Jumblesale, the project discussed a few posts earlier, is also based on Rails2, and it just works.

Well, long story short, I had an idea ( once again ). I want to build a simple platform that supports especially the blogging people in selling stuff. Why blogging people? Because a modern system would best integrate there, i guess. 

I named it jumblesale, and I’m going to specify what it’s good for. The intended audience is people who occasionally find stuff they don’t have use for anymore and want to sell it, e.g. a TV-Set or an old iPod: Non-Commercial and for private use only. This is to ensure that the focus is not on competition but on selling. This is also emphasised by choosing NOT to allow auctions. I just don’t want to place my 3g-iPod on eBay for a starting bid of 1€. I want to sell it for 120€, and whoever wants to get it for that money, simply can. 

By building the system in a way that supports RESTful access, it can be easily used from outside systems and integrated into blogs, widgets and more useful places. 

I also decided that the eBay of rating sellers isn’t the best, at least not for a small marketplace. I always liked the idea of having a circle of trust, members that guarantee for each other. So each new member requires to have an invitation to sign-up, and a higher count of “friends” at jumblesale will increase ( hopefully ) the trust buyers have in a seller. There is no plan to combine it with other features of a social network, such as messaging and so on, but the friend feature is very useful in this context. Maybe conflicts may be easier resolved by a social pressure forcing a seller to act properly.

Right now I’m exchanging my thoughts on this topic with a friend of mine, Sven Pfleiderer, and we’ll maybe handle this as a project for our studies. You can read his blog here . 

Merry christmas once again!