eBay Hacks, 2nd Edition

Contributors

The following people contributed code and inspiration for some of the hacks in this book:

• Todd Larason is a C and Perl programmer currently residing in Portland, Oregon; he’s always interested in new technologies, challenges and obsessions. You can read more about his various obsessions at www.molehill.org.

• Adam Trachtenberg is the author of Upgrading to PHP 5 and coauthor of PHP Cookbook, both published by O’Reilly Media. He began using PHP in 1997 and is a frequent speaker at conferences on XML, web services, and PHP 5. Trachtenberg cofounded and served as vice president for development at two companies, Student.Com and TVGrid.Com. At both firms, he led the front-and middle-end web site design and development. He lives in San Francisco, California and at www.trachtenberg.com. He has a B.A. and an M.B.A. from Columbia University.

• Samuel L. Clemens (1835–1910) worked as a typesetter between the ages of 11 and 21, during which time he also wrote humorous travel letters for regional newspapers. He assumed the pen name “Mark Twain” (the term used on steamboats as a warning that a river’s depth is only two fathoms deep) in 1861 while writing for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, and was first made famous in 1864 by the story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” which he wrote as a reporter in San Francisco. He is best known for having written The Innocents Abroad, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and literally thousands of memorable quotes, several of which adorn the pages of this book. Despite having died 93 years before this book was written, Clemens provided immeasurable inspiration to this and many other authors.