Kiwi conquers auto-shopping on Trade Me
Want to buy the cheapest, most random stuff on Trade Me and have it delivered for free? One enterprising Kiwi has found a way to do just that.
Developer Paul Hunkin saw that we’d unleashed our API in September, freeing up our code for developers to dig in and have a play with building applications for members to use.
Inspired by a web comic strip, Paul set aside a couple of hours to write a script that automatically searches the site and bids on cheap, obscure items with Buy Now and free shipping (he’s recently updated it to also bid on items that are closing soon, to nab a bargain). More...
Summer's on the way: win a $3k Kiwi holiday
Our friends over at Travelbug and Holiday Houses are giving you the chance to win a $3,000 Kiwi holiday.
All you have to do is enter your details online and you could win accommodation of your choice, up to the value of $3,000. You can also get extra entries if you recommend friends and they enter too.
Site outage this morning
Just a quick update to let you know about an issue we experienced at Trade Me this morning. There was a power outage in Wellington and Trade Me was affected, along with thousands of other homes and buildings across the city. Several other major websites were also knocked out by the power outage.
The site was down between 8:41am and 10:05am. Around 14,000 auctions were set to close, so we have extended all of these by 4 hours.
We're sorry for the hassle this causes anyone. More...
Reminder about free gallery listings
Last Thursday (4 November) we held a Free Gallery Day to celebrate a big milestone for Trade Me Jobs.
A lot of the freebie Gallery listings will be coming up for relist tomorrow (11 November). For anyone who took advantage of that offer, this is just a friendly reminder that when any items come up for relist, you will need to pay to keep the Gallery feature on. If you want Gallery removed from your listings, please remove the tick from the Gallery box on the Extras page.
We don’t want anyone to get surprised when they see this fee charged.
Trade Me bends back at eDay 2010
The Trade Me team broke a sweat at Wellington's eDay collection at Westpac Stadium on Saturday. eDay helps households, schools, community groups and businesses get rid of old computers and mobile phones in a responsible, environmentally friendly way.
In terms of what was brought in to the 53 drop-off locations around New Zealand, the eDay organisers have reported that 2010 was off the hook. An estimated 77,000 items were collected from 17,787 cars, translating into 877 tonnes of old computer equipment and mobile phones.
Of course, although this one-day collection is enough to fill a whopping 110 shipping containers, it's still a mere drop in the bucket given the Government estimates Kiwis lob 80,000 tonnes of electronic waste into landfills each year. More...
 |
 |