I was reading Peter’s comments about New Zealand company TradeMe this morning and I must admit I have had mixed experiences. In one case the seller didn’t get back to me in a timely manner so I cancelled the trade, he then proceeded to black mark me. The other couple of times I have used the site it has been very efficient for buying items.
This also reminded me that a local group have been using Ruby on Rails to build a site where you can borrow or lend items, called LetUseIt. It works on a similar principle to TradeMe as it generates revenue as a percentage of the lending fee but also includes tracking assets for insurance purposes. Having only recently gone live it will be interesting to see this site grow.