Anyone who spent time at Garner State Park in the late sixties and early seventies will enjoy this audio (90 minutes). Stream here or download.

A couple of years ago I programmed a web application in PHP called DownloadNow. The script automates the process of delivering digital products sold on Ebay.

I had just purchased the only similar product I could find at the time and found it to be practically useless because, while it did offer automated downloads of digital products sold on Ebay, a new product listing had to be entered for every new Ebay listing. Obviously this became incredibly inconvenient if you were selling the same product title over and over.

The reason for this was the script used the auction ID as the product identifier. Since there is a new auction ID for every single auction the whole system was just not very well thought out.

Anyway, the solution was apparently simple in my mind. create a system that uses the auction title as the identifier. You could then sell the same product title an unlimited number of times on Ebay without having to change a thing in the web application.

Since then I’ve made several improvements over the original version. The original used flat file data storage while the new, improved version uses mysql. It now also keeps up with who downloaded products when and how many times.

Here’s how DownloadNow works in a nutshell. When an Ebay buyer buys your product and pays with Paypal, the Paypal IPN (Instant Payment Notification) service automatically sends the buyers contact information to DownloadNow. DownloadNow then sends an email to the buyer with a password protected download link with a predetermined expiration date.

That’s it! You can sell the same product title an unlimited number of times in an unlimited number of Ebay auction this way and that will all be delivered to the buyer automatically by the script. Plus the links are password protected and expire so it is all very secure.

So if you need a surefire way to automatically deliver digital products sold on Ebay, check out DownloadNow.

1. Administrate
Administer is a word, as is administration. So we really don’t need the hybrid Administrate. Do we. Let’s all resolve to sound as intelligent as we really are and just stop saying ADMINISTRATE!

2. Orientate
Orient is a word, as is orientation. So must we realy now have this new word, ORIENTATE? So what if it did sneak into some dictionaries. Just to hear it makes my teeth hurt.

3. On the Ground
I don’t think this phrase even existed until around 2006 and, in this short time, has already been used 5.7 times more than “de facto” which outlived all usefullness in 1998.

4. Nucyeler
I know we’ll be done with this one after 2008.