Recently I attended a presentation given to all the major UK suppliers of ICT goods and services to schools.

While eBay was once seen solely as the world's garage sale, it is evolving into a general commerce marketplace, and that makes auction monitoring applications all the more useful. JBidwatcher, one of the best open source eBay utilities, has just released a major update. Let's take a look.

This is not an extension, but a full firefox download specially customised for use with eBay, but it is beta so be careful. It includes features such as auction alerts from within the browser, Account Guard feature re PayPal and eBay searches from the sidebar.

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts: or how the leopard can't change his spots.

eBay is not going through the happiest of times. Not only has it found it necessary to make 1000 people – 10% of its workforce – redundant, it has had to own up to a serious breach of trust with its Internet telephony program, Skype.

I don't know if you have ever seen a real penguin parade with real live penguins but they are fun to see. There is hundreds of penguins, smartly dressed up in their tuxedos, marching along. It seems that it is just a wave of black and white forms sweeping past you and it will never stop.

Is the eBay market the right role model for open source software developers looking to make money from selling support for their products?

I often find it necessary to express my inner geek side through my t-shirts. Be it in the form of my views about politics, computers, nature or just confusing tees that most people don’t know what they mean. So today I will share with you 10 of my favorite geeky linux inspired t-shirts that I own.

Online retailers have begun to flog HTC Google Android phones to Australian consumers, with the first copies having turned up on the Australian website of auction giant eBay site, although Australian telcos don't seem to have prepared for the imports.