Signs Point to Yes: Win a Magic 8 Ball for the 8th Anniversary of the eBay API Platform

It's November 2008, and that means it is the eighth anniversary of the eBay Developers Program and the eBay API platform. ZDNet and ProgrammableWeb this week both made note of eBay as a pioneer amongst API platforms.

We're marking the occasion in a couple of ways. First, at Adobe MAX 2008 on November 16-19 in San Francisco, we'll be celebrating with developers and giving them an initial look at eBay technologies such as VUVOX Collage and eBay Desktop 2.0 preview (Desktop was the winner of 2 MAX Awards last year).

In addition, at the end of this month we'll be giving away Magic 8 balls to eight lucky developers who have signed up to learn more about the upcoming Project Echo beta -- our big platform initiative we've been working on this year for next year's launch.

So sign yourself up to get more information about the Project Echo beta -- you'll learn what you need to do to prepare your application for the Echo opportunity and may walk away a winner of our 8th anniversary giveaway! Our Magic 8 ball says "Outlook good." Learn more »

PayPal Adds Support for eBay Coupons to Express Checkout

For developers who provide Express Checkout to their customers, starting November 10 you can  add support for eBay coupons to the Express Checkout flow. At launch, this feature will also be available in the PayPal Sandbox. here are two coupon codes you can use for testing coupon support in your application. Those codes would only be valid in the PayPal Sandbox and expire 31 Dec, 2009.

• CECTEST2008: 10% (Maximum discount $100) off Entire Transaction
• CECSINGLE2008: $10 off Single Item

See the blog post for code samples and the relevant excerpt from the Express Checkout API User Guide. Or see the full guide. »

How the Moving Window Affects Recent Sales

Recent sales are calculated using a moving window. As time passes, older sales that once contributed to the Recent Sales score are dropped in favor of that day's sales. This keeps the score fresh and ensures that it better reflects a seller's current practices. This also prevents  sellers from accumulating an infinitely high recent sales scores and dominating a category.

Here is an illustration of how Recent Sales might be calculated for a listing. Keep in mind that these numbers are only to illustrate the concept. You can't assume that 1 sale = 1 Recent Sales "point" and so on. Also, the moving window size varies by category and is subject to change. For this example, I chose a 4-day window. For a detailed description of the changes each day, see the blog post »

Reminder: eBay SDK for Java: Migration from Axis 1.1 to JAXB

We are excited to announce that in Jan 2009, the  JAXB-based SDK is coming out of Beta!

As announced in May 2008, the eBay Java SDK will be fully moving from the customized version of Axis 1.1 to JAXB data binding per the JAX-WS standard. To make this migration smoother for developers, we will release one more version of the Java SDK with Axis 1.1 support in Jan 2009. This will be the last Axis 1.1-based release.

From Feb 2009 on,  the Axis 1.1-based SDK will no longer be updated or supported. The  JAXB-based SDK will be the only supported Java SDK.

We strongly recommend that you to update your Applications before Jan 2009 and start using the JAXB-based SDK. For help with migrating from the Axis 1.1-based SDKto the JAXB-based SDK, see the Java SDK (JAXB) Migration Guide.

For technical questions about migrating from Axis 1.1 version to JAXB version, you can post questions in our Java SDK Forum. For more immediate or detailed help, you can file a Support Request using our premium technical support channel.

Does Your App Support Extended DST?

Just a reminder that Daylight Savings Time will be ending on  November 2. The API will continue to return eBay Official Time in GMT, so it  will be unaffected by the change.

However, if your application calculates local time, for example,  calculating the local ending time for a listing, you may need to update your  logic to account for the Daylight Savings Time change. The duration of DST was  extended for 2008, so code written for 2007 may not take into account the new  duration.

For client apps, if your customers are using Microsoft Windows,  they needed to apply a patch to ensure that their system time supported the new  DST duration. If your app uses the computer's system time to display local  time, unpatched machines will show the wrong value. Read about Microsoft DST  issues. 

Developer Impact: Displaying Quantity on View Item

As Subha Shetty announced here, listings that have more than 10 items for sale will display the value "more than 10 available" on the View Item page.

Developer Impact:
There is no change to the API for this feature. API calls like GetItem will continue to show the actual quantity of the listing.