Shoestring Theory

Click for larger image (where time is visible). Updated: This afternoon eBay put up a post on the Systems Announcements board that the restructuring of some categories was resulting in not everything being displayed correctly: Some items affected by last night’s category updates have not been moved to their new categories yet, which is affecting […]

The Gold Coast Bulletin in Australia is reporting that eBay will refund thousands of Australian eBayers who lost money on fake vacation packages they purchased from an eBay seller. Refunds could amount to $1 million (I would assume that’s in Australian dollars). The Bulletin originally broke the story of the holiday sales Mar. 8. GOLD […]

Forbes Small Business has an exclusive interview with Richard Brewer-Hay, who will launch a new “no-holds-barred” blog for eBay in April called “eBay Ink.” Unlike eBay’s existing blogs and forums, which focus on more traditional (and sanitized) corporate communications, eBay Ink aims to give readers a peek inside eBay’s internal operations. Brewer-Hay has pledged to […]

This was too appropriate not to post (especially given the news of the last month). Click the picture for a full size image where you can actually read the text (or go to Bunny’s site). You should go there anyway and enjoy the wonderfulness that is Bunny. Bunny is created by Huw Davies and licensed […]

Classy folks, real classy. So normally I despise the celebrity gossip/rumor mill, but this one intersected with two of my favorite sites, Wikipedia and eBay. The St. Petersburg Times is reporting: It’s war of the Web roses between St. Petersburg’s Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, and his ex-girlfriend, Rachel Marsden. She claims he dumped her […]

I had known this was coming, but eBay sent out a notification to buyers today announcing that complete user IDs will no longer be displayed on any auction format listings. Soon we will no longer display the complete user IDs of people bidding on any auction-style listing. Instead, we’ll use asterisks such as x***y to […]

Looks like eBay has agreed to fork over some money to MercExchange and finally end the long patent battle over eBay’s “Buy It Now” feature. The San Francisco Gate is reporting: As part of the agreement, eBay will buy three patents for e-commerce from its adversary, along with some additional assets. Financial terms of the […]

Many years ago, I pissed away a golden opportunity. The University of Kansas, private organizations and assorted government agencies heaped money on me to go to school (hint: NMS). Who knew, brains actually can pay off. But, being young, foolish and a little lost, I dropped out, giving up all that money. Twelve years later, […]

Dan Ariely explains why your life needs fewer options. Keeping too many options open could actually hurt you. Maintaining options in life can sap time, money and resources, explained Dr. Dan Ariely of MIT in a New York Times interview. Areily and economist Jiwoong Shin tested students at MIT with a simple computer game involving […]

Let’s play a game! What’s under the keyboard? (Note, not the actual keyboard in question.) Governments really shouldn’t use laptops. They just seem to lose, misplace or let the dang thangs get stolen a little too easily. In another privacy embarrassment for the British government, an encrypted CD with “highly confidential” government data was found […]