Automated Bid Programs: Coming to an eBay Auction Near You

[mandy]

Like many technological innovations, Piotr Tomczyk's started as a hobby.

The college student from Warsaw, Poland was a frequent buyer on Allegro, a European Internet auction similar to eBay. Tomczyk preferred to place bids in the closing seconds of an auction but he grew frustrated at losing so many bidding wars. And he was too busy to track every online auction in which he was interested.

A programmer by trade, Tomczyk decided to apply technology to the problem. In December 2001, he wrote an application to automatically place a bid in the closing seconds of an online auction...

He called the service Snip, located at http://www.snip.pl .

full press release: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/051212/phm010.html?.v=34