mistake again. We only use open standards and platforms now, competition is essential for us." - That is a valid criticism, but I am encouraged with Adobe's recent moved to standardize PDF and offer their actionscript VM as open source.

"Does anyone know the learning curve for this stuff, how much longer does it take to create applications using this platform?" - Carolus, speaking as someone who in the past had tried to learn Flash 3 different times, I can say that it was very easy for me to pick up.

"Hmm… Sounds like Java. As the applets never quite succeeded, Adobe is now trying their approach." - It absolutely is like Java, only with a focus on the desktop, and only the desktop. I'm a Java guy at heart, and I can say that they have learned from Java's mistakes, for example the install process for apps is very smooth.

Cheers,
Alan

Re: Project San Dimas: New eBay Beta Interface

Alan Lewis — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 19:14:24 -0000

Hi,

I can clarify a few things about Project San Dimas.

1. This is not a project that has anything to do with the eBay website - there are multiple projects underway that we hope will improve the website usability, including the new site header that rolled out a few weeks ago (in the US). It does of course provide a different user interface from the website, on purpose. It is all about having more options than just the site.

2. It is a desktop application, and it will run on the Mac too, not just Windows. I'm both a Mac and Windows user myself, and we want to support as many users as possible with this project.

3. We just last week start beta signups for the projects: you can sign up today (its quite painless, promise) at www.projectsandimas.com

4. We plan to have international support including the UK site soon after the launch (English speaking sites are easier to support for obvious reasons). For now we just have one beta program for all sites -- so even if you use eBay UK or another eBay site you should sign up for the current beta program.