Greetings,

I’ve put up the latest version, 1.0.2 of JBidwatcher. It incorporates fixes for all the issues that have plagued JBidwatcher over the last 3 weeks, and several more besides.

More information is available on the the JBidwatcher homepage, and will be available in the JBidwatcher 1.0.2 changelog when I get around to writing it. :)

• Windows executable
  No installation necessary; just download and run!
• Mac OS X app.tar.gz
  Download (it’ll automatically decompress) and double-click the .tar file to extract the Application.
• The Java binary is available for any other platform, including Linux and Solaris.
  Launch with: java -Xmx512m -jar JBidWatcher-1.0.1.jar
• The source is available for you to build it for yourself, also.

As always, best of luck with your auctions!

— Morgan Schweers, CyberFOX!

In just a very short time, looks like eBay made changes once again that won’t allow auctions to be added. I get the message “Cannot add auction http://cgi.ebay.com/……, either invalid or communication error talking to server.” Drats! And I just wanted to thank you for all the hard work in developing such a friggin’ awesome program.

Greetings,

Well, first I would ask that you check what version of JBidwatcher you’re running, by opening up the Help | About screen, and looking in the upper left, next to the image, to see if it’s 1.0.2, because that’s exactly the 1.0.1 error.

I’m not seeing that error, loading auctions… I notice you removed the actual URL that you had an issue with. I nearly always need specific auction numbers that fail to try and replicate the problem.

— Morgan Schweers, Cyber*FOX*!

I just had an auction fail Morgan. The snipe value was way over the final closing price, and the message was that the auction could not be bid on anymore because the auction had closed:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170137709249

Currently: $86.03 (5 Bids)
High Bidder: koolu01
Your max bid: $128.99
Shipping: $18.00
Seller: aztool-jerry
Listing ended at: Thu Aug 16 13:00:00 CDT 2007
Listing is ended.
Events
Thu Aug 16 12:42:48 CDT 2007: Failed to load from server! (1)
Thu Aug 16 12:58:27 CDT 2007: Preparing snipe. (1)
Thu Aug 16 13:00:27 CDT 2007: Firing actual snipe. (1)
Thu Aug 16 13:00:27 CDT 2007: Snipe apparently failed, as the auction cannot be bid on anymore: USED KO LEE B947 TAP GRINDING FIXTURE 806 (1)

Greetings,

Thu Aug 16 13:00:27 CDT 2007: Firing actual snipe. (1)

This looks like JBidwatcher thought your system clock was incorrect (a little fast) by at least 30 seconds, probably more like 60, since the end time of the listing was 27 seconds before that. It’s possible it was wrong, or that your system clock corrected between when it last determined that, and the snipe time. JBidwatcher tries really hard to adjust for clock skew, but it’s not perfect.

— Morgan Schweers, Cyber*FOX*!

Wow, I’ve been using JBidWatcher for years, and never had that problem before. I’ve got my Windows XP desktop synchronized with one of the internet atomic time clocks (time.windows.com) once an hour, and my snipe delay is 5 seconds…

Just a coincidence that this happened with JBidWatcher 1.0.2?

Greetings,

Hrm… If your clock is regularly synchronized to a time clock, it really shouldn’t happen, unless eBay’s clocks are messed up (which I saw once, but not often since then).

Go to Servers | Time Information, and post what it shows… It won’t tell us what the time delta at the point of bidding was, but it’ll tell us how much difference JBidwatcher thinks there is now.

Also, do you know when the time synchronization happens?

— Morgan Schweers, Cyber*FOX*!

Hi Morgan,

I’m not sure how to interpret the results of the Time Information Window:

Current time: Thu Aug 16 17:32:02 CDT 2007
Page load time: 608
eBay Time delta: 6641

I’m guessing that’s in milliseconds, so the clock delta in 6.6 seconds?
I’ve got the atomic clock synchronization scheduled for the top of the hour, each hour.

Greetings,

Page load time: 608
eBay Time delta: 6641

Right; this is in ms, so it’s about a 7.2 second difference (including network latency) between your computer and eBay. That tells me that either eBay or your computer are sliding a lot more than they should be, because if you’re synched to a time server, and eBay is as well, then you and eBay should be nearly dead-on.

So here’s the way it probably played out. Your computer’s clock was behind by about 30 seconds. JBidwatcher determined the time delta was around 30 seconds with latency, and so scheduled the snipe to occur at 13:00:27, because in eBay time that’d have been 12:59:54 (giving enough time for the bid submission to occur). Your computer hit what it thought of as 13:00:00, did a time-resynchronize, corrected the time (which was probably fast), and when 13:00:27 actually rolled around, it was the real 13:00:27, and the auction had been over for 27 seconds.

The combination has more to do with the pre-snipe and snipe events bracketing the time synch operation, than 1.0.2. It’s something you really shouldn’t run into very often, first because it means your clock lost more than 27 seconds in an hour, and second because auctions aren’t often listed precisely at the hour.

…

I don’t offhand know how to fix this. If your computer’s clock drifts and is corrected while JBidwatcher is trying to place it’s bid, I’m really not sure what JBidwatcher can do… :(

I’ll think on it for a bit, but I’m pretty confident it’s a rare problem.

While I do that, you should also probably look into why your clock skews so quickly; most people only need to synchronize time once a week or once a month. Once an hour is…a lot.

— Morgan Schweers, Cyber*FOX*!

Hi Morgan,
as jacob said aswell, I think ebay has once again changed something. I am unable to update auctions already in the sniper and it is not possible to add new auctions to the program.
When I select “show information” I see this:
Events
Fri Aug 17 10:23:34 CEST 2007: Failed to load from server! (16)

I am using the latest version of your program.

Regards

I’ve reverted back to an old version JBidWatcher-1.0.1.1.jar which still seems to be working ok. Updates fine, able to add new auctions ok, not tested sniping yet.

Steve

Who can sent me 1.0.1.1 for macOSX?
Martin

Yes they’ve changed their title format again. JBW will need its properties file updated. If you have CVS you can recompile a working version by including this fix . It’s a simple configuration change so I would expect Morgan to release an automatic update later today.

tested JBidWatcher-1.0.1.jar (that is not 1.0.1.1, I guess??), didn’t work, red eyes (not just from weeping again … )
I read this morning, ebay announced an update from 7:00-11:00 today in Germany, this is probably to be made responsible

please, give an adress for a binary download, pleeeehhheeeease :)

The Windows version with file name JBidWatcher-1.0.1.1.jar works fine for me. For some reason this version seems very resilient. As far as I know, it’s been working fine throughout all of eBay’s recent changes.

Steve

.. nice to read, but where could I get it ? (the jar is platform independent, isn’t it?)

Hi, update works great!

Just unpack with Winrar (its zipped) into an folder. Open jbidwatcher.properties with e.g. Textpad on win. Open the above linked textfile with textpad in another tab, too. copy the two lines which changed over old ones and zip it and rename to .jar and everything works!

great response time!!!

Morgan, you are the greatest!!!

regards,
Stefan

So, am I the only one who is beginning to think that these ebay updates are being done just to break sniping programs? Ebay knows the sniping programs cut into their profits, so it would be really easy for them to intentionally break JBidwatcher by just inserting minor editorial changes in the page format. It could be done on a cron script… play the floating “ebay” word game! It’s here! it’s there! it’s everywhere! … Then it isn’t.

Seriously, the format of an ebay page matters very little to ebay. Just so long as it looks good. If they chose to, they could make Morgan’s, and our lives really frustrating.

Perhaps it is time to develop a more AI approach to the page scraping?

-Chuck

Greetings,

If you’re having trouble with 1.0.2, go to the ‘File’ menu, and choose ‘Check for Updates’. It’ll tell you there are no new updates, but it will have silently loaded the two new strings for the matching code.

Your auctions should immediately start updating again.

Thanks to Laurence Passmore again, for the fix. I took his patch, and just put it (pretty much) straight into the update file, and it worked.

— Morgan Schweers, Cyber*FOX*!

Was having the Red Eye issue this morning, but the strings update worked great for me on WinXP. Thanks Laurence and Morgan!

Works great for me Mac OSX 10.4.10, I’ll have to donate again, cheers !

Greetings,

I should note that also just restarting will usually resolve it, as JBidwatcher is set to look for updates on restart and about once a day (so long-running JBidwatcher’s will pick it up over the next day even w/o manually checking for updates). Also any new users will pick up the changes automatically during their first run.

A capability I put in specifically for circumstances like this… :)

Best of luck with your auctions!

— Morgan Schweers, CyberFOX!

Alas, the “silent” updating described above appears not to work as outlined (for me, at least) on OS X 10.4.10 … is there some hidden trick to it? ‘File’->‘Check for Updates’, as there appears to be no noticeable end result here.

Well, a CVS checkout at 1330h PDT, is still giving me the
“can not add auction error”. And of course there are no updates.
This is on A Debian Sid machine, Sun java.

As Morgan stated earlier: “If you’re having trouble with 1.0.2, go to the ‘File’ menu, and choose ‘Check for Updates’.” Restarting JBW will also cause it to automatically retrieve the update (assuming you have ticked the “Allow live configuration updates” option).