Roddenberry's Apple Macintosh Plus Up For Auction

The first Apple Macintosh Plus to roll off the assembly table, serial number F4200NUM0001, was apparently given as a gift to Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. While no one knows whether or not he used the little mac to create any of his works, the machine is being offered for auction on October 8th and 9th. The auctioneer, Profiles in History, is expecting to fetch between $800 and $1200 but if the buzz is any indication I'd expect to see it go much higher.

cnet's Technically Incorrect blog

Canadian Government To Auction Surplus And Seized Goods Online

The Public Works Department of the Canadian government is busy building an online auction site, similar to e-bay, that will offer every Canadian the chance to bid on surplus and seized goods such as vehicles, office furniture, boats, computers, tools and hundreds of other items.

“The addition of a real-time online bidding system would reach a broader range of buyers, open up the bidding process which could result in higher sale prices and returns for clients,” said the report.

“We found that a system where the bid amounts are visible and not sealed, and that enabled potential purchasers to bid as the amount changed during the bidding, could generate increased sale prices and more revenue.”

According to an internal study obtained by The Canadian Press, under the federal Access to Information Act.

Source: The Globe And Mail

Sensitive US Military Items Offered For Sale Online

A report by the US Government Accountability Office says that investigators were able to purchase a dozen prohibited military items on popular online selling sites eBay and Craigslist. Components for the retired F-14 fighter jet, night vision goggles that allow the user to identify U.S. troops at night, army combat uniforms were among the items purchased, and special "enhanced" body armor vests. "Do we have a serious theft problem, or do we not even know if we have the ability to know we have a serious theft problem?" asks Rep. Chris Shays. Craigslist says they rely on users to police the site but eBay representatives say "We created prohibited and restricted items policies and built tools using state-of-the-art technology to enforce those policies" The fact remains that items can be purchased. CNN has the story.

Twitter Account For Sale On eBay?

Andrew Baron, of Rocketboom fame, has posted his twitter account complete with 1400+ followers for sale on eBay! As I write this, the current bid is $465 US and the fall out has begun with a few comments added to the Twitter support forum calling into question whether or not this is a violation of the Terms of Service. According to that page "Twitter is here! 10 employees are listening and participating" so I encourage you to weigh in on the debate if you feel strongly one way or the other. I am not personally following Andrew and would promptly un-follow him if I where. I thought about following him when I read this, only as a means to follow the auction, but out of principle have decided not the encourage his actions by adding more followers to the account. I'll be watching though, if only to see how this affects the followers and primarily to see what Twitter's response will be.

EBay Lowering Listing Fees

EBay is hungry for more listings and is being challenged by other e-commerce sites, so in response has announced that listing fees will be dropping by as much as 50% on February 20th in the US. To counter this and offset the lost revenues, sellers will be paying higher commissions on items that are sold. The biggest change is for items selling for less than $25, the commission on these items will be raised to 8.75%. Numbers released by EBay last week indicate that fourth quarter listings rose by 4 percent and the number of people actively using the site rose just 2 percent from a year ago. Perhaps the economy has something to do with that, but then again you might expect that listings would be raising during hard economic times...

EBay press release.

Famous Yeti footprint photo sold at Christie's auction

boingboing is reporting that a famous photo of an alleged Yeti footprint was sold at auction in London for £3,500. The photo reportedly taken by Eric Earle Shipton in the Himalayas in 1951, shows a print above an ice axe that was positioned for scale / comparison. Link to the Christie's lot here.