Archive for April 30th, 2007

For someone who’s interested in starting a retail business, I can’t think of a more perfect incubator than eBay (EBAY - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr - Rating).
The auction site, now in its 12th year, is the world’s most robust online marketplace, serving up more than $44 billion in sales every year. Nearly a quarter of […]

PayPal today announced it has been given the Online Safety Leadership Award by the Authentication and Online Trust Alliance (AOTA). The awards recognize companies that have demonstrated a commitment to preserving and improving online safety.
The AOTA Leadership Awards were judged by a panel of experts in online safety including representatives of the AOTA Steering Committee […]

eBay warned shareholders yesterday that it is facing a possible class action suit in the state of California and is likely to be hit by more patent cases.
The suit alleges that eBay and PayPal acted “to improperly ‘monopolise’ the forms of payment that sellers can use on eBay”.
The plaintiff claims treble damages and an injunction […]

Amazon.com, the world’s largest e-tailer, is expanding a program designed to allow independent sellers - including those on eBay - to use its network of distribution centers to store and ship their products, according to a report published Friday.
The New York Times, citing Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, said the e-tailer has had the “Fulfillment by […]

Karen Dobos wants a new name.
She feels no connection to her current name (which came from her ex-husband) or to her previous name (she was Karen Paul when she graduated from Poquoson High School in 1994). So she’s ready to let a complete stranger pick her new surname.
For a price.
“The idea really came from joking […]

Leave it up to the kooks at Buffalo to come up with a strange design like this. This conference call speaker looks more like an overgrown gas mask or some sort of strange space ship than an actual useful device. But that shouldn’t take away from its functionality, right?

Fully compatible with Skype, the Buffalo BSKP-CU202 […]

Skype has announced that there have been more than 10 million downloads of Skype Extras since the Extras Manager in Skype™ 3.0 for Windows was launched in late December 2006. Extras are plug-ins written by independent third-party developers that let users expand Skype functionality and enrich their Skype conversations.
I asked Paul Amery, Director of […]

With such large markets available for eBay’s new businesses, it is not difficult to imagine a future in which eBay’s auction business no longer dominates the company. eBay sees that long-term potential, though company executives underscore that a chief objective is to “reinvigorate” the core business.
In its television ads, eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY)
describes itself as […]

Over the past couple of years, Skype has gained acceptance as one of the easiest ways to save money on long-distance phone calls, allowing users from anywhere in the world to converse for free over the internet.
This popular VoIP telephony service also allows users to make dirt cheap phone calls to landlines and mobile phones […]

The world’s biggest online auction, eBay, can seem bewildering to beginners. You can buy stuffed squirrels, rare paintings, cut-price commodities and celebrity curiosities of all kinds. But the one thing people can’t seem to find on eBay is the manual. For many first-time buyers the frustration is palpable: they just cannot seem to win an […]