Amid mounting competition from direct retailers like Amazon and flagging interest in online auctions, eBay has lost some of "the magic" that has made it one of the Web's biggest and most important companies. As one seller says, the days of easily selling out one's inventory are over. Investors, too, have noted as much in eBay's earnings, which have been consistently flat in the auctions department; almost all of its growth these days comes from PayPal, the company's online payment service. The company is making an overhaul of eBay.com that attempts to make it easier for shoppers to …

Apple has chosen O2 as the wireless service provider for the UK version of its iPhone mobile handset device. The decision, announced by CEO Steve Jobs in London on Tuesday, wasn't altogether unexpected, nor were the accompanying features, save for the "rather clever" partnership struck with European Wi-Fi network The Cloud, giving UK iPhone users access to some 7,500 Wi-Fi hotspots. The handset will retail for £269 ($540) on November 9, or $140 more than it currently costs in the U.S.; buyers will be required to sign an 18-month contract at anywhere between £35 ($70) or £55 ($110) per …

MySpace rival Facebook is handing out cash incentives for developers to create compelling programs on the social network, offering up to $250,000 to those who develop apps that are both "innovative and disruptive." The grants will come out of the $10 million recently raised by Facebook from its primary backers Accel Capital and The Founders Fund. In the four months since CEO Mark Zuckerberg opened Facebook to outside developers, the number of embeddable mini-apps or "widgets" on user profiles has skyrocketed to 4,000. Zuckerberg believes that cash prizes will encourage developers to create applications and users to …

A new service called OpenAd.net, an online marketplace, gives advertisers and agencies access to a huge network of creative producers, both amateur and professional. Gillette was one of the first global brands to use the service, asking producers around the world to create a campaign to convince the men of Puerto Rico to trade in their disposable razors for a new Gillette Fusion. The three winners were a Slovenian student, a British photographer and an American creative director. Slovenia-based OpenAd.net is a marketplace for buying and selling creative. Marketers pitch their ideas to the network's 9,000 worldwide creatives …

Saul Hansell, technology writer for The New York Times, opens his review of Yahoo Mash with the following: "I just turned Brad Garlinghouse's profile on Yahoo's new social network, Yahoo Mash, peanut butter brown." Garlinghouse, of course, is the Yahoo executive of "Peanut Butter Manifesto" fame; the fact that Hansell has changed the color of his profile is significant. Mash allows you to do something that Facebook, MySpace, et. al. don't: edit your friend's profiles. That's right, Mash adds an element of Wikipedia to social networking. You can change information, redecorate and add features to your friends' profiles. Think …

Microsoft lost a big case when a European Union court ruled that the software giant was unjustified in tying applications to its operating system Windows, claiming it harms consumer choice. The court, the second highest in the EU, dismissed Microsoft's appeal on "all substantive points" of a 2004 European Commission antitrust ruling. The end result is bad for Microsoft and good for competitors like Google, because the world's largest software maker may now be forced to leave out popular Windows-bundled programs, like Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player from future sales of the OS. As the report says, Microsoft …

"There is no question that Mark and Facebook are getting the Google circa 2004 treatment," says search guru John Battelle on his Searchblog. Mark Zuckerberg's story is similar to that of Google boys Sergey Brin and Larry Page. A young entrepreneur drops out of a top college (Harvard) to nurture "a simple but powerful idea" into a billion-dollar business. Facebook still has a long, long way to go to get into Google territory, but Zuckerberg's open app decision may have given the social network the legs it needs to grow into something truly huge. But Facebook has a …

Ad-blocking software may be growing in popularity, but no word on its legal status. Even so, plug-ins like Firefox's Adblock make it easy to configure your Web browser not to display ads. Understandably, advertisers and publishers are furious. John Palfrey, an executive director of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, doesn't expect the Web business to let ad-blocking last for long, especially if it becomes more common. "I absolutely would expect to see litigation in this area," he said. Ad-blocking plug-ins are now available for every major browser, from Microsoft's Internet Explorer to …

While some big media firms try to create high-trafficked online destinations to rival MySpace and Facebook, Viacom's strategy has been to create hundreds of microsites for its many brands. However, critics have wondered how the MTV parent plans to tie it all together. The answer, it seems is, Flux, a social media system that allows MTV users to personalize pages with social networking tools like blogs, photos, videos and friends. The personalized pages will appear when users sign into any MTV or third-party site in the Flux network. Most importantly, users will be able to save to material …

The Federal Communications Commission didn't exactly please everybody in setting the rules for the 700MHz auction: Google requested four rules for open access to ensure its participation, while big telecom didn't want the FCC to open the spectrum at all. In the end, the industry overseer adopted two of Google's proposals, to mixed reactions. Google didn't get what it wanted, but neither did the telecoms. Nevertheless, the winner of the so-called "open" piece of spectrum must allow any device to run on that network. An irked Verizon Communications immediately issued the following statement: "Imposing any such requirements in …