More eBay Cautionary Tales

When the fraud was discovered, eBay deleted the listing, which denied Arnold the opportunity to extend a "second chance" offer to legitimate bidders. (EBay allows sellers to give losing bidders a chance to buy an item after the conclusion of an auction in which the item didn't sell. But when eBay deletes a listing, it's as if it never existed. So there's no way to send legitimate bidders a second-chance offer.)

"EBay has to do something about this, other than removing the listing," Arnold writes. "It makes bidders more unlikely to bid again on your auction because eBay does not give a reason to the bidders for having removed the auction. EBay should monitor older, unused accounts for, and protect from, this type of fraud."

Here's eBay's response to its practice of removing listings that end in a fraudulent purchase, repeated from my earlier column on this topic: "The current process where we cancel the listing is optimized around immediately refunding the seller's full fees (listing fee and final value fee). We realize that this solution can also have its drawbacks--specifically the inconvenience to the seller of having their listing removed and also the inability to offer Second Chance Offers to any underbidders, which is why eBay is always looking for ways to improve its services to its users."

Jason Snell of our sibling publication Macworld has somefirst impressionsof Apple's new MacBook Air ultraportable (which starts at $1799). Apple's latest bit of magic brings "incredibly small size to the MacBook line at a premium price," says Snell. He appreciates the little laptop's video-out capabilities. As for Apple's new Remote Disc software--which gets around the Air's lack of internal optical drive by remotely using another computer's drive--the software in Macworld's brief test worked seamlessly. Still, the MacBook Air has a whole host of missing features, as PCW Editor-in-ChiefHarry McCracken reports.

Apple's iPhone is still the smart phone du jour. But the iPhone's competitors are gaining on it. Among them: AT&T's Tilt ($400 with a two-year plan) costs as much as an iPhone but is more of a true laptop alternative; and AT&T's Pantech Duo C810 ($200 with two-year contract), which is as capable as the Tilt but feels more like a cell phone. For info on these phones, plus three more iPhone competitors, read "Five Ways to Get Over Your iPhone Envy."

On a semi-related note: What does the iPhone have in common with New York City? Find out onTraveler 2.0.

Iomega hasupped the storage capacityof its eGo line of portable hard drives to 250GB ($230). The drive features USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 ports and is available in Cherry Red, Jet Black and Alpine White. No power supply is required.

Contributing Editor James A. Martin offers tools, tips, and product recommendations to help you make the most of computing on the go. Martin is also author of theTraveler 2.0blog.Sign upto have the Mobile Computing Newsletter e-mailed to you each week.

Is there a particularly cool mobile computing product or service I've missed? Got a spare story idea in your back pocket?Tell me about it. However, I regret that I'm unable to respond to tech-support questions, due to the volume of e-mail I receive.