UsedEverywhere.com

Holiday Gifts: Do They Have to be New?

‘Tis the season for holiday shopping… I was walking through the mall the other day, looking for that perfect gift. It’s funny how, with so many stores under one roof, it’s still so tough to find that one item which you just know that certain someone will love. And then I got to thinking… does it have to be new? Does it have to come out of a store in the mall? Why not buy a used gift?

Here are some reasons why something used might actually make the perfect gift for your friends and family:

A vintage gift has memories.

Picture yourself receiving a gift from a friend. Picture the wrapping paper and bow, maybe a card. You open it up, and it’s your favourite toy from when you were a kid. You thought you would never see it again. And here it is right in your hands. And it takes you back. Now that’s a great gift. All you have to do is go on one of the UsedEverywhere.com sites and find someone selling it.

Adding a little glue and glitter can make all the difference.

Remember when you were a kid and you handmade all your Christmas gifts with finger paint and macaroni? Imperfect as they likely were, you can bet they were very valued by the receiver. Why not still create your own gifts? Find something used and give it a fresh coat of paint, add an embellishment or print a monogram on it. Give a gift with the D.I.Y. touch.

Why pay full price?

Need I say more?

It’s environmentally friendly!

By buying a used gift, you’re also giving a gift to the environment. Buying used keeps items out of landfills and also diminishes the use of all that packaging. Buying local also reduces the need for transportation and keeps those harmful emissions out of the air. Everyone wins.

Keep it in your community.

Buying something used not only results in a gift for your friend. You’ve also put your money into the hands of the seller, not a giant store. And, who knows, maybe they’ll be using that money to buy a gift for their friends or family. Now isn’t that a vision of a perfect circle in which neighbours are helping out neighbours?

Would you consider buying a used gift to give to your friends and family this season? How would you feel about receiving something used? Can you add to our list of reasons for giving used gifts? We’d love to hear your comments!

Guess: The Facebook Game

We thought we’d have a little fun and make a facebook game. Programming is fun? Well, it’s relative. Fun for the developers to make, yes. Fun for you to play, you bet!

You’ll now notice down the sidebar of our facbook page, there’s a link to the guessing game. Or, as an alternative way, you can save this link ( usedurl.com/guess ) to go their directly.

Right there. Sandwiched between Photos and Feedback.

So how do yo play?

You get a title, image & category of an ad live on one of our sites. You guess the price. Rinse and repeat. The goal is to get as close the the listed price as possible.

An Image A title, and a category - that's all you get. How much?

Which Site?

We’ve got a whole family of sites across the country so why would it pull an ad from Victoria if you live in Saskatoon, right? No worry – when you say “Yes Please” we pull in some location information from your facebook profile: the city you were born in, the city you live and the city you work. We use that to figure out which sites to pull from. That way you can be sure the ads are closest to you.

Points

For each guess, the closest you get to the listed price, and the more you guess, the more points you get. When you get the most point, you top the leader-board and have full bragging rights. ( a “na-na-na-poo-poo would be ok from time to time on our facebook wall. )

Can you beat these ladies? I Don't know. They are kicking butt!

How do you get Better?

As you guess we will start noticing patterns. Are you someone who guesses way to high, or too low? Under your history, you’ll see your last 15 guesses, which categories you guess best, your rank, plus a small recommendation.

What, I'm 12th? I think I can do better.

VS Mode

As your friends come on board and start playing, you’ll see their recent guesses under “Recent Players”. Click the title of the ad they guesses on to match your wits. You’ll find out if you beat them or not.

We keep you motivated like a drill sergeant on a rainy day

So start guessing and have fun. See if you can beat your friends. You may just be surprised how much people are selling their used stuff for.

Meatloaf Memories

In a meeting surrounded by women I was given the challenge to make meatloaf. Challenge accepted.

Why meatloaf? I haven’t had it since I left home. When I was very young I would help my mom. As I grew up it became a monthly meal that magically appeared on the table. When I left home my need for it just drifted away.

Chop

While chopping the onion, mushrooms & garlic I tried to remember why I haven’t had meatloaf since. What young adult trying to make their way in the world stops to make meatloaf? It’s not even a consideration. Who would miss it surrounded by university parties & late night cram sessions.

Saute

The onions where caramelizing nicely, the garlic was turning from kick-in-the-pants to hint-of-sweetness, and the mushrooms had soaked up the right amount of butter and salt. As as I added the corn at the end ( to thaw and mix ) I came up with another reason why I hadn’t thought of this particular meal.

It’s not romantic. Just say the word “meatloaf”. When I told my partner I was going to make her meatloaf I could see her working through the confusion of ‘why oh why?’ and ‘if he really wants to do this, I’ll support him’. It wasn’t like the time when I made crepes – that was romance.

Mix

This is when things went wrong. You see this picture to the left? You see how the meat is bubbling out of the pan (note the extra in the other pan, slightly out of focus). The pictures I saw of this stage floating around the web have the meat flat, completely in the pan.

What went wrong?

I put in the bread crumbs smashed croutons, milk, eggs, sautéed mix, and 1/3 of the glaze. I lightly mixed it all together with the meat. When it came time to put in the pan – why was there so much?

In Canada we have Metric. Most western Americanized recipes use Imperial.

1 kg = 2.2 lb

Seems in my effort to add up to 2, for my meat medley, I was adding up the wrong 2. I had now inadvertently screwed it all up making, 2 kg, or better known as 4.4lb, of meatloaf. This of course changed my timing, and the meat to mix ratio was way off.

At least my glaze turned out great.

Heat & Cook

I had missed the window to have a perfect meal ready, waiting on the table for my girlfriend when she came home. It was now 7:50pm, time to pick her up from work, without having put anything in the oven. On the counter was a raw slab waiting. The question I had was, if the originally recipe called for 1-1.5hr at 350F how long would twice as much need?

I found a message board stting it would need 2-2.5hr for 5lb. Not good. Since it was now 8:30pm that wouldn’t work. So I justified that my oven cooked on the hotter side. Plus, I had a good amount of mix that didn’t fit (remember the photo above?), so I wasn’t actually going to cook twice as much, no, it was only slightly more.

I figured 1.5hrs would be good.

I chose to cross my fingers and hope it was cooked through to eat at least by 10pm.

The Gamble Worked

It wasn’t the most disgusting thing I ever ate. My girlfriend gave it an 8.5 out of 10. Not bad accounting the slight inflation from love. I was just glad I could have dinner ready for 10pm.

After eating here’s what we decided would be good for next time (hint: she agreed that there would be a next time – also a good sign).

• Get the mix right – 2lb is 2lb. This should give more flavour to the fillings
• Glaze while cooking – I had lathered all the glaze on top before cooking. And we thought maybe a re-glaze every 10-15min would let some thicken while keeping some nice and moist
• More glaze – we’re sauce lovers so the ability to take some of the glaze after and use it as a dip or spread would have been a nice treat

Clean

Did I mention this was the mess I brought my partner home to?

Time to clean.

All Said and done

I think once I get it right, my fond memories of meatloaf just might move me to make it for my kids. Sure, I expect them to forget about it for a while. But when they hit their 30′s, or if they should have kids before then, I’ll have a little challenge waiting for them. Something to remember me by.

August: You might have missed it

August came and went in a flash so here’s a recap:

We made some changes to the site – but you didn’t like it, so we changed it again.

Social media guidelines were born

• Our approach to social media
• Guidelines for employees

Along with these, I’ve added one more: Guidelines for participants

We added two new faces to the team.

Justine

Jennifer

And something else happened?

What was it? um …

Fishing?

Maybe.

Zombies?

Possibly.

Oh, right! School.

Next up? It’s time to start thinking about those costumes.

Summer Nights are Over . . . almost.

Why get serious before the long weekend? For me, growing up in Ontario, it was that last chance for Summer Nights! Have a good long weekend and I hope you and your kids have great stories to share when everyone goes back to school.

Setting Expectations

Let’s talk expectations. What do sellers expect from buyers, and what do buyers expect from sellers?

Take a read through the following ad for a free hutch.

Update:

No I will not deliver!, if you don’t have a truck it will not fit in the trunk of your toyota tercel! No it’s not junk, it’s solid wood and is approx 200 lbs. No! I will not hold on to it to the end of the month for you! If you sent me a email sorry that I have not replied.
I did not expect 50 + emails and counting.

First person to email me that can come pick up on Thursday afternoon with a truck in Cowichan Bay. It’s yours leave me you P#.

Thanks

top of hutch, free or its going on the burn pile in the winter. Too nice to hack up as its solid wood. I have no use for it. Sam if your looking sorry.

please email

I don’t know the whole story, and I’m not here to debate tone or wether selling an ad angry is good or not. What I am wondering is, when posting an ad, do you set the expectations of buyers? Should you write down things that may be common sense or are some of the expectations only common sense to you?

Discuss!

The box stack (aka The Box Swap)

Update Aug 25, 2011: You didn’t like the change, so we’ve moved the boxes, but they are now on top of each other in one quick and easy view.

Do you see the difference?

Technically speaking, our facebook & twitter share links where on the, um, how do I put this… clunky side ( like my photoshop skills ). Both giants of social media have build very sleek on-click wonders that show counts or add your likes to your wall. While they were speeding ahead, we have these links.

No More!

The new shinny way

There’s a few things to point out.

We moved Report Ad. It’s now right beside the title. Why? Having it under “share” didn’t make sense. Beside the title seemed a great place for it.

Drawing circles on laptops are hard

We swapped the Contact Seller & Share placed the share box underneath the contact box. Why did we do this? We tried various variations of where it should all go – and at the same time not push the picture you love so much too far down. And this was the one we said… “well that works!” Because you spoke, and we listened.

Added the Contact Count. We’re opening the doors to give you ore information on how an ad is doing. How many people have contacted them, or shared their ad. Could be a good indicator of the competition, or amusement.

Ouch - I think I'm getting worse.

Hello Google +1. You could say we’re jumping onto the band wagon of all the google+ and +1 chatter. Or you could say more sharing = more exposure. More exposure = selling your items quicker. It’s up to you in how you look at it.

I think this circle is much better than the last one. What do you think?

So, again… New & Shiny vs Old & Clunky Shiny-er & New

Sharing our guidelines & approach

Since starting down our social media road, I’ve always had a sense of how things should go. And because it’s been managed by a small rag-tag team, I think we’ve done pretty well at being consistent and unified. With a little trial by fire we’ve all learned and created unwritten guidelines for ourselves. But unwritten is only good for us. It’s not good for newcomers to the team and it’s not good for friends and guests. It’s also not good for you to understand why it is we sometimes do what we do.

This is why I’ve added two new pages on our corporate site that, hopefully, will let you see the cogs working.

• Our Approach to Social Media
• Guidelines for Employees

Along with these, I’ve added one more: Guidelines for Participants

Participants? What!? Why would we want to do this? Because we moderate.

However, here’s something important I’d like you to see:

It’s the same. I’m asking we all follow the same principles.

Only through debate and discussion can we make it better – please feel free to comment.

Play it safe

Click to view full size

These are just a few indicators we’ve come across that could indicate a scam ad. Know of any other Ghosts out there to be weary of?

New Feature: Sign In

Over the next week, we’re adding “Sign In” to our sites. In those days you should see those two little words in the top right corner beside “Safety Tips” and “Help”

We’ve been testing it non stop over the past few months to make sure it doesn’t crash and burn, and so far we haven’t heard any loud noises or smelled burnt toast. We think the coast is clear.

With the Sign In we are rolling out 2 new features: The User Dashboard and Alerts

User Dashboard

The biggest thing it does is organize your ads. In one page you’ll be able to see all the ads that you’ve posted, how often they’ve been seen, and quick links to upgrade, edit, or mark as sold. No need to save all the emails or bookmark all your active ads. Just sign in; there they are.

Alerts

You are on the hunt for new patio furniture. So you look under Outdoor Furniture. But your too late. Everything has either been sold, or has someone one the way to pick it up. What can you do? On the right hand side under “My Tools” click “Email / SMS Alerts”

Fill out an email address or phone number, and see the latest ads posted. Then you’ll be notified the moment new ads are added. You’ll be sure to get the upper hand now.

For those in the UK & Austrailia – We haven’t set-up text messages for you yet – however the email notifications will still be available, so with a smart phone, you should still be able to get notified anywhere you are.

Do you have to sign in to post ads?

Nope. We know that some like the way it works right now, so why ruin a good thing?

Where is all of this going?

We don’t know for sure. We’ve got approximately 1 million and 3 ideas around the Sign In. We only have 5 people on our development team. So it’ll be one step at a time.

If you’ve got suggestions and recommendations on where we should start, post your idea on our getsatisfaction page.

When should you see it?

• Thank you PEI for helping us test this new feature. You’re up and running and your feedback has been very helpful.
• Atlantic/Prairies – you are good to go right now!
• Quebec/Ontario – your scheduled for Wednesday
• Everywhere else ( including Australia & the UK )- Monday morning. So get ready – keep you’re eyes peels and start signing in.

Once you see the “Sign In” you’ll also be able to read more details in your help section.