Those unlocked 1st gen iPhones are going for a surprisingly high chunk of change on eBay, but that's nothing compared to the prices people are willing to pay for the new iPhone 3G. Unboxed and supposedly unlocked varieties (though we haven't heard of any functioning unlocking tools) are fetching prices well in excess of $1,000 for the 16 GB variety. Even the 8 GB iPhone is going for $800-$900.

Prices are being driven to astronomic levels by high demand fueled by insatiable gadget lust and limited supplies produced by Apple. Some of that demand is even coming from overseas in countries that simply can't wait for the new gadget du jour to start shipping to them later this year. [Source: PC World via: Textually]

You might not be aware of it, but your old iPhone is worth a considerable sum of money. Some questionably honest businesses are even making a profit by buying up used first generation iPhones from unsuspecting American customers and reselling them at a hefty profit. One such shop was passing around fliers outside of an Apple retail outlet offering the full price of a 3G upgrade ($199 for an 8 GB, $299 for a 16 GB) for your old phone.

The Web site for FreeiPhoneSwap claims to "recycle" the old iPhones in an environmentally-friendly way. By which, of course, they mean unlock and resell at surprisingly high prices to customers overseas.

Although the new iPhone is available in many countries, it is still unavailable to some people in countries such as India or China where it is not sold officially by any carriers (though Hong Kong, rather than all of China, and India, are on Apple's new "Coming Soon" list). These folks are still left out of the multi-touch fun and some don't want to tie themselves to an exclusive iPhone carrier -- such as AT&T in the U.S. For these people, the only option is an unlocked iPhone, which will work on any compatible EDGE or GSM network (T-Mobile for example, but not Verizon or Sprint).

So if you're thinking of selling your old iPhone, make sure not to jump at that seemingly great deal to trade in your old iPhone for a new one -- unlocked 8-gigabyte (GB) first-generation iPhones are fetching bids of over $500 on eBay. You could buy two new iPhones for that price. [Source: NY Times]

Though just barely a year old, many Apple fanatics will be going out to replace the original iPhone, which they paid five or six hundred dollars for. So what to do with what is essentially very expensive junk? One suggestion is to simply deactivate it and use it as an iPod Touch. The iPhone will still function as a media player and be able to access the Internet via Wi-Fi, even without a wireless contract.

Another option is to wipe the handset clean, jailbreak it, and hand it off to a friend or relative who is persistently broke and suffers from extreme gadget envy. You could also take the same jailbroken iPhone and hock it on eBay, where original unlocked iPhones are fetching premium prices despite the imminent arrival of its 3G offspring.

Those of us who have amassed small museums worth of aging computer equipment and gadgets may just want to keep this one for posterity, and some jerk will likely prop a wobbly table up with one.

What are you going to do with your old iPhone? [Source: TUAW]

For months, we've been following the tale of Ian Usher, an Australian man who decided to put all his worldly possessions online for sale. The auction, which started a week ago, closed yesterday. Usher's life went for a rather disappointing sum of just $380,286. That's less than his house alone was worth! Also included in the auction was his motorcycle, car, jet ski, and a whole cadre of friends.

So, someone got a pretty good bargain, and Usher has turned himself into a minor celebrity, a status he hopes to exploit via his new venture 100Goals100Weeks.com. We wish him luck, because time has shown that nothing's more fleeting than the popularity of an Internet celebrity. [Source: AOL News]

Remember when eBay was all about getting tickets to sold-out Radiohead concerts and Superbowls and stuff? Now you can get lots of gross and unnecessary things on there, like this Kate Moss hair extension, which the supermodel "shed" in Germany while fleeing the paparazzi. The victorious hair-finder, (fashion equivalent of the guy who catches a fly ball in his beer at a Yankees game) is auctioning off the lock for an anti-drug charity, ironically.

The organization is called Keine Macht den Drogen (No Power to Drugs) and sounds like the Weimar equivalent of D.A.R.E. We hope the hair money goes toward the purchase of thousands of KMDD t-shirts and will keep the German youth from one day losing their own hair and teeth.

"I hope Kate doesn't mind. I did not have time to ask her..." says hair-auctioneer John Farr. Of course she won't, John. It's for the kids. [Source: The Local]

Proving once again that it's always the smiley-faced, rosey-cheeked cherub that has the human skeletons in its closet, sunshine-and-rainbow-drenched video game purveyor Nintendo has come in dead last in a ranking of the world's most eco-friendly electronics companies.

The quarterly "Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics" ranks 18 electronics firms by how green their production processes and products are ... and the big N pulled up the rear at number 18.

Of course, Nintendo had its own response, claiming that it scored low because it had not provided data for the survey. "Greenpeace chose to conduct a survey and produce a report, which graded companies upon the voluntary submission of information," the firm said in a statement. "Nintendo decided not to take part in the survey and were therefore 'ungraded' in the resulting report." Which of course begs the question: Why didn't the company take part?

Oh, and pipe down over there in the corner, Xbox fanboys -- Microsoft came in at 17, a position that reflected its "low score on climate criteria". [Source: BBC]

In these patriotic times you've heard the saying, "Freedom isn't free," right?

It seems this goes for both liberty and iPhone calling plans. (Yes, we know its a stretch. Please don't be offended.)

The new iPhone 3G, announced by Steve Jobs earlier this month at the Worldwide Developers Conference and hitting Apple Store shelves July 11, will start at $199 for the 8-gigabyte (GB) model and $299 for the 16-gigabyte (GB) model. The relatively low retail price is possible because AT&T is heavily subsidizing the cost of the phone and will make it's money back on the service plan. One trick of the new iPhone is that buyers must activate an account with AT&T.

So what if you want to use an iPhone but prefer another service provider?

Then the old iPhoneis your answer, and this solution is not lost on people in the market for a little service freedom.

Older unlocked 8-gigabyte (GB) and 16-gigabyte (GB) iPhones are going for about $400 and $585 respectively on eBay. That's more than what they would sell for at retail.

In order to make a new iPhone work on a network other than AT&T, you'd have to buy the phone, sign up for the service, then cancel the service with a $175 penalty, and then unlock your phone and sign up with your service provider of choice.

Or just get an old unlocked iPhone and avoid the AT&T mess altogether. [Source: Kottke.org]

Sick of your tired, boring life? Want a new one? Well, you're in luck, because as it turns out, there's a burgeoning market for the trading of lives. No, we're not talking about underground slave labor. We're talking about people selling their possessions, friends, and even jobs online -- that's right, their whole lives. The latest 'life,' that of Ian Usher's, is going up for auction on eBay in tomorrow.

Ian, whom we first reported on when he started planning this auction earlier this year, is an Australian twenty something whose life will hit eBay on June 22. Anyone, whether Aussie or not, can bid on everything he has to offer -- though it's a little unclear how the whole job transfer thing will work. One thing we do know is that he's not the first, and not even the first Australian, to sell his life. Fellow countryman Nicael Holt beat him to the punch last year. Ian seems to be getting a lot more publicity than Nicael did, though, showing that being the first isn't necessarily always a good thing. [Source: Alife4sale.com, via Reuters]

We've seen a lot of strange things go up for auction on eBay - a town, a life, a video game collection, even another auction website. Yet we were still shocked when a man attempted to sell his wife via the auction service, and this morning were utterly horrified when we read an article about a German woman who attempted to sell her child on eBay.

The 23-year-old mother says she put her child up on the web site as a joke, but the authorities aren't ready to believe her yet. The child has been taken into the custody of the state and the mother is set to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

Still, one Euro for a baby that apparently cries too much doesn't seem like that great of a deal. [Source: Reuters]

The Internet has provided many ways for shaming those who have wronged you, and we thought we'd seen them all. That is, until Paul Osborn decided to auction off his "adulterous, lying, cheating, bitch, whore" of a wife on eBay (his words).

Paul found out that his wife and mother of his children, Sharon, was having an affair with a co-worker. His response was to throw her out of the house and post an "auction" for her on eBay. We use quotes around "auction" because in the listing Paul specifically states, "please do not bid on her because she is worth sod all." Paul also used the eBay listing to out her lover Richard Drew, who is also married. Paul provided phone numbers and addresses for both Richard and Sharon. Naturally, eBay took the listing down pretty quickly. [Source: The Sun]

A few months back eBay made the controversial decision to remove the ability for sellers to leave negative feedback about buyers. The site said it got too many complaints and decided that the system wasn't worth the trouble. So, with that ability gone, when a seller of some collectible coins felt jilted by a less than positive review from a buyer, he did the purely logical thing, which was to sued said buyer for $10,000.

Steve Shellhorn was the buyer in this transaction and didn't like the packaging job done by the seller. When he received the package, he found that many of the coins were unprotected in an envelope. So, when the seller requested feedback, Shellhorn left him a less than complementary, but still not negative, report. The seller responded with the lawsuit, which was ultimately tossed out of court, but only after Shellhorn had to pay $500 for an attorney. That's the kind of auction fee that nobody needs. [Source: King5, via Fark]

It's a widely held belief that eBay and Craigslist, the two premier online places to get rid of your old stuff and buy someone else's, are bitter rivals. While it's true that they're definitely competitors, what's not widely known is that eBay actually owns roughly a third of Craiglist, having bought 28% of the company back in 2004. Odd, then, that eBay would be suing Craigslist (and thus itself) for perpetrating some sort of unknown affront against the company.

The lawsuit is sealed, meaning the exact complaint made by eBay is a secret, but it has something to do with actions made by Craigslist directors Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster, whom eBay feels were damaging to the company. The suit is an attempt to get those two to get the company back on whatever track eBay thinks is best. Exactly what track that is, unfortunately, also be a secret.

Maybe eBay is just bitter that its Craigslist competitor, Kijiji.com, hasn't exactly caught on. [Source: AOL Money & Finance/AP]

Want access to the newest in military technology without having to deal with such annoyances as "boot camp" and "Iraq"? Just look online.

According to a report by the Government Accountability Office (who knew such a thing existed!?), sensitive and stolen U.S. military items are being sold on eBay and Craigslist. The federal investigators posed as buyers, and successfully purchased a dozen prohibited military items on the sites.

These items ranged from night vision goggles to two F-14 fighter jet components, to a wardrobe's worth of army combat uniforms. Oddly enough, also available were body armor vests used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan –- the same gear that the army initially struggled to actually get to the troops themselves.

The report notes that the items purchased could easily have been shipped overseas and "used directly against our troops and allies."

Or, for the record, festered in some eBay addicted military fetishist's asbestos-filled basement for the next half-century.

From CNN

Today a group of naked Canadians are considering a class action lawsuit against PayPal. The Federation of Canadian Naturists (FCN) -- an organization for Canadian nudists-- claims that PayPal suddenly cut off its services to them, refusing to process their magazine subscription payments after four years of business.

The FCN are not the first business to get denied services for supposedly breaking the acceptable use policy. Since 2003, PayPal has excluded so called "sexually oriented Web sites" from using their services for the purchase of digital goods like membership or subscription fees. However, any Web site is allowed to use PayPal for the sale of sexually oriented physical goods, like DVDs or magazines that are then delivered by hand to the customer. PayPal claims this is due to the immense administrative cost of doing business with an industry riddled with criminal schemes and frequent "charge backs" (when a customer disputes a charge to their paypal account.) In addition to this discrepancy between physical and digital goods, PayPal further reserves the right to deny Web sites that are distributing sexually oriented material involving minors or for Web sites that "facilitate meetings for sexually oriented activities." These two lines from the Mature Audiences section of their Acceptable Use Policy are what PayPal claims the FCN has violated.

While the nudists object to being considered sexually oriented in the first place, the government affairs director for the federation, Judy Williams, says "PayPal's decision about Going Natural and its claims about the FCN are unfounded embellishments born of ignorance."

According to the history, naturists base their practice on a nineteenth-century reform movement that believed the cure for the ailments of industrial society "was exposure to the natural healing elements or fresh air, sunlight, and water--preferably with loose or absent clothing." In addition, they don't believe that the naked body is inherently erotic, which anyone who has been to a nude beach can attest to. While the images in Going Natural magazine might include pictures of naked minors, a court would probably deem them no more pornographic than those baby pictures of you with a shampoo mohawk.

The last line of the PayPal's Mature audiences policy says that "PayPal will not include sexual preferences or viewpoints as a factor in determining what goods or services are prohibited under the Mature Audiences Policy." We think the FCN might not agree.

Related Links:

• Paypal to Customers Don't Use Safari
• Police Crack Down on Craigslist Sex Industry
• Man Goes to Jail For E-Mailing 15,00 Nude Pics Of His Ex

We've seen some interesting and unique eBay auctions in our day, but this one is certainly the most bizarre. Ian Usher, a resident of Perth, Australia is auctioning off his entire life. Following a messy divorce, the 44 year-old decided it was time for a fresh start. The prospect of selling off his possessions one-by-one seemed too daunting, so Usher packed up all of his possessions into one mega auction.

The highest bidder will receive Usher's completely furnished home, his car, motorcycle, jet ski, introductions to his friends, and even his salesman position at a local rug shop. Jenny Jones, Usher's employer, said she was willing to give the highest bidder a trial run at the shop as a favor to Usher who, she said, she regards as family.

At alifeforsale.com, Usher details his plans for the auction and sets the start date for June 22. A week later on June 29 a winner will have emerged and Perth will have its new Ian Usher. Meanwhile, Ian Usher will be free to go become who ever he wants.

From ABC News

Related links:

• "Date" With Scarlett Johansson for Auction at eBay
• Man Selling His Soul on eBay
• Texas Town Sells for $3.8 Million on eBay