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>> ***: My name is Alex *** from Bonfire Media. Bonfire has been building mobile application
for about six or seven years now. And the application actually we're showing today at
Google I/O is called Pocket Auctions for eBay. And as the name suggests, it's an eBay application
for your mobile phone. It's essentially a miniaturized version of eBay. It's got the
most basic features like My eBay, search, completed search, bidding, buy it now, even
gallery pictures. But our Android version is the newest version of our Pocket Auctions
for eBay application and it is by far the best one that we've built so far.
>> That's great. So, you chose to develop this on Android. Can you tell us a little
bit about the technical reasoning behind that? >> ***: The reason we chose Android as one
of our platforms for Pocket Auctions for eBay is that we were able to add some really unique
features to our application that really only the Android operating system allows. So, along
side all the standard features like search and bidding and so forth, really one of my
favorite features is what we call the 10-minute Warning. So, the idea here is that you're
bidding on a set of items, you may even have items in your watch lists, and 10 minutes
before any of those items ends, your phone will buzz you in your pocket or in your purse
and that will give you a chance, basically a reminder to say, "Hey, you may want to go
bid on this item now." And it's for anyone who uses eBay. They'll realize why that's
a pretty big competitive advantage. And the aspect of the Android that's really important
there is the ability for us to run in the background. We've also added some features
like barcode scanning. So the idea here is that you're out in about maybe in a traditional
store and you see something that's on sale, and what you can do is you whip out your Android
phone, scan the bar code and it will actually look up the price of that item on eBay and
you can figure out whether or not should you wait to buy it on eBay or buy it now. And
then we just launched also with the new Cupcake release the ability to show eBay daily deals
right on the phone top, on the home screen. So the idea here is eBay every day themselves
publishes four daily deals--and they're actually pretty good deals--and so what we've done
is we just captured that feed and we rotate among those deals right on the Android homepage
or home screen. >> So, are there any other features in Cupcake
that you've been able--that you've taken advantage of?
>> ***: Other features in Cupcake that we're going to take advantage of are--one is Live
Folders. So, right now, the way our application works is that, let's say you're an avid eBay
user and you want to check you're my eBay. Well, you launch the application, you log
in, and you'll see all the items you're watching the bidding on. Well, why not have a live
folder right on the home screen where you click on it and without ever having to launch
the application you immediately are shown the latest or the items that you're watching.
>> So, you talked a little bit about some features that are available on the Android
for you that aren't available on any other platforms. Are there any others?
>> ***: Features in our Android application not available on other platforms, yeah, there
is actually one other feature that is actually pretty important to point out. Anybody who
uses eBay realizes that sometimes it's not in your best interest to bid early on an item.
And what people will do on ebay.com is they will constantly refresh their browser page
so that they can get their bid in the last minute. Right? And so what our Android version
can do is it actually counts down the time left on an auction in real time. So, on any
ordinary item page, you can actually see counting down in real time the time left so you can
get your bid in exactly the right time that you want to.
>> So, you've been working with the Android platform. Is there anything in the development
process that has made it particularly easy for you?
>> ***: One thing I really like about the Android development process--and keep in mind
that we've been developing apps on mobile developments for about six or seven years
now--is the fidelity between the emulator that ships with the STK in the actual devices.
Anyone in the mobile business for more than three or four years knows that just because
you get it to work in an emulator, it doesn't mean it's going to work on the device. But
actually with Android, that's not true. I'm not sure I have seen many bugs at all that
come up only on the device and not the emulator. >> That's great. So, do you have any advice
for other developers who want to get started developing on the Android platform?
>> ***: The only advice I'd give folks who are interested in developing on the Android
is that just dive right into it. You know, it's really about--don't read manual. I mean,
actually, I don't know that Google gives you a manual. It really is about downloading the
examples source code. And it's actually using the samples as the base of your application
and just extending those samples to what you're building, and then everything just comes from
there. As long as you know Java, you're right on track at learning Android.
>> Excellent. Well, thank you Alex for coming, and enjoy the rest of the show.
>> ***: Thank you.