Webware

eBay Motors founder Simon Rothman announced on Monday that he has officially launched a new e-commerce site, Glyde.

According to the press release, Glyde's goal "is to democratize e-commerce." The site was born out of Rothman's desire to make it easier for Web users to buy and sell products online.

But Glyde throws in a twist. The site's marketplace is designed for Web users to sell used goods. They can sell books, CDs, DVDs, and video games.

"The average American household has $3,000 worth of unwanted media collecting dust," Rothman said in a statement. "We built a service that makes buying and selling a used DVD as simple as trading a share of Disney stock. It's the NASDAQ for physical goods."

It's an interesting take on what Glyde is all about. But after using the site for awhile, I would agree that it does make it extremely easy to buy and sell goods.

Glyde lets you search for DVDs, CDs, Games, or books.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Glyde's design is extremely simple. If you decide you want to buy some products, you can flip through the listing of available inventory, pick what you want, and learn more about it by clicking on it without much trouble. Unlike sites like Amazon or eBay, which deliver you to a product's individual page listing, Glyde displays the listing over the search results. When you're done looking at it, simply click the "X" at the top right of the panel and you'll be returned to your spot in the results.

Placed prominently on all product pages is a "Buy Now" button. Users have the option of buying a used copy of the product from a seller or a new copy.

Glyde shows off a product listing.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Glyde's buying process isn't all that unique. It's standard fare. And even though it offers discounted pricing, I just don't think it competes well against Amazon's Marketplace or eBay. Those sites have far more products, competitive pricing, and simpler checkout processes. Unless Glyde can improve upon that, it might have a problem.

But it's Glyde's selling side that will probably appeal most to users. The site makes it incredibly simple to sell products. Users need only to list the product, set a sales price, and wait for someone to buy. Once they do, Glyde sends them a prestamped, preaddressed mailer. Sellers need to insert the item they're selling into the mailer and place it in their mailbox. Once the buyer receives the product, the funds are deposited into the seller's account, less the cost of the mailer and Glyde's fee, which is 10 percent of the sales price.

Even better, those selling products on Glyde can opt for the proceeds to go to the charity of their choice. It's a nice option.

Glyde provides a simple, efficient e-commerce solution. But by taking on giants eBay and Amazon in the used-goods market, it will be difficult for the company to stay relevant and capture significant market share.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

Windows Marketplace for Mobile debuted in October as Microsoft's answer to smartphone app stores. As with Google's Android Market, Windows Mobile 6.5 users could initially only find and purchase apps from the device. Now Microsoft has published an online catalog to mirror its mobile storefront.

As with iPhone's app store in iTunes and BlackBerry's online App World, Windows Marketplace for Mobile site lets you find apps by browsing, searching, or discovering programs from lists of what's most popular or new. App screenshots, ratings, and version details are accessible from product pages. Like BlackBerry's App World, you can pick apps from the online catalog to install via Marketplace for Mobile on your smartphone.

In addition to discovering new applications to download, the online mobile Marketplace has a management window for you to track your download history and tweak your account settings.

Developers will see a separate portal that contains community resources, blog posts, and lists of upcoming events. Although Microsoft has been the tardiest of the major mobile platform developers to implement an app store solution, it's to Microsoft's credit that the company is quickly rounding out its storefront with an online catalog. Now Microsoft just needs to open up the Marketplace to phone owners using older versions of Windows Mobile operating systems.

(Credit: Mozilla)

It's been just under four months since Mozilla launched its pilot program for contributions, a way for users to donate to add-on developers for their time and effort.

The program was launched in tandem with a redesign of Mozilla's add-ons site that gave developers their own profile pages. Many add-on makers were already running donation programs through their own sites, but wanted the option to show up in Mozilla's catalog too.

Already it appears to be working, but on a smaller scale than some developers might have hoped. For the half dozen developers that CNET News talked to, none has made enough from it to, say, quit their day job. While Mozilla would not reveal specifics on which developers are getting the most contributions, it did provide us with the total amount given: around $20,000. An organization spokesperson said that most of that came in September and October.

Of the 500 or so developers who are participating in the program, the average contribution falls somewhere between $5 and $6, with the largest thus far being $150. All have gone through PayPal, which is the sole way to pay through Mozilla's add-on site. PayPal then gets a small fee out of each transaction, something that comes out of the developer's pocket, although this varies based on how much the user gives.

Other ways to make money

Some developers believe Mozilla has gone about the payment problem in reverse. With the current contributions program developers are given the chance to ask for money before the user even downloads the free add-on. So why not give them a way to ask for a contribution after a user has downloaded and installed it?... Read more

At long last, Microsoft is publicly getting its Windows Mobile application storefront under way. On Monday, Microsoft opened the door to submissions from developers in 29 countries. To sweeten the deal and to drum up excitement, Microsoft has also announced the Race to Market Challenge, a contest of superlatives that will end with Redmond doling out four touch-screen Microsoft Surface tables to four winning developers.

All applications, games, and widgets certified in the Windows Marketplace for Mobile before December 31 will be eligible to win one of four categories: most downloaded freeware, most moneymaking app (calculated by the number of downloads times price), the most useful product, and the most playful. Microsoft will determine the last two subjective awards by a panel decision.

The winners' spoils are paltry in terms of quantity and heft when compared to Google's first Android Developer Challenge, which gave 10 teams a $275,000 award, 10 teams a $100,000 check, and each of the top 50 finalists $25,000 as an incentive to program the "best" of the first-ever Android applications.

Indeed, we were hoping to see more lucrative prizes from a company whose mobile operating system long ago lost its gleam to the iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, and now even the Palm Pre. With such a modest purse, it's doubtful that the contest will lure important developers more than the promise of sustained profit and saturating the mobile market on all platforms would. It might attract the smaller fish, whose success could likely be eclipsed by fast-acting bigger players.

Still, for the hopeful winners, odds clearly favor the free and premium applications that are promoted in the app store the longest, and among them, apps already popular on earlier Windows Mobile builds and on other mobile and desktop platforms (Google Mobile App might be one example).

The backdrop to Microsoft's challenge is its submission process, which Microsoft estimates will take 10 business days from start to finish. Developers will be able to chart their apps' progress on a dashboard, and access a report if Microsoft denies the submission for breaching content policies (PDF), prohibitions (PDF), and submission guidelines (PDF).

Microsoft's Windows Marketplace for Mobile application storefront will premier on Windows Mobile phones running the upcoming version 6.5 of the mobile operating system. It will be the distribution nexus for free and premium Windows Mobile applications that is similar in concept--and likely in form--to Apple's iTunes App Store, Google's Android Market, and RIM's BlackBerry App World.

Windows Mobile 6.5 phones are expected to hit shelves in early autumn.

Interested developers can access everything from the developer toolkit to the marketplace registration here.

Microsoft is accepting submissions from developers in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong SAR, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and the United States.

On Tuesday, Adobe Systems relaunched its directory of AIR applications, calling it a "marketplace." There are, however, no premium applications that cost money--at least not yet.

Adobe Integrated Runtime is the company's desktop runtime for rich Internet applications. Beyond the namesake, users can finally search for applications by both name and developer. There are also four new RSS feeds that post the most recently added, most popular, staff-chosen, and recently updated applications.

On the back end of all of this, developers can now manage the various versions of their hosted applications and keep track of downloads and user reviews. Users can also view a company's profile and all its AIR applications in one place, which makes it a little simpler to download more applications from a developer you like.

This new system should be able to scale a little better than the old one as that number grows larger. There are still just under 400 applications in the directory, with the most popular one being an AIR front-end for Adobe's own Acrobat.com service.

The new marketplace is a little tighter and includes many under-the-hood upgrades for developers who want to post their AIR applications.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Responding to its users' desire for more restaurant review offerings, TripAdvisor announced Tuesday that throughout 2009, it will be adding features that will allow visitors to do more than review eateries on the site. So far, the site features 2 million reviews and ratings on 500,000 restaurants worldwide. To help users search through those more effectively, TripAdvisor added price, cuisine, and "recommended for" filters to its restaurant page Tuesday.

Also, the company has partnered with OpenTable.com to allow U.S. users to make a reservation directly on TripAdvisor's site. The company's new iPhone app, dubbed Local Picks, lets users find local restaurants and use the device's location-based technology to find restaurants nearby. More features will be announced later this year. Goodrec offers a similar service.

Online radio service Slacker Radio has launched five new stations in time for Valentine's Day. Its Broken Heart Radio station will feature "a melancholy mix of lost love and yearning with a touch of soulful redemption." Slow Jamz aims at getting you in the mood with songs from Marvin Gaye and others, while Rock Ballads Radio tries to bring you and your loved one back to the 1970s and 1980s. All of the company's Valentine's Day stations are live now.

XLR8 Mobile, a company that offers customizable widgets for sharing videos, music, and pictures across social networks, announced that it has changed its name to Dijit. The company's CEO, Eric Allen, claims the name change was the result of his company's "commitment" to developing new technology that allows users to share their original content and focus more on sharing. The company's new name was announced in conjunction with the release of a beta version of its widget platform.

Oodle, a network for online classifieds, announced Tuesday that it raised $5.6 million in funding from existing investors, Greylock Partners, JAFCO Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures. The company, which announced last year that it will power Facebook's Marketplace, will use the funding to form more partnerships. The Facebook Marketplace is scheduled to launch later this quarter.

Search marketing and analytic firm Enquisite, closed an $8 million round of financing that was led by Castile Ventures and Formative Ventures. According to the company, it plans to use the funding for product development and marketing efforts it hopes will expand its operation.

This blog was updated first at 12:30 p.m. PST with some reader feedback and then at 1:40 p.m. PST to include an interview with Bopaboo's CEO.

"Stop illegally sharing, and start legally selling" is the tagline for a start-up that wants to enable music owners to sell their unwanted MP3s.

Ernesto at the blog TorrentFreak has a story about Bopaboo, which has created a digital marketplace where users operate mini download stores.

Bopaboo buyers can search for music in all the usual ways, and the site offers a seller rating to help shoppers learn a merchant's reputation. Sellers register and then are given an MP3 store, where they can upload the music they want to sell. No DRM-wrapped music is allowed, so iTunes owners like me are blocked from selling.

According to TorrentFreak, there is no limit on the number of songs that can be offered. Sellers select their own prices but, of course, must cut Bopaboo a percentage of sales.

This was an idea bound to emerge out of the craze over songs stripped of digital rights management software. People have traded DVDs, mixed tapes, and albums for decades.

Bopaboo says the site is legal, and it sounds like it should be. Don't people own their MP3s? We'll see.

UPDATE: 12:30 p.m. PT: Several of you readers have pointed out that it's going to be tough, if not impossible, to prevent people from reselling songs over and over. This sounds like a fight in the making with the music industry. I've got a few calls in, so I'll further update this post with any objections from the Recording Industry Association of America.

UPDATE: 1:40 p.m. PT: Okay, here's the juice from Bopaboo CEO Alex Meshkin, a 28-year-old who didn't go to college, doesn't know programming but once ran Toyota's Nascar team. Yes, Nascar team. He added that Bopaboo is a Washington D.C.-based company founded a year ago.

I put the most important question to him first.

Q: Why don't you think the recording industry is going to sue you into oblivion?
Meshkin: Obviously, MP3s are very easy to duplicate...It's very difficult to tell the difference between a so-called new copy and a so-called old copy...I can buy a CD and I can rip it and that behavior has basically been endorsed by the music industry. I can resell that CD on Amazon. The industry doesn't have a way to monetize physical goods being traded on the secondary market. The first-sale doctrine protects that right. In the physical world consumers have the right to resell their property and copyright owners can't do anything about that."

Okay, but there's no way that the four largest music labels are going to sit back and let you enable people to sell multiple copies of the same song. Isn't that what people will be able to do using your digital marketplace?
Meshkin: We have the technology in place to prevent you from selling a song more than one time...We take a digital fingerprint through every upload that prevents a user from uploading to our service a track more than one time. Actually we've come up with an algorithm, which is beyond what even (digital filtering company) Gracenote does with song identification.

Have you spoken to the big recording companies or the RIAA?
Talks have sped up...I will be in New York later this week for meetings. The talks so far have been positive and the labels are inclined to look at alternative business models to monetize.

Since its launch in early February of last year, Facebook's online gift store has run off of standard U.S. dollars, letting users purchase gifts one at a time, or in bundles at a slight discount. However, starting Monday the popular social network has moved to a micropayment system where each point represents a cent, opening up its gifts marketplace to items outside of the $1 standard.

There are several benefits to using such a system, the least of which is user convenience. Microsoft, which has had its own points system since the advent of the Xbox Live Marketplace, has forced users to buy points in packs ahead of any purchases, in effect requiring user credit before a sale. The result of this is that users almost always have a leftover balance which can rest in Microsoft's accounts, earning the company interest until the user's next purchase.

The big difference between Microsoft's system and Facebook's implementation is that Facebook has stuck with the same monetary standard that most of its users are locked into. In comparison, Microsoft points are approximately 25 percent more per 100 than a dollar, which becomes confusing at higher amounts--and even more so at the international level. So much so that several developers have created currency translators and sites to help people figure out how to even out their remaining balances.

Facebook gifts must now be purchased in 'points' instead of U.S. dollars, opening up a new system where items can be above or below the magic 100 mark.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

So what does this mean for the future of gifts and other transactions on the service? We're likely to see both higher- and lower-priced items, which will result in customers having remainder balances. It's something that will entice (and require) them to buy more. So far Facebook is offering point packs in chunks of $1, $5, and $10 while the price points of gifts remain at the standard 100-point ($1) and free denominations. Facebook says free gifts will continue to be offered, however expect to see sub-100-point, and more expensive "premium" gifts coming in the very near future.

[via VentureBeat]

Two Microsoft research groups, Microsoft Research Asia and Microsoft Office Labs, have launched Task Market, an online marketplace for jobs that can be done on Office applications.

Like Elance, oDesk, and other piecework job sites, Task Market is a marketplace for people with skills and time--and those that need them.

Task Market is focused on very specific, and nontechnical jobs. At the moment, the only job categories allowed on the site are writing, editing, translation, and basic design. Why not programming or scripting or multimedia editing? Because, as the FAQ says, "By focusing on tasks accomplished using applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access, Task Market makes it quicker and easier for small businesses to get their job done."

Of course, Webware recommends Web-based productivity suites (like Google Docs) for team editing and collaboration, but there's as yet no marketplace service for Google like Task Market. Anybody want to build one?

Each job in Task Market has its own discussion thread, in which bidders for the job can communicate with the person who wants it done. There doesn't appear to be a way to contact individuals privately, though, which is odd. Users (both contractors and customers) get ratings--just like on eBay--once a task is complete.

Task Market is a simple and clear service for finding document-based tasks for hire.

Task Market lets employers specify the fee they're willing to pay for a job, and all payments go through eBay's PayPal.

Task Market's big benefit right now is that it is very simple to get into. It's easy to post a job, and it's easy to scan the available tasks. More mature services, such as oDesk, provide better job-tracking services, as well as more options for users to promote themselves and set up teams.

The site, still in "tech preview," and has few jobs on it.