Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Top Tip of the week: Iif you start an auction at 99p (or less), there are no insertion fees for the first 100 items a month on eBay.

So that meant that Mary and I spent a chunk of yesterday listing items we've had lying around for a while, mainly because we've upgraded or just don't need them any more, and that could go to a new home...

• A5 PC graphics tablet: Wacom PenPartner Graphics Tablet


• Webcam that becomes a digicam: Creative PC-CAM 600


• UnpoweredUSB hub: Xgene Hubsucker 7-port USB hub with suction attachment


• Presentation remote: Xgene Gogopad Bluetooth remote control with touchpad


• iPod docking station and speakers: Sharp DK-AP2(BK) Portable iPod Docking Station


• Damaged Treo 600 for parts: Orange Palm Treo 600 (broken screen)


• Spare battery for a tablet PC: Motion Computing Extended battery for LS Series


• Featurephone: Sendo D800


• Homeplug ethernet port: Phonex NeverWire 14 Powerline Homeplug Ethernet Bridge


• Featurephone: Sendo M550


• Collectable fabric keyboard (might also do for craft projects): Roll-up fabric keyboard for Orange SPV


• Use an old disk with a new PC: IDE-SATA adaptor


• Use a second old disk with a new PC: IDE-SATA adaptor


• 200GB of network attached storage and printer sharing: Linksys Etherfast Gigadrive EFG80


• Windows mobile smartphone: O2 XDA IQ


• Windows Mobile smartphone: Orange SPV M2000

A productive afternoon. Now for them all to sell!

I've put my unlocked 16GB iPhone 3G up on eBay.

Why, yes, I did get an iPhone 4 yesterday...

One of the cool things about my job is getting to meet interesting people and talking about fascinating technologies.

It probably hasn't escaped your attention that one of my favourite technologies of the moment is Adobe's Apollo (read my hefty pieces on it in upcoming issues of Web Designer and PC Plus), and today I spent some time talking to Adobe's Mike Downey about what's happening with Apollo and where Adobe sees it going (his blog is available as adobe_mdowney).

One of the things we talked about was San Dimas*, eBay's Apollo-based client application. It's a cracking piece of code, and you can now sign up to get onto the public beta when it rolls out over the next month or so. I had a play with it, and I have to say it's the most intuitive way of working with eBay I've found. It makes it easy to both sell and bid - and you can even use it with a web cam to quickly upload pictures of an item.

I'm firmly convinced that cross platform development tools like Apollo are the future of desktop applications - especially when you can convert a Flex-based server application into Apollo in less than two days (quicker for pure HTML/AJAX applications), and developers don't need to work with separate installers, windowing solutions and file systems for each OS they work with. Apollo means one code base will work on the web, on OS X, on Windows and on Linux. That's a huge saving in time and money for any development team.

When the Flash and Dreamweaver Apollo plug-ins come out later this year, things are going to get even easier - especially as you'll be able to go straight from a Photoshop illustration to an Apollo application...

Microsoft is going to have to get the .NET Micro Framework into Silverlight sharpish to even start to compete here.

*Are marypcb and I the only people to spot the Bill and Ted reference in the name?

There's one for sale on eBay...

It's one of the contestants for this year's X-Prize, and winning gets you sponsorship rights, half the the prize money, and one of the lander prototypes (in whatever state it is) when the contest is over...

Why do I get a sinking feeling when I look at this?

...may soon include William Shatner's kidney stone.

The actor says that the stone will become the “ultimate piece of Star Trek memorabilia” and he will flog it for charity.

Then again, eBay bans the sale of body parts...

Time for a little eBay pimpage...

We're selling our old sofa. It's a rather nice G-Plan piece, which you can stick together any way you want...



As always we're also selling other stuff - check out marypcb's current eBay auctions and my current eBay auctions