04/01, 5:13am
Offered better deals than official refurb outlet
An eBay store that sold refurbished Apple products -- seemingly with Apple's blessing -- at prices equal to or below those of Apple's own refurbished store has been closed, at least temporarily. The store, which sold officially-refurbished Apple products under the seller name "refurbished_outlet" (a long-standing power seller on eBay) now has no products listed after zeroing out all inventory sometime Saturday. The store gained notoriety by selling some items below normal refurb prices, offering a PayPal option, and avoiding taxes in some states.
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03/31, 3:28pm
EBay forecasts $23.5 billion revenues in two years
EBay has a bright outlook on its future, as its most recent sales forecast has topped even Wall Street analysts' estimates. The Internet auction site, which is increasingly positioning itself as a retail outlet, estimates that its total volume of merchandise sold will hit $110 billion by the year 2015. EBay also sees a significant portion of its growth coming from developing markets.
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03/08, 2:53pm
Discounts up to $50 available on iPads, iPods
At its eBay refurb store, Apple is now selling the 13.3-inch MacBook Air for $899 -- $100 less than the price of a similarly refurbished model at the official online Apple store, AppleInsider notes. Other products are also getting unusual deals, such as 32 and 64GB iPod touches, which are going for $179 and $229 -- $30 and $50 off Apple's normal refurb costs. Verizon models of the iPad 2 are listed at $429 for 32GB and $529 for 64GB, in each case $50 less than normal.
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02/04, 2:54pm
Companies can require addresses, phone numbers in California
Apple and other online retailers aren't breaking state law by requiring people to submit their address and phone number when making credit card payments, the California Supreme Court has ruled. The decision at least temporarily ends a proposed class action brought by David Krescent, who charged that Apple should not be able to require the extra information for iTunes purchases. Reuters reports that eBay and Walmart submitted briefs in support of Apple.
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10/17, 6:54pm
PayPal account and eBay user growth accelerating
The last quarter brought significant year-over-year revenue gains for eBay, the online marketplace reported today, with an improvement of 15 percent over the same quarter last year. The third quarter of this year saw eBay pull in $3.40 billion in revenues, up slightly from $3.39 billion for the second quarter, but a significant jump from 2011, when the company pulled in $2.97 billion. The company saw acceleration in the growth of its PayPal accounts and eBay user counts as well, and it raised its full year guidance.
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09/20, 12:00pm
Must-have tech for the savvy jetsetter
If you're a gadget addict and a jet-setter, you probably already know you're living in something of a golden age for both of your big interests. Travel has become cheap and easy; meanwhile mobile technologies have advanced to the point that one can bring a staggering range of gadgets on the road without breaking the bank or breaking one's back lugging them around. Still, there is a wide range of devices out there, and it can be hard to know what to choose for the best travel gadget setup. Electronista has your back, though: and we've tracked down the best gadgets to rig yourself out with for the open road, the train station, the air terminal, and all parts in between.
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08/06, 11:43am
Partners with retail businesses for San Francisco orders
Auction site eBay is experimenting with same-day delivery through its new mobile app. The eBay Now beta app for iOS now lists the same-day delivery option for $5, though the service is limited to San Francisco and orders in excess of $25. E-mail invitations have been sent out, and beta users will gain both a $15 discount on their first purchase and free delivery on the first three orders.
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08/03, 6:20pm
User's eBay account used same password as lost Yahoo data
A Yahoo Voices user from New Hampshire is suing the search engine for the compromise of his eBay account as a result of a hacker intrusion. Jeff Allan is suing the crowd-sourced question-and-answer service in California court for improper personal information safeguards, and is seeking compensation for himself and other users affected by the loss of over 400,000 users' data, which included emails addresses and unencrypted passwords on July 11.
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07/25, 4:30pm
Internet Association is formed by four web giants to help lobby in Washington
Four giants in the tech and Internet world have banned together to form the Internet Association. It's meant to be a lobbying group that is dedicated to advancing public policy solutions and protect an open, innovative, and free Internet. Heading up the group will be the one-time Deputy Staff Director to the US House Energy and Commerce Committee Michael Beckerman.
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05/18, 1:05pm
Historic predecessor of Commodore PET
A MOS Kim-1 single-board computer, originally released 36 years ago in kit form for $245, recently sold on eBay for $1,550. Following the acquisition of MOS by Commodore International, the historic computer became the basis of the Commodore PET.
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05/03, 2:00pm
eBay app gets redesigned interface, requested features
eBay has released an overhauled iPad app, bringing it to v2.0.0. The app now supports the Retina display on the third-generation iPad, but also has a new interface, for instance featuring a customizable homescreen. Several user-requested features have been added, such as better search, a Back button, and the ability to revise listings.
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03/09, 8:05pm
Plans added services beyond traditional payments
In February, PayPal provided new details on how it planned to roll out its in-store payment services. The subsidiary of eBay plans to demonstrate at the SXSW conference in Austin how it hopes to distinguish its consumer-side digital wallet service from the competition, including Google Wallet and Isis. PayPal hopes to expand its attractiveness by offering more payment flexibility, generating wish lists, and providing greater account control.
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03/09, 11:35am
eBay offers guaranteed trade-in value
Following the iPad keynote on Wednesday, SquareTrade has announced that it will be offering an $89 Accident Protection Plan for the latest generation iPad. The 2-year iPad service, which provides coverage against iPad drops, spills and general accidents, includes free express shipping to and from SquareTrade's depots, with most repairs taking less than 48 hours. Users also have the choice of taking their device to a local Apple Genius Bar, with SquareTrade reimbursing the repair costs.
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02/09, 11:40pm
Eolas sees web patent lawsuit claim tossed
Eolas' attempt to patent the "interactive web" may have been dealt a permanent blow after a jury in the normally patent lawsuit-friendly town of Tyler, Texas ruled that the patent was invalid. The decision negated both any attempts at claiming damages and also negated three future trials. The rejection came in part after testimony from the spiritual creator of the web, Tim Berners-Lee, as well as individual creators whose work predated that of Eolas owner Michael Doyle.
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02/06, 2:50pm
PayPal mission not fazed by CEO departure
Despite the abrupt leaving of its CEO in January, PayPal is unfazed in its mission to make money off in-store payments, AllThingsD learned. Owned by eBay, the outfit had a number of demonstration set-ups of a grocery store, hardware store, and clothing store. In the San Jose area, PayPal has working registers set up in numerous Home Depot locations as part of a pilot program.
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02/03, 2:40pm
Motorola Woot auction slips Xooms with user info
Motorola has started up a return program after a minor but still significant privacy gaffe during a Woot auction. About 100 of 6,200 refurbished Xoom Wi-Fi tablets sold during auctions between October and December are believed to have still had some private data stored inside. These could have included anything from account logins through to personal files, Motorola said.
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01/27, 12:15pm
HP TouchPad up for sale again for 220 at Woot
Despite being discontinued, HP's TouchPad tablet is up for sale again, at Woot. It's a refurbished 32GB model, priced at $220, or about $70 more than the last refurbished 32GB TouchPads sold on eBay. Shipping is a much more manageable $5 for the new sale, however.
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01/05, 4:40pm
Will beat out Schmidt, other tech leaders
Apple CEO Tim Cook may be about to vastly increase his personal wealth, notes an executive compensation tracking firm, Equilar. Parts of two separate restricted stock unit grants belonging to Cook are vesting in the current quarter. Based on Apple's closing stock price on December 30th, the shares are estimated to be worth about $96.2 million.
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01/04, 9:45am
Yahoo settles on permanent CEO from eBay division
Yahoo confirmed rumors Wednesday and picked PayPal president Scott Thompson as its new CEO. The nomination of the eBay division head followed months of uncertainty at the company following the firing of Carol Bartz in September. Thompson takes the position January 9.
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12/28, 4:00pm
Modded GameCube available on eBay for $950
A modder who calls himself Slipstream has breathed new life into the 10-year old GameCube home console from Nintendo through a portable hack. He calls his creation the Sly Cube, and it includes a seven-inch LCD flip screen. The integrated 7.2V, 600mAH battery is said to provide between three and four hours of play time.
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12/22, 11:35pm
Apple helped by Black Friday, iTunes shopping
Early holiday shopping helped push Apple past some of the largest stores online for visitors, comScore said Thursday. Apple's website and iTunes combined got over 79.2 million unique visitors in November, large enough to push it past eBay (72.1 million) and even retail giant Walmart (58.5 million). Other major shopping sites it eclipsed included Best Buy (36.5 million) and Sears (31 million).
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12/22, 4:25pm
Google to pay $300m per year in Mozilla deal
When Google and Mozilla renewed their search royalty deal earlier this week, they didn't reveal that Google will pay $300 million per year, AllThingsD learned. For this amount of money, Google will be the default search engine in Mozilla's Firefox browser. The numbers are a sharp increase from the previous arrangement because of the new competition from Yahoo and Microsoft.
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12/12, 11:55am
HP offered just 7,850 refurbished TouchPads
This weekend's eBay TouchPad sale saw 7,850 of the refurbished devices find buyers, which is all the stock HP had on hand. The 16GB eBay listing saw 2,316 sales, priced at $99, while the 32GB model sold 5,534 units at $149. All were sold in less than 25 minutes, making eBay and PayPal work much slower and return a number of errors and unsuccessful transactions.
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12/03, 2:45pm
HP TouchPad Go goes up for very rare auction
HP's unreleased TouchPad Go has surfaced in a very rare eBay auction. The 32GB, 3G model is being sold from China and may have been one of the few if any devices that was fully completed but didn't reach stores. Apart from cosmetic wear, it's fully functional and is running a version of webOS optimized for the seven-inch screen.
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11/21, 12:00pm
Hunch to bring recommendations to eBay auctions
eBay has purchased Hunch, a data analysis firm, in an attempt to improve recommendations for its web-based store. Hunch founders Chris Dixon, Tom Pinckney, and Matt Gattis will stay at eBay in New York, said a Thursday report. Financial details weren't revealed.
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10/05, 1:00pm
eBay pegs iPhone 4 at up to $357
Some vendors have begun special trade-in promotions in the wake of yesterday's iPhone 4S announcement. Chief among these is eBay, which has launched an Instant Sale promotion that ends at 11:59PM Pacific time on Wednesday. The auction site is offering up to $357.50 for a 32GB AT&T iPhone 4, or $318.50 for an equivalent Verizon model. 16GB capacities can fetch as much as $325.50 or $297.75, respectively.
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10/04, 1:35pm
Standalone mini-store in Tribeca for 3 months
PayPal will open a popup store in the trendy Tribeca neighborhood in Manhattan to showcase its point-of-sale features. PayPal will invite local merchants to visit the store, located at 174 Hudson, to see real-time demos of the company's payment processing technology for bricks and mortar stores. The store also features a QR code on the storefront window so pedestrians can learn more about the new payment options. In addition to handling payments, PayPal's new system is expected to allow consumers to check inventory in real-time, and provide location-aware and in-store offers from stores.
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09/22, 10:35pm
Apple backs DDP calls for warrant-based searching
Apple and Dropbox took rare political stances Thursday by joining Digital Due Process. The coalition, which includes technology firms like Comcast and eBay as well as the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation, is primarily interested in toughening laws barring law enforcement from snooping on computers and mobile devices without a warrant. Recent campaigns have focused on modernizing the ECPA (Electronic Communications Privacy Act), a 1986 bill that doesn't account for many modern Internet components.
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09/22, 4:20pm
HP drops Apotheker after tumult over mobile, PCs
HP confirmed rumors and fired CEO Leo Apotheker after just 11 months on the job. The exit is absolute and sees him exit both the CEO and president spots as well as resign as a board member. Former eBay head and HP board member Meg Whitman in turn has been chosen as a permanent CEO and president replacement, effective immediately.
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09/22, 1:35pm
HP said dropping CEOs almost immediately
HP may be ready to fire Leo Apotheker as soon as Thursday, more than one source claimed at mid day. The tip to AllThingsD had the 11-month CEO out and replaced by former eBay head Meg Whitman after the stock market closes, between 4PM and 4:30PM Eastern. Whitman would be a permanent replacement and not the interim hire some had expected.
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09/21, 12:35pm
HP board may vote to fire Apotheker early
HP's board of directors is near holding a meeting that could fire its CEO Leo Apotheker less than a year into his stint, a pair of sources said Wednesday. The group is said by Bloomberg to be unhappy both with nine months of consecutive forecast drops and plans to drop mobile hardware and PCs. Under one proposal, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman would take over, at least temporarily.
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09/19, 4:20pm
Windows 8 dev tablet eBay bid up to $2,700
A few of the more than 5,000 Samsung Windows 8 developer tablets given out to the attendees of last week's Build conference have now shown up for sale on eBay. The prices on the auction site have reached as high as $2,700. Based on the Slate PC 7, the device gets some detailed changes.
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09/13, 7:45pm
eBay denies wrongdoing
Prosecutors are reportedly investigating a number of eBay employees to determine if the online auction company broke any laws as it built a classifieds system to compete with Craigslist. The move is the latest chapter in an ongoing dispute between both companies, which centers around eBay's actions after it bought a stake in Craigslist.
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09/06, 7:45pm
Framed original receipt also included
Nearly 15 years ago, Apple released the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, known ever since as the TAM. It was the first major project at Apple of a promising young designer named Jonathan Ive, but despite offering many of the design ideas and technologies that would define Macs for years to come, it didn't do well as only sold around 11,600 units. A rare "new in box" TAM has now appeared on Ebay, the machine and accessories having never been used.
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08/30, 9:15pm
Company stopped Ebay sale of modded model
A modified MacBook Pro with a built-in SIM card slot and a raisable 3G antenna that showed up on Ebay three weeks ago will soon be back in Apple's hands, CNet is reporting. A North Carolina man, who originally bought the item for parts from a listing on Craigslist for parts, had his Ebay attempt to sell off the machine stopped by Apple, who are now in touch with him to arrange its return, despite bids as high as $70,000 before the auction was pulled.
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08/15, 4:45pm
Special Xperia Play from Mojang up on eBay
Mojang, the developer of Minecraft, is selling a limited edition Xperia Play smartphone on eBay, with the 50th bid up to $1,250 at time of writing. More versions of the device are expected to be given away to winners at the upcoming GamesCom show in Germany. The handset differs from run-of-the-mill devices only with its Minecraft-themed paintjob.
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08/14, 12:20pm
Auction shows Apple had tested 3G MacBook Pro
A still-ongoing eBay auction has validated suspicions that Apple has been testing 3G-capable Macs for years. The 2007-era MacBook Pro prototype, originally bought off of Craigslist for parts, has a built-in Dynastream ANT2USB modem modified to fit in the aluminum chassis. It includes not just the necessary SIM card slot for the HSPA 3G access but a retractable antenna that would sit flush with one corner of the display.
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07/13, 2:55pm
Paypal demonstrates NFC payments on Nexus S
PayPal at the the Mobile Beat 2011 conference in San Francisco Wednesday showed off its first Near Field Communications (NFC) widget for Android-powered devices. During a demonstration, funds were transferred simply by running the widget and tapping two Nexus S phones together. The new PayPal NFC widget lets users send or receive money. Holding phones together until they buzz, then entering a PayPal password or mobile PIN is all that's required to complete the transfer.
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07/07, 11:45am
eBay buy of Zong expected to end by end of summer
Auction website eBay on Thursday revealed it bought mobile payment provider Zong for $240 million. It did so to reach four billion cell phone users as it already has PayPal for browser-based auction payments. Zong allows users to pay for their eBay purchases through their monthly cell phone bill.
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05/27, 2:25pm
Google to fight PayPal trade secret lawsuit
Google in a statement Friday afternoon planned to fight back against the eBay and PayPal lawsuit accusing it of stealing employees and trade secrets for Google Wallet. The company insisted that it would "respect trade secrets." It went on to argue that the staffers, Osama Bedier and Stephanie Tilenius, had the right to leave for another company since experience was vital to moving up in the technology industry.
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05/26, 10:30pm
eBay and PayPal sue Google over trade secrets
eBay and its payment wing PayPal immediately followed up the launch of Google Wallet by suing Google and two executives for allegedly stealing trade secrets to help create the mobile payment technology. The online auction house accused Google's Wallet project lead Osama Bedier of feeding confidential PayPal information to Google to help it create the NFC mobile payment system and of making former eBay executive Stephanie Tilenius break a contract by having her join Google as its VP of commerce in February 2010, a month before she finished a consulting contract with eBay that had followed her exit from full-time work. Bedier also supposedly tried to poach PayPal employees while he was at Google.
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05/13, 3:30pm
France to hold tech summit on May 24-25
The French government said Friday that it will hold a summit where big presences on the Internet such as Amazon, Facebook and Google will debate how countries can bring innovation to the web. The forum will be held on May 24 and 25 in Paris and is a part of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's plans. In attendance will be Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos.
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04/15, 4:55pm
Supreme Court hearing tech patent validity case
The US Supreme Court at a session on Monday will hear Microsoft call to change patent law in a way that could help both the Windows developer and many other technology firms fend off patent troll lawsuits. The motion will attempt to change a rule that requires a defending company provide absolute, definitive evidence that a patent is invalid in order to avoid a guilty verdict. Under Microsoft's proposal, courts could invalidate patents only by requiring that the majority of evidence supports rejecting the patent.
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03/31, 11:45am
Biggest export destinations were Russia, Canada
Just about 12,000 iPad 2s were auctioned on eBay in the span between the tablet's March 11th US launch and an international launch on March 25th, according to data published by the website. Particularly significant is that about 65 percent of units sold -- almost 8,000 -- went to buyers in the US. The ratio is well above that of 35 percent for the iPad 1 in 2010.
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03/31, 10:25am
Search, advertising essential part of complaint
A firm called H-W Technology has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against 32 different high-tech companies, reports say. Targeted corporations include the likes of Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia and RIM. H-W's complaint specifically revolves around a single patent awarded in April 2009, dubbed Internet Protocol Phone with Search and Advertising Capability.
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03/29, 9:30am
Prices go as high as $1,000 over original cost
Tickets for WWDC 2011 are already appearing on eBay, accounts say. One ticket on auction is currently priced at about $3,150, nearly double the $1,599 originally asked by Apple. Another is valued at $2,500 after 12 bids, despite there being over nine days left before the auction closes.
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03/10, 3:10pm
MasterObjects sues Amazon for patents in search
Amazon.com has been sued for allegedly infringing on a patent in its instant search suggestions. The plaintiff is MasterObjects, which offers Ajax and Flash-based software that automatically posts search suggestions before users even finish typing their queries. Amazon uses such a function in its browser, add-ons and toolbars, as well as mobile apps.
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03/03, 12:35pm
Cites doubled profits, iPad 2 event
For a fourth year in a row, Fortune has once again identified Apple as its Most Admired company in the world. Apple has an overall score of 8.16. "The company's blistering pace of new product releases has continued to set the bar high for tech companies across the board," Fortune writes.
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03/01, 10:35am
Nook Color down to $199 on eBay with coupon
Barnes & Noble has began selling the Nook Color e-book reader on its eBay store. The device is priced at just $199 after a $50 coupon is applied that's freely available on the listing. This is $50 less than the device trades for on Barnes & Noble's own website and in its stores.
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12/28, 9:15pm
Interval resubmits dismissed lawsuit
Interval Licensing took a second shot at its dismissed lawsuit with an updated filing. The Paul Allen-owned company's new complaint still accuses Apple, Facebook, Google, Netflix and others of infringing on e-commerce patents but now includes specific, claimed examples of how the companies allegedly copied Interval's technology. In Apple's case, Interval cited the iTunes Store's album purchasing view (pictured) as a primary example.
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