UniqueAuction.com: 3G iPhones for $0.07? Not so fast...

From UniqueAuction's iPhone auction. Good luck finding a winning bid.

UniqueAuction.com has a great hook: Instead of traditional bidding, where you'd actually put up the amount of money you think an item is worth, here you can win just by bidding a price that no one else has bid. 

Moreover, every item on the site is discounted to 1% of its retail price, so if you want to get a 3G iPhone, the most you could possibly pay is $1.99 -- and if your unique bid is just $0.07, then that's all you pay!

The site also has other desirable and high-dollar items -- motorcycles, flatscreen TVs, GTA4, and even a house. 

And all you have to do is bid a dollar figure that no one else has bid!  It's sounds so easy, Bob, there's just got to be a catch!

That's right, there is.

First of all, UniqueAuction lets you see all the bids that have been submitted so far.  So for the current iPhone that's up for sale, every number from $0.01 to $1.99 has already been picked--meaning there are no more unique bids available.  When all the numbers are taken, the site awards the item to the first submitter of the highest bid with the smallest number of duplicates.  So if only 3 people bid $0.25, and every other number had 4 bidders, the first person to have bid $0.25 wins.  So if you wanted to bid on the iPhone now, there's no way you could win. 

The only chance you have is getting in the auction early to stake out one of the numbers before they're all taken.  But even if you nab the 7 cent bid before anyone else, your odds of winning are still esentially one in two hundred -- meaning you'd have to participate in 200 auctions before you ever won anything. Does that sound like it's worth your time? 

Meanwhile, the site can make a pretty penny charging bidding fees on expensive items (it costs $2 to bid on the TV, $20 to bid on the house), and ring in a trillion page views from bidders incessantly checking to see if they've won, and searching for new items to bid on when they find out they didn't.  Giving away an iPhone or two -- or even a cheap house -- is certainly a small price for luring hordes of people with the (fat) chance of a great deal.

Still and all, I think I have a pretty good shot at getting GTA4 for 43 cents... 

Here's a fun news site from Stephen Dolan at Trinity College Dublin: He's found a way to show the smallest number of Kevin Bacon steps separate any article on Wikipedia from any other. So for instance, if you want to find the shortest path between, say, the  Sweetgum tree and ball bearings, just enter them on the page and check out the results (you usually have to submit a couple of times before it works):

Sweetgum --> Glacier --> Friction --> Ball bearing ... 4 steps!

Dolan also used the algorithm to determine that the article from which any other article (on average) is the fewest number of steps away is "2007", with an average click distance of 3.45.  It's a little unfair to choose 2007 as the center of Wikipedia, though, because it's just a long list of things that happened that year, so it has a million links in it. Just so, Dolan found that the non-list article that's the closest to most other articles is "United Kingdom."

Let's test it out, shall we?  The idea is to pick a topic or person that has the least possible to do with the UK. It's tough.  My top-of-the-head attempt is the Planck Epoch.  Let's plug it in and watch...

United Kingdom --> December 7 --> Max Planck --> Planck epoch

Let's try one more: Different Strokes. 

United Kingdom --> Kosovo War --> Peacekeeper --> Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003 TV series)
--> Different Strokes ... 5 steps! And imagine, I might've had 6 if the "Peacekeepers" weren't a fictional law enforcement group in TMNT. 

Not bad, well at least we beat the average.  Can anyone find something that's 6 degrees from UK? 7? 8?

(image by Laurens van Lieshout)

OK, I guess this is a slightly misleading headline, since the article in question refers to Wii pole dancing, which as we know doesn't necessarily need to be done in the nude (just like, I suppose, you could swim with clothes on if you wanted to). 

And if you think about it, it's actually completely unclear how the banana-sized Wii controller could somehow simulate a fixed pole around which the gamer moved.

A pingpong paddle, yes. Tennis racket, sure. But how are you going to do this with this?

On a mostly unrelated note, have you seen Pure Pwnage's video of the guy who builds a robot to beat "Guitar Hero"?  It's pretty epic.

(From Pure Pwnage)

Six degrees of Wikipedia -- come and play

Here's a fun news site from Stephen Dolan at Trinity College Dublin: He's found a way to show the smallest number of Kevin Bacon steps separate any article on Wikipedia from any other. So for instance, if you want to find the shortest path between, say, the  Sweetgum tree and ball bearings, just enter them on the page and check out the results (you usually have to submit a couple of times before it works):

Sweetgum --> Glacier --> Friction --> Ball bearing ... 4 steps!

Dolan also used the algorithm to determine that the article from which any other article (on average) is the fewest number of steps away is "2007", with an average click distance of 3.45.  It's a little unfair to choose 2007 as the center of Wikipedia, though, because it's just a long list of things that happened that year, so it has a million links in it. Just so, Dolan found that the non-list article that's the closest to most other articles is "United Kingdom."

Let's test it out, shall we?  The idea is to pick a topic or person that has the least possible to do with the UK. It's tough.  My top-of-the-head attempt is the Planck Epoch.  Let's plug it in and watch...

United Kingdom --> December 7 --> Max Planck --> Planck epoch

Let's try one more: Different Strokes. 

United Kingdom --> Kosovo War --> Peacekeeper --> Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003 TV series)
--> Different Strokes ... 5 steps! And imagine, I might've had 6 if the "Peacekeepers" weren't a fictional law enforcement group in TMNT. 

Not bad, well at least we beat the average.  Can anyone find something that's 6 degrees from UK? 7? 8?

(image by Laurens van Lieshout)

OK, I guess this is a slightly misleading headline, since the article in question refers to Wii pole dancing, which as we know doesn't necessarily need to be done in the nude (just like, I suppose, you could swim with clothes on if you wanted to). 

And if you think about it, it's actually completely unclear how the banana-sized Wii controller could somehow simulate a fixed pole around which the gamer moved.

A pingpong paddle, yes. Tennis racket, sure. But how are you going to do this with this?

On a mostly unrelated note, have you seen Pure Pwnage's video of the guy who builds a robot to beat "Guitar Hero"?  It's pretty epic.

(From Pure Pwnage)

Fun with games: Wii stripping and 'Guitar Hero' robot champion

OK, I guess this is a slightly misleading headline, since the article in question refers to Wii pole dancing, which as we know doesn't necessarily need to be done in the nude (just like, I suppose, you could swim with clothes on if you wanted to). 

And if you think about it, it's actually completely unclear how the banana-sized Wii controller could somehow simulate a fixed pole around which the gamer moved.

A pingpong paddle, yes. Tennis racket, sure. But how are you going to do this with this?

On a mostly unrelated note, have you seen Pure Pwnage's video of the guy who builds a robot to beat "Guitar Hero"?  It's pretty epic.

(From Pure Pwnage)