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eBay App iSale Gets Universal Binary

by , 1:45 PM EST, February 24th, 2006

eBay auction assistance tool iSale is now a Universal Binary, thanks to the version 3.0.4 update released by developer Equinux on Friday. Distributed by Aspyr Media in the U.S., iSale pulls auction images directly from iPhoto and integrates with such Apple technologies as Spotlight, Dashboard, Automator, .Mac and more.

Other changes to the software include French and German localizations, better Amazon and eBay description imports, the ability to import Turbolister CSV files with multiple auctions and the incorporation of gallery image and supersize photos into the templates. In addition, Equinux has included more templates.

This is a free update for owners of iSale 3. The full software is US$39.95, with upgrades from pervious versions starting at $14.90. Mac OS X v10.3.9 or higher is required, with v10.4 required to use iSale's Spotlight-, Dashboard- and Automator-enabled features.


iSale

Observer Comments

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Close Name:the wedge Posts: 15 Joined: 10 May 2006
Subject: Better than nothing does not mean it's great...

I'm a Store owner on eBay. Used TurboLister until I got rid of my last PC. I though iSale would be at least as easy to use as any other i-type App. Nope. But first, the Pro which you've probably read a lot about: iLife integration. It's fairly seamless. Just like the product documentation states. Pull pictures from iPhoto. Host pics with iMac... sort of. The template feature lets you import pics all over the place, but doesn't automatically resize them to fit the little windows. Gave up on trying to figure out if there was a way to have iSale automate the process. So I stuck to "no template" style.
Another bennie was the integration with iCal and scheduled start times. Even gives you the three most popularly used of "night watch", "eBay's best" and one other one I can't recall.
Cons:
1. CUSTOMER SUPPORT IS NON-EXISTANT! I’ve written e-mail after e-mail and NEVER got a response. If you have a problem, concern or suggestion for improvement, they will not answer. It’s been over two weeks since my first question.
2. WYSIWYG editing is sophomoric at best. There’s no way to toggle back and forth to edit the WYSIWYG, then check the source code to make sure it’s what you want. You have to pick one or the other from the start.
3. When iSale is submitting the listing, some character’s aren’t recognized and replaced with question marks. Suuuure would be nice if there were some sort of warning when selecting validation before submitting to eBay. So far I’ve submitted about 45 listings and had to revise about 35 of those to correct the errors. Not what I want for a $40 piece of software. That means every time I submit a listing, I have to check and revise it in eBay (kind of defeating the purpose of this software) and edit the listing in html (also defeating the purpose of the software) which takes an extra 5 minutes chasing done one errant character in the source code.
4. The templates are not editable. A big detractor if you want to extend your listing description. Pretty much forces you to the non-template design.
5. When “updating the status” of listings, your will only get updates of auction listings, not store listings. In fact, the program provides minimum support for store owners in general. You can’t even import listings from eBay that are already at your store. Not a problem with TL.

So I kind of look at it this way. Lots of really cool capes, but most do not seem they were completely thought out, very unlike a OS X app. If you want to administer your store with this, forget it. It’s taken at least twice the amount of time I ever spent with TurboLister. My humble suggestion is either continue with TL or use Nvu and import the HTML into eBay. Both of those are free and take less time.

I hope this helps. And I hope equinux (a German company BTW) gets this and does something with it.

later

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