A major earthquake struck the Caribbean island of Haiti on Tuesday 12 Jan, and measured 7.0 on the Richter scale.  This was significantly less than the 7.9 ‘quake that triggered the Boxing Day 2004 Asian Tsunami, yet TV pictures show significant on-shore damage and a country desperately needing help.
In a race to launch assistance gathering [...]

The official PayPal blog has announced that the 2009 PayPal Developer’s Conference will take place in San Jose from June 16th to 18th this year.  In what may be a cost-cutting exercise, the conference will take place at eBay’s North Campus.
The annual eBay and PayPal Developer Conferences are normally part of the preliminaries for eBay [...]

Following on from eBay’s recent courtship of Top Sellers at Long Beach reported by Ina at AuctionBytes, I’ve been told that the Asia-Pacific team are to similarly smooch their top sellers in Northern Thailand.

Guess what?  Our own Gaz has been invited and he’s had a face like the Cheshire Cat since he found out on [...]

eBay users in Australia have pushed eBay into offering services to assist with fundraising to help victims of the Victoria State bushfires that have left many dead, and many more homeless.  They have also leapt to the aid of the victims of the floods in the State of Queensland that have had similar consequences.
eBay AU [...]

Britain’s Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) have announced the date, location, content, and theme of their 2009 conference.
The theme is to be “Firing up the British Economy” and the location is at Celtic Manor in the Usk Valley near Newport, South Wales.  Dell, Visa, the Co-Operative Bank, British Gas and the Health and Safety Executive [...]

Just a quick reminder that the chance to save $100 off the price of tickets for the Channel Advisor Catalyst 2009 conference expires on January 15th.
This year, the focus is on developing a consumer-driven, multi-channel sales strategy that is tailored to your business and puts your products where shoppers are.
Some other benefits you’ll [...]

I’ve just had a phone call from Gaz, who’s just had a phone call from an outside contractor working for “eBay Thailand” and it seems the Thai and Singapore offices are to roll a series of roadshows around Thailand in early December.
Dates mentioned were 1st – 10th December, and include getting up into [...]

Overall, the announcements were disappointing – heavy on fluff and fog, and even for eBay, unusually light on substance and fixed dates. It has done nothing to remove my belief they have a management crisis underway – too many partial pull backs from unwanted policies, and no definitive action to restore sellers’ confidence in the channel.

As I write this, the keynotes speeches are due to start in 15 minutes time, so it’ll be a rushed post, and if there are any typos I’ll tidy them later.
Jamie Iannone, Vice President of Global Search, on the day that the UK had the new Best Match search dumped on them (yesterday), revealed more [...]

eBay Live 2008 kicks off today – that’s the main buyer & seller event as opposed to the developers conference which was held earlier in the week. As the attendees begin assembling and attending eve of event parties, I thought it would be useful to look at some of the announcements from last year’s event and see how many promises were fulfilled or broken.

eBay have released the page links for their online broadcasts of the eBay Live Key Note Speeches and the ensuing Town Hall conference.

Being able to access these important management to member interactions without attending the event is becoming more crucial for eBay sellers with each passing year.

It’s about that time again.  For the last five years, eBay US has announced the competition for Best of Stores during the first 10 days of March.
I’ve not seen an announcement yet this year, but thought I could use the calendar coincidence to remind everyone, that with the arrival of Spring (and the switch of [...]

Now that March is upon us, the winter and skiing holiday seasons are all but finished and a lot of people are going to soon begin thinking about their summer holidays, and a spot in the sun.  It’s an appropriate time to explore some new ideas for product sourcing and sales maximisation / reinvigoration after [...]

It came and went as it does every year, but how many of you remembered to do the traditional ritual on the correct day?
I’m talking about the 12th Day of Christmas and the taking down of the Christmas tree and decorations  gotcha with that one didn’t I? 
As usual in our household, the tree being behind [...]