Grizzled eBay veterans know all too well that the action on any auction doesn't heat up until the last few minutes. Bidding wars can be won and lost by who had the fastest click--or the highest auto-bid. To aid in this nail-biting process is Snipe Swipe, a "sniping" tool with a new Firefox add-on that does the bidding for you at the very last possible second.
Once installed you'll get a new button on any auction page that lets you set it to be sniped. After you've done this, it gets flagged in Snipe Swipe's system and will be bid on, up to the maximum amount you set, even if your computer is off.
Because it's part of a sign-up service, you only get three free "snipes" with Snipe Swipe. After that, you can either go in on a monthly service with unlimited bids, or a $5 bundle of points that can be used on future bids.
It's worth noting that sniping is not discouraged by eBay, as the online auctioneer has its own proxy bidding tool. However, third party tools such as Snipe Swipe are constantly trying to outwit this system, which is why these tools have garnered a less-than-respectable reputation in the eBay community.
Related: eBay opening up add-on marketplace, APIs
Once installed, Snipe Swipe adds a new option to eBay listings to let you attempt to win them at the last second.
(Credit: Mozilla / Snipe Swipe)
SportSnipe is a new single-page aggregator the likes of Original Signal, PopUrls, and others, although it's focused specifically on sports feeds from all over the world. Users can browse through headlines and video thumbnails for various leagues, genres, and teams. Like Original Signal, SportSnipe has the option to hover over any headline to read the first few lines of the story, along with a comment button that lets registered users add their own commentary to the story--separate of the parent site.
The service claims to pull its headlines from over 1,300 different sports feeds. It also doubles as a regular old build-it-yourself feed aggregator similar to Netvibes and PageFlakes, albeit a little less flashy. Users can add RSS feeds as either text or video feeds. The video feed catcher is especially cool and gives you a little thumbnail for each clip. If you do this with a text feed, you won't get anything but a black box.
SportSnipe has a few ways to sort and share content. You can bookmark pages you'd like to share with others through a variety of social bookmarking sites. You can also turn off comments and hover over previews. With a quick toggle you can rearrange the feed boxes and extend the feeds to see more than just a few headlines. There are also embed codes for putting your feeds on a blog, Web site, or social networking profile (which I've done to the right.)
In many ways, SportSnipe isn't very original as a single-page aggregator. Pageflakes and Netvibes do a much better job with their presentation, and the resemblance to Popurls and Original Signal is unquestionable. However, SportSnipe has a really great directory of sports feeds that aggregate quickly and are far more comprehensive than what Original Signal offers. The video feed implementation is a nice touch as well.
More screens after the jump.
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