@BStrauss3 said:
Have you gotten recent and competent patent advise on this? After Alice, it's become very hard to patent software. After that 2014 decision, trade secrets are a bit more attractive. Then came last year...
Well, I started my patent process early in 2014 and submitted a provisional in late 2014, shortly after Alice. I'm not too worried about comparisons made to some of these famously weak patent claims, because, as you probably know, there are three tenets of patentability which the AuctionHero technology can be argued to meet:
Novel -- try finding a similar dynamic real-time search across monotonic data
Non-obvious -- when you try to perform the same operation using pen & paper (or indeed, any tool at your disposal), you'll quickly discover how deceptively complex the concept is
Useful -- hardly debatable by those of us using AuctionHero on a daily basis!
In 2014, the US Supreme Court dealt a major blow to software patents. In their 9-0 ruling in Alice Corp v. CLS Bank, the justices made it clear that just adding fancy-sounding computer language to otherwise ordinary aspects of business and technology isn't enough to deserve a patent.
All is not lost, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has found several cases where software is still patentable.
Except, no post-Alice cases have reached back to the Supremes, so it's not clear if the new rules will survive.
And the Federal Circuit has a dismal record on appeals to SCOTUS (whether this is because SCOTUS only takes cases where enough judges already feel the decision is wrong ... selection bias ... isn't clear).
Basically, I went after a patent because I didn't want to risk another entity patenting the same technology and crushing my plans for AuctionHero. Even if my claims are struck down, AuctionHero now has a future, because the patent application serves as prior art to deny any future patent on a similar concept.
Interesting. One hoped that the changes simply struck down the "do something obvious but do it on a computer" class of patents. Of course anytime you upset years of precedents (regardless of whether reasonable or stupid), lots on unintended consequences occur. I don't think anybody really does know what is or is not patentable.
Good luck!
-----Burton ANA 50 year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
Got a chance to work on AuctionHero today. I fixed a couple bugs and added automatic Search validation, which makes it easier to measure the impact of your search edits as you make them.
I couldn't justify doing the Baltimore show and missing the Pikes Peak Hill Climb, so I will be doing the Colorado Springs show on Saturday. Free AuctionHero demos in person!
First of all, let me say that I miss your eBay auctions. Are you back on eBay in some capacity?
Secondly, I just registered to use AuctionHero and played around for a little bit.
Some thoughts:
Love being able to exclude sellers, was able to scrub a seller easily, but had a little tougher time permanently blocking a seller, didn't appear to immediately update my "Search Results".
The pagination was a little unusual. Was only seeing 4 or 5 listings per page, and didn't seem configurable, was this by design?
Love the concept of the Rewind feature, but didn't appear to work. Went back to the search results page, and it still said there were no entries.
@jerseycat101 said:
First of all, let me say that I miss your eBay auctions. Are you back on eBay in some capacity?
I appreciate that. I'm working with another dealer who has adopted the coin inventory system I wrote for Disruptek, so it's likely that something similar to my old listings will reappear on eBay.
Secondly, I just registered to use AuctionHero and played around for a little bit.
Thanks for taking it for a spin!
Some thoughts:
Love being able to exclude sellers, was able to scrub a seller easily, but had a little tougher time permanently blocking a seller, didn't appear to immediately update my "Search Results".
Scrub Seller removes the seller's listings from the cache of results we've already fetched. You might use it by itself when, for example, someone posts 50 listings for 1gram vial of gold flake and you don't want to bother wading through them all.
After adding a seller to a Seller List and assigning that Seller List to the Search in an Exclude capacity, that seller's listings will not appear in any future fetches of results. If you have not scrubbed them from the cache, issuing a subsequent Scrub Seller will ensure that both pre-fetched and future listings will be omitted.
I get confused by Scrub Seller from time to time. If you go backwards and are looking at stuff you've already passed on, and then hit Scrub Seller, nothing appears to happen. As Scrub Seller moves a seller's listings from the cache into the discarded ("passed") pile, and you're already looking at the discarded listings, the seller's listings don't leave the screen.
I might change the background of the discarded results to a light gray to help indicate that you are looking at "stale" stuff. What do you think?
The pagination was a little unusual. Was only seeing 4 or 5 listings per page, and didn't seem configurable, was this by design?
It actually is by design, but it's also configurable.
Take a look at the Setup page using the navigation bar at the top. The reason you want to use a small number of results per page is two-fold:
Your eye can interpret images faster and more accurately if they are not in motion due to the page scrolling.
AuctionHero re-sorts the cached results to present the freshest, most significant material first, and it does this each time you advance a page. It's also constantly looking for newly-posted listings in the background. If you set your Page Size to 500 items, then it might take you 5 minutes to scroll through a page (and perhaps view a few interesting items). That means you may miss a wicked Buy-It-Now that was posted during that period and immediately snapped up by @FadeToBlack.
Love the concept of the Rewind feature, but didn't appear to work. Went back to the search results page, and it still said there were no entries.
A Rewind takes a few seconds to run, and the subsequent first fetch of results takes ~8 seconds. If your Search Group includes validated searches that yield a number of results, it shouldn't take more than 10-12 seconds to Rewind and see results.
After that initial fetch, the cache is populated and it's unlikely that you will scan through stuff fast enough to outpace AuctionHero's background fetches. If you do, you can simply reconfigure the Watermarks from the Setup page.
Shoot me a message from the Help page (Live Chat) if you want me to take a look at your Search Group. It's entirely possible that there's a bug with Rewind, and if so, I want to identify it! On the other hand, I've been using this tool for years without encountering that issue.
@disruptek Thanks for the answers, glad to see the pagination is configurable, and I probably didn't wait enough time for the "rewind" feature to work.
I appreciate this tool simply because I can eliminate 1 famous purveyor of AT peace dollars from my ebay search results! And I love not seeing the same results over and over, but rather, just new results. Great stuff!
I wanted to let you folks know about an important update: Aspect Filters. As the "help" copy says,
Aspect Filters allow you to further narrow an existing single category search to item listings with particular Item Specifics values. For example, you might limit a search in the Porsche 911 category to cars with Transmission: Manual, Body Type: Coupe, and Exterior Color: Red. The available Aspect Filters vary with the category specified. Aspect Filters are available to Advanced and eBay Store searches, though again, you must specify one (and only one) category to search.
As an example of how this might be useful to searches for coins, consider an Advanced search of the Gold (Pre-1933) category. The following set of Aspect Filters pops up once the category is selected. You can see here that I have selected the PCGS and PCGS & CAC values for the Certification field.
The numbers in the badges indicate the number of results which, given any prior filter selections, remain for the given value.
In the image above, for example, there are 46 New Orleans-mint gold coins certified by PCGS which will appear in my results. You can further see the distribution of results by coin grade when I click on the Show me anyway! button under the Grade filter:
In contrast to the eBay site, you will always see all available filters/values -- even as you narrow the results to a subset of items which do not match unselected filters. It has always annoyed my that the eBay site won't let you create complex filters that might not yield results at the time of creation.
One of the areas in which this feature really shines is eBay Motors searches for cars; for example, you can see that I'm searching for Porsche 911 and 912 models here, from a large list of filters.
These new Aspect Filters can be used in conjunction with all the other filters in your search, such as Keywords and the many Item Filters. For best results, specify Aspect Filters first, and then add other constraints to your search.
I'm proud to say that with this feature, AuctionHero is officially more powerful than the eBay site, for all applications.
A future enhancement will allow you to specify arbitrary filter names and create value lists to attach to filters. As an example of how this might be useful in coin categories, you could create a search for the serial numbers of a few hundred stolen coins, or for all the coins on a competitor's set registry.
Since the automatic search validation was implemented, it got a little tricky to make a series of changes to a search in what might be your currently-selected Search Group. This new feature solves that, disabling any Search Group you've modified until you re-enable it in the Results page. You are also presented with a Rewind button, since this is frequently the action you want to take after making changes to your searches.
I will spare you the "What is this?" help dialogs...
I also performed some streamlining of search edits and the tutorial so that you can inspect your searches without disabling your Search Group.
Made some usability tweaks today which might help both new and existing users, but mostly I wanted to invite you to visit my table at the Denver ANA show next week.
Stop by and see a demo of AuctionHero, challenge me with your most difficult searches, complain about the obtuse interface, suggest a sexy new feature, or show off some of your best eBay rips.
I'll be at corner table 631 by the pillar in the center of the bourse, on the island dominated by US Coins. Come say 'hi'!
I tried and it is not showing any coins with the date I am searching. Morgans show up and there are no morgans of that date. Not sure what I am doing wrong.
If you've made changes to the search, you need to hit the Rewind button. If you scroll up this page, you'll see the dialog box that will appear on the Results page after you've made changes to any search. It has a Rewind & Enable button in addition to a Just Enable button.
If you've made a very subtle change that doesn't really matter -- say, you've adding a minor Item Filter -- then you probably want to Just Enable. This will retain all your progress through the results and all simply apply your changes to any new results fetched as your pre-fetched items are depleted.
If you've made a substantive change, like modifying keywords, categories, or a more significant Item Filter or Aspect Filter, then you may want to Rewind & Enable. This will essentially start over, discarding all fetched results and presenting you with only those items that match your new search criteria.
If you've already dismissed that Rewind / Enable dialog, you can rewind your Search Group "manually" from the Search page by clicking the yellow Rewind button:
@disruptek said:
If you've made changes to the search, you need to hit the Rewind button. If you scroll up this page, you'll see the dialog box that will appear on the Results page after you've made changes to any search. It has a Rewind & Enable button in adding to a Just Enable button.
If you've made a very subtle change that doesn't really matter -- say, you've adding a minor Item Filter -- then you probably want to Just Enable. This will retain all your progress through the results and all simply apply your changes to any new results fetched as your pre-fetched items are depleted.
If you've made a substantive change, like modifying keywords, categories, or a more significant Item Filter or Aspect Filter, then you may want to Rewind & Enable. This will essentially start over, discarding all fetched results and presenting you with only those items that match your new search criteria.
If you've already dismissed that Rewind / Enable dialog, you can rewind your Search Group "manually" from the Search page by clicking the yellow Rewind button:
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Who cares? Rewind, Enable. Do this and that.
Let us know when your product is ready, otherwise, yawn.
@epcjimi1 said:
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Who cares? Rewind, Enable. Do this and that.
Let us know when your product is ready, otherwise, yawn.
The Rewind /Enable behavior is a feature, and it enables more transparency so that it's more obvious as to what is and isn't happening behind the scenes. I just tweaked the dialog box further, to make it more prominent and offer simpler call-to-action text.
This stuff doesn't get created in a vacuum; I perform usability testing on a daily basis. People such as yourselves use the product and give me feedback, which always goes back into the product. For example, I added this dialog specifically because many users -- even some in this thread -- didn't understand the mechanics of the Rewind feature.
The product itself wasn't created from a vacuum, either. I was buying 30-40 gold coins on eBay every week, and I wanted to expand into scanning many thousands of other coins without the tedium that this implies on the eBay site. The concept has been validated repeatedly, and not just in coins.
But make no mistake -- this application is not designed for everyone. It's designed to solve a couple specific problems, to enable exploitation of eBay that is otherwise damn near impossible. If you're satisfied with eBay, you won't see any value in AuctionHero, and that's perfectly fine.
Perhaps @epcjimi1 can give it a shot and let me know if the product is now ready for the rest of us eBay fiends.
Comments
Well, I started my patent process early in 2014 and submitted a provisional in late 2014, shortly after Alice. I'm not too worried about comparisons made to some of these famously weak patent claims, because, as you probably know, there are three tenets of patentability which the AuctionHero technology can be argued to meet:
Basically, I went after a patent because I didn't want to risk another entity patenting the same technology and crushing my plans for AuctionHero. Even if my claims are struck down, AuctionHero now has a future, because the patent application serves as prior art to deny any future patent on a similar concept.
877-DISRPTK
Interesting. One hoped that the changes simply struck down the "do something obvious but do it on a computer" class of patents. Of course anytime you upset years of precedents (regardless of whether reasonable or stupid), lots on unintended consequences occur. I don't think anybody really does know what is or is not patentable.
Good luck!
ANA 50 year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
Got a chance to work on AuctionHero today. I fixed a couple bugs and added automatic Search validation, which makes it easier to measure the impact of your search edits as you make them.
I couldn't justify doing the Baltimore show and missing the Pikes Peak Hill Climb, so I will be doing the Colorado Springs show on Saturday. Free AuctionHero demos in person!
877-DISRPTK
@disruptek
First of all, let me say that I miss your eBay auctions. Are you back on eBay in some capacity?
Secondly, I just registered to use AuctionHero and played around for a little bit.
Some thoughts:
Hope to see more improvements, and good luck!
I appreciate that. I'm working with another dealer who has adopted the coin inventory system I wrote for Disruptek, so it's likely that something similar to my old listings will reappear on eBay.
Thanks for taking it for a spin!
Scrub Seller removes the seller's listings from the cache of results we've already fetched. You might use it by itself when, for example, someone posts 50 listings for 1gram vial of gold flake and you don't want to bother wading through them all.
After adding a seller to a Seller List and assigning that Seller List to the Search in an Exclude capacity, that seller's listings will not appear in any future fetches of results. If you have not scrubbed them from the cache, issuing a subsequent Scrub Seller will ensure that both pre-fetched and future listings will be omitted.
I get confused by Scrub Seller from time to time. If you go backwards and are looking at stuff you've already passed on, and then hit Scrub Seller, nothing appears to happen. As Scrub Seller moves a seller's listings from the cache into the discarded ("passed") pile, and you're already looking at the discarded listings, the seller's listings don't leave the screen.
I might change the background of the discarded results to a light gray to help indicate that you are looking at "stale" stuff. What do you think?
It actually is by design, but it's also configurable.
Take a look at the Setup page using the navigation bar at the top. The reason you want to use a small number of results per page is two-fold:
A Rewind takes a few seconds to run, and the subsequent first fetch of results takes ~8 seconds. If your Search Group includes validated searches that yield a number of results, it shouldn't take more than 10-12 seconds to Rewind and see results.
After that initial fetch, the cache is populated and it's unlikely that you will scan through stuff fast enough to outpace AuctionHero's background fetches. If you do, you can simply reconfigure the Watermarks from the Setup page.
Shoot me a message from the Help page (Live Chat) if you want me to take a look at your Search Group. It's entirely possible that there's a bug with Rewind, and if so, I want to identify it! On the other hand, I've been using this tool for years without encountering that issue.
Thanks again for checking it out.
877-DISRPTK
@disruptek Thanks for the answers, glad to see the pagination is configurable, and I probably didn't wait enough time for the "rewind" feature to work.
I appreciate this tool simply because I can eliminate 1 famous purveyor of AT peace dollars from my ebay search results! And I love not seeing the same results over and over, but rather, just new results. Great stuff!
I wanted to let you folks know about an important update: Aspect Filters. As the "help" copy says,
As an example of how this might be useful to searches for coins, consider an Advanced search of the Gold (Pre-1933) category. The following set of Aspect Filters pops up once the category is selected. You can see here that I have selected the PCGS and PCGS & CAC values for the Certification field.
The numbers in the badges indicate the number of results which, given any prior filter selections, remain for the given value.
In the image above, for example, there are 46 New Orleans-mint gold coins certified by PCGS which will appear in my results. You can further see the distribution of results by coin grade when I click on the Show me anyway! button under the Grade filter:
In contrast to the eBay site, you will always see all available filters/values -- even as you narrow the results to a subset of items which do not match unselected filters. It has always annoyed my that the eBay site won't let you create complex filters that might not yield results at the time of creation.
One of the areas in which this feature really shines is eBay Motors searches for cars; for example, you can see that I'm searching for Porsche 911 and 912 models here, from a large list of filters.
These new Aspect Filters can be used in conjunction with all the other filters in your search, such as Keywords and the many Item Filters. For best results, specify Aspect Filters first, and then add other constraints to your search.
I'm proud to say that with this feature, AuctionHero is officially more powerful than the eBay site, for all applications.
A future enhancement will allow you to specify arbitrary filter names and create value lists to attach to filters. As an example of how this might be useful in coin categories, you could create a search for the serial numbers of a few hundred stolen coins, or for all the coins on a competitor's set registry.
877-DISRPTK
I've just sat here and read this entire thread from start to finish and found it very interesting.
I haven't been buying lately so I probably won't try auction hero but its fascinating stuff just the same .
Carry on everyone
Since the automatic search validation was implemented, it got a little tricky to make a series of changes to a search in what might be your currently-selected Search Group. This new feature solves that, disabling any Search Group you've modified until you re-enable it in the Results page. You are also presented with a Rewind button, since this is frequently the action you want to take after making changes to your searches.
I will spare you the "What is this?" help dialogs...
I also performed some streamlining of search edits and the tutorial so that you can inspect your searches without disabling your Search Group.
877-DISRPTK
Made some usability tweaks today which might help both new and existing users, but mostly I wanted to invite you to visit my table at the Denver ANA show next week.
Stop by and see a demo of AuctionHero, challenge me with your most difficult searches, complain about the obtuse interface, suggest a sexy new feature, or show off some of your best eBay rips.
I'll be at corner table 631 by the pillar in the center of the bourse, on the island dominated by US Coins. Come say 'hi'!
877-DISRPTK
How would you set this up to look for a specific date say 1877 over all types of us coins. I just signed up and am not having much luck.
You probably don't want to attempt an Aspect Filter for that, because use of the Year Item Specific is inconsistent by sellers.
I would setup a search for the U.S. Coins category and simply add the keyword 1877. Search Titles, only.
Looks like about 2500 results:
877-DISRPTK
I tried and it is not showing any coins with the date I am searching. Morgans show up and there are no morgans of that date. Not sure what I am doing wrong.
If you've made changes to the search, you need to hit the Rewind button. If you scroll up this page, you'll see the dialog box that will appear on the Results page after you've made changes to any search. It has a Rewind & Enable button in addition to a Just Enable button.
If you've made a very subtle change that doesn't really matter -- say, you've adding a minor Item Filter -- then you probably want to Just Enable. This will retain all your progress through the results and all simply apply your changes to any new results fetched as your pre-fetched items are depleted.
If you've made a substantive change, like modifying keywords, categories, or a more significant Item Filter or Aspect Filter, then you may want to Rewind & Enable. This will essentially start over, discarding all fetched results and presenting you with only those items that match your new search criteria.
If you've already dismissed that Rewind / Enable dialog, you can rewind your Search Group "manually" from the Search page by clicking the yellow Rewind button:
877-DISRPTK
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Who cares? Rewind, Enable. Do this and that.
Let us know when your product is ready, otherwise, yawn.
The Rewind /Enable behavior is a feature, and it enables more transparency so that it's more obvious as to what is and isn't happening behind the scenes. I just tweaked the dialog box further, to make it more prominent and offer simpler call-to-action text.
This stuff doesn't get created in a vacuum; I perform usability testing on a daily basis. People such as yourselves use the product and give me feedback, which always goes back into the product. For example, I added this dialog specifically because many users -- even some in this thread -- didn't understand the mechanics of the Rewind feature.
The product itself wasn't created from a vacuum, either. I was buying 30-40 gold coins on eBay every week, and I wanted to expand into scanning many thousands of other coins without the tedium that this implies on the eBay site. The concept has been validated repeatedly, and not just in coins.
But make no mistake -- this application is not designed for everyone. It's designed to solve a couple specific problems, to enable exploitation of eBay that is otherwise damn near impossible. If you're satisfied with eBay, you won't see any value in AuctionHero, and that's perfectly fine.
Perhaps @epcjimi1 can give it a shot and let me know if the product is now ready for the rest of us eBay fiends.
877-DISRPTK
Not interested, go find somebody else to guinea pig. MHO
AuctionHero now works on Internet Explorer 11. Good news for all you holdouts who aren't using Chrome for whatever reason...
877-DISRPTK