ebay

Regardless of what P.T. Barnum said, we can't legitimately call the buyer of this $100,000 iPhone a sucker because it was all for charity. An anonymous bidder won the phone (pictured here), the first sold at Apple's Soho store to Spike Lee, on eBay as part of the "Keep a Child Alive" auction to raise money for children suffering from AIDS in Africa.

It's not all blinged out (blung out?) like some others we've seen, but that's actually a good thing. And BornRich does say it comes with other fringes, including &… Read more

I don't know if this is wrong or just weird. A few people have put Pownce invites up on eBay (buy-it-now price is $9.95). Let me remind everyone: it's a free service. And it's in alpha testing. Just wait for it to evolve a bit and open up to more people.

If you want an invite, I just got a few more. I'll give 'em out to the first people to fill out the form below. All gone, sorry.

Auction giant eBay has launched an online classifieds service that will compete with market pioneer, Craigslist.

Kijiji, a site eBay has operated overseas for two years, is now available in about 220 cities across the United States, spokesman Hani Durzy, said Tuesday.

"We're targeting young people and young families looking for bargains locally," Durzy said. "For now it's a free service and our focus is on building the user experience."

Reached by phone, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark sounded less than worried about competing against a powerhouse like eBay.

"My take is that anything … Read more

While it was generally slim pickings for those wishing to flip iPhones for a profit over the past few days (including a would-be bulk buyer who paid $800 to buy a place at the front of the line to find purchases limited to one per customer), it appears that one lucky vendor had a worthwhile weekend on eBay.

According to the Financial Times, eBay Marketplace Research reported that a single iPhone had changed hands for a staggering $12,500. I just hope it was an 8GB model.

Source: FT.com

If you were hoping to make big bucks by reselling an iPhone on eBay, it doesn't look like it was really worth the effort.

Corey Spring has posted an analysis of iPhone listings on eBay over the weekend (spotted on Daring Fireball), and he has concluded that the average listing generated $54.43 in profit. That's not a very good return for those who waited in line for hours, or even days, in hope of flipping an iPhone for big bucks. The median return was even worse, at $34.16, which means that half of iPhone auctioneers made … Read more

Those iPhone hopefuls who had planned to avoid long lines at Apple stores by visiting AT&T stores had to get lucky to secure one yesterday, and replacements might not arrive for weeks.

Launch day for the iPhone went very smoothly at Apple's retail stores. Plenty of units were available and long lines of customers were moved swiftly in and out of the store. But 12 of 15 AT&T stores surveyed Saturday sold out of their allotments on Friday night, which ranged from 30 units to 90 units. Only one store in Chicago still had 4GB … Read more

I'm an advisor to Bungee Labs and am spending the day with the company (along with other advisors from Sun, Amazon, etc.). I'm not a developer myself, and so focus more on the community-building activities of the company, but they mentioned an incident at the eBay Developers Conference that I found fascinating.

eBay developed a new eBay Shopping Web Services WSDL. They stopped by the Bungee Labs booth and asked what the company could do with it.

By dragging and dropping components and objects, [Bungee] had a simple application running in minutes. The application had an input field to specify a search query. When you clicked the search button, the query results (item title, gallery URL, View Item URL, etc.) were displayed on the form.

Start to finish, this all took less than 20 minutes. Not bad for working with a new API. And, as [Bungee] pointed out, we never left the web browser!… Read more

PayPal launched on Friday its security key fob, a little device designed to thwart password-stealing bad guys who are out to pilfer your online payment account.

PayPal, owned by online auction behemoth eBay, says its PayPal Security Key will generate a new security code every 30 seconds, which people will enter along with their log-in and password for their eBay and PayPal accounts.

PayPal, which initially announced in January plans to increase security via a password-generating key fob, will charge $5 to PayPal and eBay account holders in the U.S. The plan will be expanded internationally.

Various versions of … Read more

As I sit here and consider how I should begin telling you about this wonderful piece of machinery, I first wonder just how great it would be to see this sucker sitting in my garage. Imagine the rush you feel in knowing that you own the fastest go-cart in the world. Not bad, if I should say so myself.

The go-cart not only features a gas turbine engine that you would find in a US Navy A7 Corsair carrier aircraft, it spews some pretty serious afterburn. With a press of the fuel injection button, followed by the ignition button, the … Read more