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Microsoft, eBay Get Cozy
By Seth Jayson
It must get lonely at the top. Sure, technology behemoths like Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) make so much money they don't know what to do with it. But there are the times when it feels like the entire world is watching, wishing you to fail, taking potshots at every turn. (Sniffle. Hand me a tissue, please.)
So maybe it should come as no surprise that today, Microsoft and eBay joined hands to link the world's most popular home-office software with the world's biggest online marketplace. The cooperative effort will allow eBay's most prolific sellers to integrate their auction management and inventory via the Extensible Markup Language (XML) utilized in Microsoft's Office 2003 products, most notably the Excel spreadsheet and Web-authoring tool FrontPage.
The English translation is this: Businesses will be able to initiate or streamline their Web presence by using eBay as the back-end for virtual stores. OK, maybe that's not plain enough English. Here's an example:
Imagine you sell rechargeable batteries at a storefront in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and also through an eBay Web store. (Don't' laugh, I recently made a purchase from just such a place.) With the new tools, eBay still provides the huge and loyal customer base, the security, and the payment mechanism for your Web store. But instead of paying someone to spend hours submitting item listings one at a time and transcribing sales and shipping data back to your local spreadsheets or database, the information can be kept in a single file. It could upload new inventory and download online activity automatically, as well as compile valuable marketing metrics.
Similar functionality has been available for using software-development tools provided by the online auctioneer, but simpler integration with the ubiquitous Excel and FrontPage should encourage greater numbers of small enterprises to let eBay provide their commercial Internet infrastructure. Then the company can just sit back and do what it does best: making billions by collecting nickels and dimes.
Fool contributor Seth Jayson promises to use his new rechargeable batteries for good, not evil. He has no stake in any company mentioned here.
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Someone is joking, took eBay months just to release MisterLister. Cannot imagine them doing this. Anytime a category change, everything goes bonkers.
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I took a survey that sounded like they were going to do something like this a while back. At the end of the survey I put in the comments sections that Ebay SHOULD QUIT BREAKING THINGS THAT AREN'T BROKEN! I also told them that I was tired of all of the changes and wouldn't use this new change they were surveying about because I already had a way to keep records.
Guess they didn't listen to me. http://community.here.com/infopop/em...icon_frown.gif
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I haven't read about it yet but I did find a demo online.
Bill Gates Demonstrates the eBay Web Service with Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 and Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Integration
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oops double post
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interesting, but will not affect me unless they make a Mac version or until hell freezes over, whichever happens first.