For months now I have been testing the German beta version of Firefox's eBay extension. I have been extremely impressed by its stability and features and it has rapidly become one of my "must-have" extensions. I buy (and sell to a lesser extent) on eBay all the time and that extension is extremely handy. You get a pop-up notification when you have been outbid, when the auction is about to end and much more.

Now it seems that the extension has come out of beta as eBay is now advertising it. I can only find the British version and the German version. If anyone can find a US version, please post the link here.

If you use eBay and Firefox, this extension is a must-have.

This morning I set up a second Skype account and I added my main ID (camelot2302) to the new Skype account. So I was basically sending an authorisation request to myself to add myself to my account. This is the window my new account received.

Notice the yellow message underneath! That just cracked me up. I haven't seen it before either (I approved or declined a few authorisation requests yesterday and that yellow warning message wasn't there).

Would I want someone like me to contact me? I don't know. That is one weird unnerving eye looking at me!

The benefits of setting up a second account can be many. For a start, you can use a second account as a security precaution to check up on your home while you're away. This has been blogged about before but of course Murphy's Law dictates that I can't find those blog posts now that I need them. I vaguely remember someone at eBay blogging about it but I'll be damned if I can find it now.

Anyway, what you do is this - set up your second account (in the options panel) to answer calls automatically and make sure your webcam is switched on and obviously it goes without saying that your computer needs to be on (!). Then when you're away and you want to check up on things at home, use your main account to call your second account. When the call goes through, the second account answers automatically, the webcam kicks in and bingo, you have a security camera with which to see if a burglar is rifling through your drawers (ooh-er missus!).

The guy at eBay who originally blogged about this also had his PC speakers switched on so he was able to call to his dog who was in the room. So you can also use this second account method to harass poor animals too!

Oh and you can also use a second account to initially talk to people whom you don't quite trust yet with your main Skype account. Then when you're convinced they're not a lunatic stalker who will hound your life forever, you can move them over to your main Skype account for further contact.

Sometimes it pays to be paranoid - sometimes they really are out to get you!

Auction Contact has brought out a nifty little tool which allows people to put your current eBay auctions on their customised Google homepages.

To test it out, I put in my eBay username and here's what came out :

Add my Gadget to your Google Homepage

Now I'm guessing that all you need to do is click on the "+Google" logo at the bottom and that should put it on your Google homepage? The Auction Contact page doesn't make it very clear.

Moving onto the next page, I customised the widget and after inputting the code it gave me, I ended up with this :




Of course it will actually start working when I list eBay auctions this coming Thursday. Right now, I have nothing selling...