It’s quite possible that you may have never heard of Smokoo – don’t feel bad. I hadn’t heard of them either until a couple of weeks ago. With tons of secrecy surrounding their launch, nobody really knew what they were all about.

Well, the secret is out. Smokoo.co.za is an auction site. Yes, I see the look of boredom in your eyes. I was underwhelmed initially. Then I started looking at and using the site.

Beautiful isn’t even in it. Don’t go into this thinking that Smokoo is like BidOrBuy or eBay. Despite the similar themes, Smokoo is something the other auction sites isn’t – completely live. And it’s that live addiction that they’re hooking into and people are buying into the system and buying big.

Putting aside the aesthetics of the site, watching auctions countdown when you’ve bid on one is highly addictive, intensely enthralling and even a little fun.

The way it works is this:

1. You buy “bid credits” at the price (currently) of R5 per bid.
2. Each auction that comes up has a price per bid – a number of credits per increment of R0.01 in price. So far the price has been at 1 credit per bid but it looks like it can go up (or down) should the powers that be decide.
3. You pick an auction that you’d like to bid on from the list. A TomTom GPS, a Mercedes CLK, brand new iPhone – it’s up to you.
4. You click “place bid” and along with everyone else, you watch and wait to see if your bid was the last one. If it was, congratulations you just won your auction. Whatever the price you bid was is what you’ve just bought the item at (excl. shipping)
5. If you were not the last bidder the timer will jump up by 10 seconds and you’ll have another chance to become top of the heap.

So far, some of the items which have been sold are:

PS3 slim+GodOfWar 3 for R3.73

iPad 16GB for R10.33

There are a bunch more but you should probably go out there and take a look for yourself.

If you’d like an invite directly to the site, please leave a comment here.

Happy bidding!

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If you smile enough, nobody will notice you're dead inside.

We’ve all been there. It’s a dreary day at the office and some inconsiderate person has decided that what you’d like most out of life right now is another three projects.

You are not alone.

Of course when you’re at work you have to be all responsible and adult about everything but there’s a limit to the amount of time a sane person can spend shuffling numbers on a Cost/Profit document before there’s a real chance of depression.

Since we’d all like to keep our spirits up (and since if you’re  happy you’ll keep browsing our site) we’ve decided to provide you with a few simple tips to avoiding work (while being at work).

#5: The Tom Sawyer

Getting someone else to whitewash your fence is a pretty nifty trick even if you are an imaginary character from the 17th Century. More impressive is getting Tom from Accounts to finish up your tedious report while you mess around on the internet “researching”. There are a few techniques you can try that just might work:

• The Complimentary – Tell your co-worker that you’ve never seen someone do it as well as they can. Egos love to be stroked and there’s nothing like the sense of accomplishment (and hauteur) when you know you can do something better.
• The Payoff – So straightforward and simple, even Jackie Selebi could manage it. Simply offer to pay someone to do your work for you. Sure, it’s not the cheapest way but it’s probably the easiest. Everyone has their price and there’s no guarantee you have to actually pay once the work is done right?
  

  Always better looking when done by someone else.

Ease of use – 5/10. Reward factor – 7/10

#4: The Dedicated Worker

No sir, it's the Guterman file. Really.

Not everyone can pull this one off so it should be used sparingly and in a controlled environment to start off. Some jobs simply won’t work with this technique so it’s something of a risk. The rewards, however, can be great. If you’re lucky, you’re one of the people in this world who are blessed with a job that requires a lot of reading and you don’t have to be picky about what that is. For the rest of us, there is the internet. There are literally millions of websites dedicated to news of all sorts including entertainment, sports and politics.

With a few simple browser changes (you might want to disable flash and javascript as well) your internet experience stops being a smörgåsbord of media, images and exciting photos and reverts to being about as exciting as an Excel Spreadsheet.

The beauty? Well the content stays pretty much the same so you can get your Beyonce, Springbok or Juju fix while looking like you’re studying the corporate manual.

You might want to switch it back for when you’re actually wanting to browse though.

Ease of use – 8/10. Reward factor – 7/10

That’s it for now – more next week. And remember – use your newfound powers wisely. The most happy-go-lucky boss can turn into something of a nightmare if you’re caught slacking. Working is important and you should always get it all done… at some point.

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