Alan Lewis

eBay Desktop 1.0 is out. Whew.

I just pushed the 1.0 version of eBay Desktop live. You really should go get it. It is free, and it is the coolest thing since, well, ebay.com. And as if that weren't enough, I've started a new blog (because, you know, I'm so good at keeping my own blog up to date) over at http://desktop.ebay.com/blog. Subscribe to that in order to keep up to date with eBay Desktop related stuff. I promise to keep it to a minimum here from now on. Maybe.

I have been working on this along with my peeps at Effective UI since July of 2006, making this by far the longest project I've ever worked on.

FYI - I find my IT setup right now quite ridiculous. I'm in a hotel in San Francisco for the night so that I don't have to commute up at rush hour to get to the Adobe Engage event where I'm speaking. In order to push the files live to the server I'm connected over VPN to the eBay network, then I have to remote desktop into a server that is physically located within the eBay network and then from that server I connect to the file server in order to push the release live. All to send some 1s and 0s around.

-Alan

eBay Desktop Public Beta Now Available

The project formerly known as "San Dimas" is now available in public beta: eBay Desktop launches in public beta today. Anyone can download eBay Desktop for free.

eBay Desktop is, well, eBay on your desktop. You can use eBay Desktop instead of the website to search, browse, bid, watch items, read and write messages -- most everything that you use the eBay website for to buy stuff. eBay Desktop also goes beyond the web experience through features like desktop alerts (for when items are ending or when you get outbid) and favorite search feeds, which let you spot when items are listed that match one of your searches.

We've made a number of improvements since the private beta (besides changing the name, of course). The number one piece of feedback from users was "make it more about me." We took this to heart and have completely revamped the home screen to put more information about your eBay activity up front. We've made significant performance and memory-usage improvements, and more will be coming soon. The alerts feature now works even when the application window is closed -- eBay Desktop will optionally keep running in the background so that you can get notified when you are outbid.

Remember when it used to be possible to browse on eBay? Well we wanted to leverage the power of the desktop to make browsing on eBay workable again. On the home screen you can drill-down into the categories, all without refreshing.

My favorite new feature is search feeds. eBay has offered favorite searches for a long time, but unless you enjoy getting emails containing your favorite searches, they have been of limited use. Now in eBay Desktop you can access your existing favorite searches or create new ones, and view those lists of items as "feeds" just like you would in an RSS reader. In this view you can see if an item is new, and you can delete items that you aren't interested in.

Download eBay Desktop, and let me know what you think. Feel free to contact me directly (see link in the sidebar) and the application has a built in feature request and bug report widget.

eBay's San Dimas Project - Big in France

I've been very pleased by the positive reaction to San Dimas. We have beta testers from all over the world -- the US leads the way in terms of number of beta testers, no surprise there. However, I was surprised to find out that the number 2 country is... France! This is despite both Germany and the UK having bigger eBay usage. Also, there is no translated version of the interface yet, and we have done zero press about San Dimas in France up until now.

As if it weren't enough to be number 2 in beta testers, French bloggers and media have written up a storm about it. Here are some of the stories:

Nouvelle version d'eBay en préparation

This was the first French article, and was published back in April. After this was published we saw a big spike in beta user registrations from .fr email addresses.

Premiers pas dans le projet San Dimas - AccessOweb, le blog

What appears to be an in-depth review of the San Dimas features. I say "appears to be" because I can't actually be sure, since I was an abject failure in learning French, this despite my four years of French class in junior high and high school.

One of the commenters on the blog post says this:

"Pour en revenir au graphisme, moi je le trouve au contraire très bien foutu : plus classe que du html avec de légers dégradés, et surtout un écran pas surchargé du tout où l'on pourrait se perdre, comme sur la homepage d'ebay. On ne peut pas non plus le constater sur des screenshots mais la navigation est très agréable également. Bref joli test pour une jolie application !"

Which Google translates into this:

"To return from there to graphics, me I find it very well on the contrary foutu: more class that HTML with light ranges, and especially a screen not overloaded of the whole where one could lose oneself, as on the homepage of ebay. One cannot either note it on screenshots but navigation is very pleasant also. In short pretty test for a pretty application!"

Umm... thanks?

Application riche #13 : eBay San Dimas - Fabien Deshayes - Du client riche à un Internet riche

Another in-depth review, I think. My favorite quote is the following:

"La grande force de San Dimas est à mon avis cette navigation complètement nouvelle qui casse les codes d'une page web, ou même d'une application de bureau plus classique : fini les pop-up, les rechargement : ici tout se fait par onglets ou par panneaux, profitant à merveille des technologies Flex et Air pour donner un style à part entière à San Dimas."

Which translates as:

"The great force of San Dimas is in my opinion this navigation completely new which breaks the codes of a Web page, or even of an application of more traditional office: finished the popones, recharging: here all is done by mitres or panels, benefitting wonder from technologies Flex and Air to give a style to whole share in San Dimas."

I'm calling pop-ups "popones" from now on.

Que sont les applications riches (RIA) ? - Partie 3 - Quel futur pour l'Internet riche ?

There is a small San Dimas mention in this article, which is a three part magnum opus on Rich Internet Applications. (3 part blog post! Take that, Twitter!).

What I like about this one is that it refers to San Dimas as "projet San Dimas d'eBay".

Premiers regards Vidéo : Project San Dimas : Ebay en Apollo

I've saved the best for last. Somebody made a 17 minute (17!) video of a San Dimas walkthrough. In French. I have no idea what the narrator is saying. Can anyone help translate this?

Bravo, French San Dimasers, Bravo

San Dimas Beta Invitations Going Out... Now!

I'm pleased to announce that the beta program for the eBay "San Dimas" project has begun! If you signed up for eBay San Dimas in the first couple days after we opened sign-ups (in April), you should have an invitation sitting in your inbox. I'm also knee-deep trying to figure out how to get invitations out to everyone who was at eBay DevCon - I know that there are some users who have got them and some who have, but it is a manual task that I haven't yet figured out how to automate. Poor me :-) Here is a screenshot of the build we are sending out:

I got to show San Dimas in the keynote on Monday, and thankfully it went off without a hitch. Doing live demos on real production data with a beta product running on a beta platform is a recipe for disaster, but I wanted to risk it and show everyone the product. Thanks to everyone for the compliments, and thank you to everyone who came to my "Desktop 2.0" session later on. Also thank you to the beta users (including beta user number 1 -- you know who you are) who have sent in lots of great suggestions (and plenty of bug reports) already. We are working hard on fixing the highest priority bugs, and will push out a new build by the end of the week.

One of the points I made in my session, and that I want to re-emphasize here, is that I would love for San Dimas to become a platform that third-party developers can "plug-in" to. I'll stress that this may not happen - and if it does it is a long way off. Having said that, I had great conversations with developers in Boston about things that they would like to do with an eBay desktop application, if they had the ability to extend it or integrate with it.

We are busy enough working on the first version of the product, so we haven't sat down to think through what we need in the technology for allowing third parties to extend San Dimas, but now is the right time to talk to developers, so that anything we do allows developers to create things they have told us would be useful, not just what we think they should do with it. I want to continue that conversation on this blog and elsewhere. During the day 3 keynote, Pierre said that third party developers are a crucial engine of innovation, and I agree with him 100%.

So, developers, if San Dimas were a platform, what would you do with it?

Want to Be the First to Try San Dimas?

I'm auctioning off the first San Dimas beta invitation. Whoever wins the auction will get their invitation at least 6 hours before everyone else. All of the auction proceeds will go to charity, so you really should bid on it. Also, while you are at it, do me a favor and spread this eBay togo widget far and wide, k? (click the "Copy this widget" link on the bottom and follow the instructions)

The team is working hard on the San Dimas beta - we are feature-complete, and are in bug-fixing and tweaking mode. I can't tell when we plan to start sending out invitations, but I will say that there is a dependency on something that I'm not allowed to talk about. And whenever that dependency is cleared up and that other thing is finished it will be just about the right time to start the limited beta. Is that all clear now?

Slides from my Desktop 2.0 talk at Web 2.0

Here is the presentation from my talk at Web 2.0: "The Future of the Desktop". I hope to blog about the material I pulled together for the talk, but it can be summed up as: web services enable rich desktop applications, users like desktop apps, and there is life beyond the browser. The Q & A session was really great, and unfortunately the awesome questions aren't captured in the slides. Thanks to everyone who attended!

I don't know what to think of the whole conference. Moscone sucks - way too big to have a community feel. The show floor was interesting, and some of the vendors like Effective UI and Bungee Labs seemed to really get good value from it, which is great for them. Kevin Lynch's demo was awesome - I love the rapid fire demo style that he has, and it was awesome to see San Dimas demoed in front of such a large audience.

I won't say who it was, but lots of people were peeved at one of the keynote presentations from the CEO of a large Internet company who basically gave a 15 minute vendor pitch. Of course many of the sessions were nothing but vendor pitches. I tried to keep that to a minimum in my talk, and I hope that folks got some useful information out of it that wasn't eBay-specific. There was great buzz about Rolf's "Web 2.0++" talk (my co-worker) (Birdz, OMG!). 500 slides in 45 minutes, and none of it was a vendor pitch. You have to see this talk... and you can at the eBay Developers Conference in Boston - June 11th - 13th! Hey, I know its a pitch, but everyone is doing it...

Apollo Alpha is Out - See How eBay is Using it at Web 2.0 Expo

The Apollo Alpha is finally out. Ryan Stewart, Techcrunch, Read/Write Web, and a host of others all have coverage. (Ever wonder how the press gets such scoops so quickly? Well, they all get briefed days ahead of time, and were all under embargo -- in this case all agreed to not publish anything until 9:01 PM on Sunday night.)

My new boss, Max Mancini, got a quote in the press release, and Adobe has been very gracious in helping us promote "San Dimas" -- the application we are building on Apollo. We are planning an announcement about San Dimas at Web 2.0 Expo next month, so stay tuned!

Desktop Apps I Use the Most

As I start to think more and more about Rich Internet Desktop Apps, I thought it would be useful to take an honest look at what desktop apps I use the most. Since my work computer is a Windows box, I can refer to my Start menu for a (relatively) accurate view of what apps I run the most: 

1. Firefox: People forget that web browsers are desktop applications -- and they are very successful desktop apps at that.
2. Outlook: I've been running Outlook 2007 for a few months now, and I'm really happy with it. Ever since Outlook got syncing right I've been a happy Outlook user
3. iTunes: The windows version of iTunes is slow and buggy, but I am still a happy, locked-in iPod/iTunes user. I hold it up as at the best example of a "Desktop 2.0" application, only because there isn't anything out there that is better right now
4. San Dimas: Already blogged about that one -- don't have anything more to say right now :-)
5. Skype: I've had an account for years, and right after eBay bought them everyone switched over to it as our primary IM system. I use the voice capabilities only occasionally, but it is really convenient to be able to switch over from IMing to voice seemlessly.
6. FeedDemon: My only feed reader. Absolutely love it -- I just wish it would cache images offline. Reading Gizmodo just isn't the same without the pictures. Goodbye MyYahoo!
7. Windows Live Writer: My blog writer -- what I'm using to write this post.
8. SnagIt: I used to use Hypersnap as my image capture tool, but I've slowly transitioned over to SnagIt. A very useful tool.

Other apps that I run on a regular basis include Excel, Powerpoint (love the new version), Flex Builder (Flex and Apollo development), Picasa, Flickr Uploader, Textpad (best Windows text editor) and Calculator. I also run Command Prompt lots -- I grew up on DOS, and I drop to the command line to run most developer type tools like Subversion.

More interesting is looking at what apps I don't run. I hardly ever run Word any more. Like other eBayers I tend to write anything documentish as an email, even if I just end up sending it to myself. I don't run any IM clients except for Skype any more -- I've started to use Meebo to communicate with those on other systems. And last, I've uninstalled all widget engines from my system, including Yahoo's and Google's, because I didn't find more useful than distracting. The only mini-app that I use on a regular enough basis is Calculator, and I get my information fix from my full-blown feed reader.

So, what's on your Start menu?

San Dimas Gets Techcrunched

Project San Dimas got a nice mention on Techcrunch this morning in an article on Apollo. More basics on the project are available here.

Introducing Project San Dimas

Update 4/18/07 - The San Dimas beta program is now open. Sign up today -- we'll start sending out invitations soon.

While I haven't been blogging very much recently, I have been very busy. And now I can talk about my pet project: "San Dimas" -- an eBay Desktop prototype. We showed the prototype at the Adobe MAX show last week, and the response from the show attendees was fantastic. Read more about the show on the eBay developer blog.

I will be posting more here soon. For now I will say this:

• This is just a prototype... for now
• Adobe is building an eBay code library, which was used by San Dimas, which will be up on their labs site in a few weeks
• The prototype shows what is possible using eBay Web Services -- any developer could build an eBay experience like this one
• It is built on the Adobe Apollo platform
• Effective UI, a fantastic design/development firm, worked with me to build it