LetsBuyIt Blog

We are reading a lot of stories about the new search engines lately and after Cuil claimed that it wants to be the new competitor of Google we found it was time to test it. We searched Letsbuyit.com on three different often mentioned search engines namely SearchCloud, Cuil, Searchme and Google to see how relevant/useful/advantageous the results are for us in 2008:

SearchCloud

The fact you need to click twice to execute a search is a negative point. Secondly we find that the search result only returned articles about us from 2001, which didn’t really impress us. Unfortunately we are not convinced that this is the future despite offering that grid function (whatever that is for?!)

Source: SearchCloud Screenshot

Cuil

If Cuil wants to be the new competitor of Google.com then we hope for Cuil that they have endless updates up their sleeve because to get Google down on their knees because of Cuil is rather unrealistic as of now! The page set-up is definitely interesting because you receive so much preview text however the order and relevancy to Letsbuyit 2008 is not obvious and the summary text for letsbuyit.com is very out-of-date! Maybe they have indexed trillions of pages but for Letsbuyit definitely not the most current nor relevant!

Source: Cuil Screenshot

SearchMe

The visual search engine SearchMe definitely gave us the most up-to-date results with the screen-shots of our latest website and blog design, which means that their indexing is up to scratch! We still like it the best because it is most relevant to our 2007/08 relaunch. To compare visual search engines with text-based search engines is questionable, we agree, but still our most favorable search engine result!

Source: Searchme Screenshot

Google.com

Google did quite well with the pages shown on the first page but still too many articles about the former Letsbuyit.com of 2001. Also not very favorable for us yet and definitely improvable!

Source: Google Screenshot

Our Conclusion is that in order to have the most favorable Search Engine Ranking without having a website is to create your own search engine and beat Google at its game ;).

Have you noticed that Letsbuyit.com is also on Twitter? In case you have never noticed it we have put a special candy on the Twitter on the 24.07.2008 at 15:58h EST we are sure that you will like it for those who are interesting in knowing some inside information of Letsbuyit. Tip: Beta Launch!!!
check it out here on twitter.com/letsbuyit

In the last few months we have come across some start-ups that focus on contracts and legal templates, which offer platforms to share, edit, adapt and exchange contracts. The inspiration for the article was originally the mulitilingual OECD Privacy Policy Generator, which generates your individual Privacy Policy after going through a long questionnaire with you. The result is quite minimalistic but quite a good starting point for further research.

However then we have a discovered a start-up last year, which is called Tractis. This a portal where you can share and discuss your contracts or find contracts of all sorts, which you can than adapt to your needs. You can gather your “contracts online and use them offline” they say, the applicability however is questionable because I doubt that contracts can be standardised (except maybe Non-Disclosure Agreements or Power of Attorneys) and be fully useful but again it is a good starting point.

Now we have come across a recently launched start-up in Germany, which is called “Vertrag-tauschen.de” or translated “contract-exchange”. This is an interesting portal, which will definitely create an interesting discussion, because there you can offer to exchange, sell or buy transferable contracts. Most probably all of us have had problems with lock-in periods for contracts, be it with mobile phones, gyms, club subscriptions, leases, or even hosting contracts. Therefore we consider this portal to have a lot of potential on the C2C market. Maybe this is the place to get rid of your contracts and obligations and perhaps even push the market to liberalise the contractual frameworks that are present everywhere such as the 2 years contractual obligations for telephones in Germany!

Do you know of any other contract sharing, swapping or creation websites?

We would like to draw your attention to a new Blog, which is called Posterous. Posterous is very interesting because it makes the posting of content much easier in comparison to other Blog Management Systems like Wordpress, etc.. You don’t need any log-in because you only email your content to posterous to publish your content. There is only one unique email ID (post@posterous.com) where you send your email (incl. photos, hyperlinks, Youtube Videos, etc.) to, which is then resized and formatted for you and it will be posted to your individual page based on your email ID. We have set up our own Posterous page for Letsbuyit.com that is also to be watched now: http://letsbuyit.posterous.com/

“The Spirit impels us 4ward 2wards others; the fire of his love makes us missionaries of God’s charity. C U tomorrow nite - BXVI”

That was a SMS that Pope Benedict XVI had sent out during the World Youth Day in Sydney last week. He truelly does speak all the languages of the world

Source: Welt

An article of Cédric of “Woweffect” has given us some great links to truely unforgettable ads. Check out all these great ads as listed on DezineHQ, Toxel, SmashingApps and Tumblr.

We would also like to add this Adidas add to our favourite adds because it is really unique (here). This unique ad made us look for other handwritten designs, which made us tumble upon this list of excellent handwritten designs: Smashing Magazine site.

Are there any other great ones that you would like to recommend?

By the way we were inspired by this movie:

Source: youtube.com

Some of you might remember that we have written about Loopt in July last year (here) already but we would like to introduce Loopt to the rest of you because Loopt is the proof that we are living in a new era. Loopt is a mobile phone application, which acts like a social network (incl. groups, chats, etc.), the difference being that your current location is indicated on a map and you can see the location of your friends on that same map in real-time. Needless to say that the notion of people/companies tracking your whereabouts 24/7 is more than frightening but finding Apple promoting its iPhone Application Store with Loopt is even more fascinating. This is how far you can go in one year with people-tracking technologies.

Source: Apple

After having previously reported (blog post here) about Telebid we now read in the FAZ that apparently Telebid has not only expanded to the UK and Spain but is also planning to open up in the US, Korea, Japan and China and currently has a daily subscription rate of 3,000 new members per day! We had also discussed the business model previously in the blog and we know now that apparently Telebid is making a daily turnover of almost 30 000 to 35 000 Euros per day, according to FAZ!!! Judge for yourself.

Concerning the recent eBay sale of Yieeha, a Social Community Shopping Portal, the new owner has been made know now on their blog and is the Net-Line Onlinedienste GmbH from Heilbronn. After quickly checking out their website the company turns out to be a live-erotic-cam provider, which gives the Yieeha slogan “Social winning” quite a new twist! It is good to know the user info in safe hands.

First of all we would like to share some more hidden internet jokes that we have found. There is quite a range of Google jokes or hoaxes that somebody dedicated an entire Wikipedia “Google Hoaxes” article to them. For more jokes or Easter Eggs, as they are also called, check out the site eeggs.com. Back in the days Microsoft used to be quite funny and there were hiding quite a lot of easter eggs in their programs like Excel but that has been reduced because people were complaining about the waste of resources (how mature!).

Secondly we have noticed that the Ebay Sale of the Online Shopping Community Yieeha (we have previously reported) has come to an end at the stunning selling price of EUR 24.550,00 incl. VAT. The Sale has not been commented on their blog as of now (no new entry since June 23, 2008) however the average sale price of 2EUR per registered user is definitely not very satisfactory but it was definitely worth a try. There are not that many Shopping Community Sites for Sale on Ebay to compare with but our feeling is that the price could be more!

Source: Ebay

Spiegel has published a few examples of funny jokes that are hiding in programs and sites that we are using everyday without knowing it. I have quickly summarised the findings in a few lines:

Firefox: Checkout the address “about:robots” and this page will show you a new interesting site! The robots want to communicate with us humans!

Yahoo Yodeling: Some years ago there was dispute about that Yahoo Yodel, which is actually still hidden on the site. Go to the Yahoo.com site and click on the “!” in the Yahoo logo in the top-banner.

Amazon: Check out the hidden special thanks to David Risher, former Amazon employee, by clicking on an invisible image below the copyright note on the bottom of the category overview page.

Picasa: if you want to see funny teddy bears, open your picasa and type “ctrl+shift+y” at the same time and you will see teddy bears appear!

Google Reader: if you want to see ninja’s in your google reader type the famous konami code: “↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A” and ninjas will appear in your reader.

These hidden gags are quite funny. Do you know of any other ones?