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For sale: one Boeing 727 jet limo

If a Ferrari, tank or--heaven help us--a Hello Kitty Hummer limo just aren't "special" enough for you, consider this: a Boeing 727 jet limo.

You read that right. TechEBlog reports that one such item is up for auction on eBay, with a high bid of $269,900 as of this writing. (There's still time--the listing will remain open until Sunday around noon PST.)

It includes a "sunken living room with a dance floor, big screen TV, fireplace, and full bar," according to the listing, and "if you need a nap, go in the … Read more

MySpace, Skype to partner for voice function on IM client

MySpace and Skype are set to announce on Wednesday that the eBay-owned telephony client will be providing voice chat services for the News Corp.-owned social network's instant messaging client, MySpaceIM. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.

Through this deal, MySpace users will be able to link their profiles to Skype accounts, and will be able to place voice chat calls through the MySpaceIM client or the Skype client to both Skype and MySpace members--but if your MySpace profile is set to "private," you will be exempt from calls from people who aren't on … Read more

eBay wants to welcome you to its new 'neighborhood'

In an effort to create a greater sense of community, eBay on Wednesday plans to add a social-networking environment intended to bring together buyers and sellers with similar interests.

eBay Neighborhoods will allow users to post photos and reviews and offer tips and feedback in a beefed-up version of its text-based discussion forums. As of late Tuesday, there were more than 600 groups, with topics ranging from the Dallas Cowboys to crocheting to comic books. Users can also suggest new neighborhoods for creation.

Once users join a neighborhood, a My Neighborhoods function is added to the My eBay section.

The … Read more

Yahoo Mail to block fake eBay and PayPal e-mail

If you use Yahoo Mail you should be seeing a significant reduction in the number of e-mail scams purporting to be from eBay and PayPal very soon.

Yahoo will be upgrading its system beginning on Thursday with technology--dubbed "DomainKeys"--designed to block phishing spam and other fraudulent e-mails that look like they come from eBay and PayPal but don't. The system works by verifying the domain of the sender of the e-mail, allowing ISPs to block messages they deem illegitimate.

The upgrade is expected to be accomplished globally over the next several weeks.

Typically, the phishing scams … Read more

Skype = failed acquisition for eBay

eBay is planning to write down $1.4 billion in Skype-related charges, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The Internet auction giant said the charges include $530 million to complete payments related to its 2005 acquisition of Luxembourg-based Skype. The other roughly $900 million in charges reflect goodwill impairment due to "the updated long-term financial outlook for Skype."

This is too bad, since the Skype service has so much promise, and Skype could fit nicely with someone else. I never could understand the alleged synergies between the two, but now that I'm a happy Skype user, I hope … Read more

Talk about short memories--eBay's Skype experiment

Hand it to eBay's management. Despite blowing billions on one of the dumbest mergers in recent tech history, the company remains in remarkably good shape.

Maybe eBay will fess up to a nasty surprise during its third-quarter earnings call, but so far there's little evidence to suggest anything is amiss with the company's auction business. I can't say the same about the expensive chemistry experiment that was the Skype integration.

When it acquired Skype a couple of years ago, eBay argued that the pickup would help move the company beyond its core online auction business. Didn'… Read more

Old DVD-recorders selling for $1,900

DVD-recorders with hard drives may be old technology, but they're commanding astronomical prices on the free market these days. Case in point: We reviewed the Panasonic DMR-EH75V about a year and half ago when it had a list price of $500. If you search for the DMR-EH75H on Amazon, you'll see three resellers (all with reputable ratings) selling them for insane prices:

New DMR-EH75V: $1,895 New DMR-EH75V: $1,899 Used DMR-EH75V: $1,498

Is it just a glitch with Amazon? You might think so, but that's pretty clearly not the case. Jumping over to eBay, we found some recent auctions for the same product.

New Panasonic DMR-EH75V: $750 Refurbished DMR-EH75V: $675 Used DMR-EH75V: $760

Sure, that's less than half of the Amazon prices, but they're still very high. How often does the price of electronics increase after being used for a few years? What's going on here?

The answer is pretty simple--if you know the gritty details of consumer electronics and a little economics.… Read more

French woman uses eBay to fence stolen goods

A woman in the town of Pontarlier, France, saw a little boy steal some goods from a supermarket and slip out the door undetected thanks to a faulty alarm system.

That was in 2004. Nearly every day since, the woman is accused of walking out of the store with stolen goods that she later sold on auction site, eBay, according to a story in Thursday's edition of LeParisien.

Before being apprehended, the woman hauled in the equivalent of $120,000, according to the story. Some of the stuff she pilfered included video games, CDs, DVDs and razor blades.

In … Read more