We have successfully imported auction items from members own websites and from online auctions for them numerous times. You may have noticed in the forums that we recently mentioned a new facility we are developing which allows us to import your eBay items. This is now in test mode and we need some volunteers to help. You don't have to do much at all so don't worry. In fact, you don't need to do anything other than give us your eBay user ID.

Once we have fully developed and tested the system we will be creating a facility for our Members to do the import themselves. Exciting times!

RSS ITEM FEEDS

We now have the facility to provide you with an RSS feed of your own items to use in Blogs, your own website or pretty much wherever you can paste a link and sell from. This is an example of a feed http://specialistauctions.com/rss.php?owner=100038 which will display our Technical Directors items. If you want to see your own, simply change the user ID at the end to yours and see what happens!

We believe we have one of the best customer service teams around, so, as always, if you need help just ask.

FEEDBACK CHANGE

As you already know, we have always had the facility to import and show, your eBay feedback on SA. Unfortunately a few people have abused this by entering another users ID while the Scammers are also seeing an opportunity of using this standard feature to try and bypass our security. Naturally we can't allow this to happen and so we are changing the way we collect and display your feedback.

We are delighted to be able to tell you that we have partnered Repatoo.com who will operate a more extensive and secure feedback system on our behalf. Alongside our basic philosophy, there will be no cost to you at all for this added service. The main benefits include:

• Support for multiple (14 and climbing) auction sites, allowing sellers to combine their feedback from multiple selling venues, not just eBay.
• In order to assure that sellers don’t try to pass off other’s positive feedback as their own, we verify auction account ownership without the need to enter your auction site password.
• Feedback is automatically updated approximately every 6 hours. So it is a "set-it and forget-it" solution.

Repatoo make your reputation as portable as it can be. After all, it is your reputation, you built it, it belongs to you. We're sure you'll have some questions so please visit this page http://beta.repatoo.com/faq.php to have them answered!

SEARCH FACILITIES

We're aware that our search facilities need a complete overhaul and will be starting work shortly on what will be a major upgrade. We hope to include some of the latest semantic search technology in this which will mean that you always get very accurate returns.

For those who are interested, here's some 'nerdy' info.

Our use of textual information on the Web has been fundamentally limited because our systems for processing this data do not understand the meaning of that data. Instead, we construct searches using word combinations as an 'indicator' or 'proxy' for the content we are trying to find. The results of our searches can be incomplete because we can not find an identical match.

Semantics is the study of the meaning of words or phrases in the context in which they are written. Semantics provide the possibility of differentiating search results when words are present but used in a different context (eg orange the colour and orange the fruit). Understanding the meaning of text offers huge opportunities to our Members and will ensure that we return results that are relevant. And it means you can use intelligent searching rather than just free text.

FORUMS and BLOGS

If you don't visit our forums very often perhaps you should take a look now? There are some great people in there every day and some really interesting posts. We'd love to hear your views so do please pop along and introduce yourself.

In the next few months we will be introducing a new Blog area, like everything else we do, this will be aimed at creating and developing a strong community. Watch the forums and site for announcements!

WE'RE STILL GROWING!