Today’s big news is that Ebay will be selling off a huge portion of Skype, but in my house we can’t log in to the website due to a “closer alignment between Ebay and Half.com.”

What is happening is that when Chris attempts to log into his Ebay account, he gets a message saying that he needs to enter in his credit card information before he can continue. The next page is hosted on an old credit card processing server for Ebay and it (at least at one point in time) is legit. After he enters in his information he gets an error message that says, “Sorry, we cannot process your request at this time, please try again later.” This is on a page that is full of broken images.

After that it sends him back to Ebay’s homepage, and he’s still not logged in.

Every time one of us calls Ebay they give us the run around, won’t let us talk to a technical support person, and also tries to play it off like we have a virus on our computers. I know that all customer support people are trained to assume that most customers are computer illiterate and have downloaded 44 viruses on their computers and don’t know how to clear their cache, but I suppose we’re the exception. We have three computers and are completely unable to log in to Chris’s account due to the Half.com error.

So, here we are, we’ve spoken to three different people at Ebay: One on the online chat and two on the phone. The situation has yet to resolve itself so we started looking at online forums to see what other people are doing and there are people out there who haven’t been able to log into their Ebay accounts for months due to this error.

I suppose if it came down to it, Chris could sell on my Ebay account, but he has spent the last two years building up his feedback and credibility on his account and now he has regular customers.

This post may sound a bit scatterbrained, but we’re both pretty fed up with the entire situation and are starting to consider selling on Amazon and other internet sites to just try to stop this problem from happening again. Ebay (and PayPal) have been nothing but a headache for the past month anyway. After a package was lost in the mail and the customer didn’t pay for insurance on it, PayPal decided that (even though we had plenty of proof that the item was shipped and the Post Office will back up this claim) it would be holding onto the money until the package was delivered. Over 2 months later, the package was delivered and we got the money, but we really couldn’t figure out what is the point of offering insurance.

Microsoft is having a hard time in 2009. This year has so far been the worst for the company in years. For the first six months of the year the company saw weak computer sales as well as frozen corporate tech budgets which led to profits declining by 29 percent.

However, things may be looking up for the second half of the year according to CFO Chris Liddell. He wanted to keep everyone’s hopes up after Microsoft missed expectations by $1 billion and the earnings slipped by a steep 29%.

The earnings topped off a fiscal year in which revenues for the company fell for the first time since 1986, when Microsoft first went public. For the entire year, it said that profits went down 17% or $1.62 a share.

Of course investors weren’t happy to hear the news, sending Microsoft’s stock price down $2, which is 7.8%, to $23.56 a share. In April, Intel’s CEO said that it had seen the worst PC sales and that they had “bottomed out” after the holiday season. Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell said, “we couldn’t necessarily see the bottom. I think that at least we are seeing signs now of the bottom,” in a response to Intel’s statement.

Liddell also made the statement that the remainder of the calendar year will be difficult for PC makers and the software giant because Microsoft’s success is directly linked to the PC industry which is expected to sell fewer computers this year than last. Right now, netbooks are still all the rage and if they are running Windows, they are running XP which means less profits for Microsoft. If Windows 7 comes out and is good enough, then they will begin making more money off the sales of the netbooks due to a higher royalty.

In hopes of stirring up a little demand for the products, Microsoft will be releasing Windows 7 on October 22 as well as a new Office suite in the first half of next year, but these alone will not help the company.

Once upon a time Microsoft was the company everyone wanted to own stock in because it seemed like a pretty safe bet. There was no other competition for them as far as operating systems. If there were other operating systems out there no one really ever paid much attention to them. Now, Microsoft is trying to stop Apple from taking more of the market share than it already has and is fighting with a pretty bad recession.

As the economy has proven, nothing is fully recession proof. In an emotionally driven society and a fairly unpredictable financial condition, job security has tended to mean nothing and cost cutting has prevailed beyond the course of the job market. However, there are some careers that have still proven to be ‘recession proof’. Some are very lucrative, rewarding careers, and still some do not require four year degrees or time extensive training.

Health care is a very rewarding career, and job security is inevitable, especially with experience and tenure, simply due to the fact that illnesses and death are just parts of life, uninfluenced by economic status or stability. People do not stop getting sick if the economy is down. When you think of health care, you think of doctors and nurses, but unbeknownst to those not privy to the inner workings of the industry, it is a large field with endless opportunities if you have the patience and patients, homonym intended. There are several jobs that one can have in the health care field, some of which do not require a doctorate or bachelor’s degree.

Physician assistants have the same functions as a doctor except for opening up their own practices or medicating patients, in some cases. They do not earn as much as doctors or receive the potential notoriety, but they are well above median salary. Nurse practitioners can earn enviable salaries and even specialize or start up specialty practices. Often times, people visiting their general physician will actually see a nurse practitioner in the office. Diagnostic cardiac sonographers are also popular careers with a high demand rate due to the technological specialization. They collect reflected echoes and Doppler signals from images and tracings of a person’s heart, using ultrasound equipment to assess the condition of the different functions and valves of the human heart, very useful due to the high rate of cardiac illness in a fast food society.

Physician assistants must go through a two-year training program, and at least two years of college and a license exam, and the median salary is $62.000 per year. A nurse practitioner does need a master’s degree in nursing and the median salary is $74,000 per year. A cardiac sonographer only needs a two-year associate’s degree, or in some cases, a 1-year certificate in diagnostic sonography while a laboratory technician needs a bachelor’s degree with coursework in chemistry, biology, and statistics and state certification and licensing upon completion. Both of these supporting careers have a median salary of over $50,000 a year each.

With a specialized technical background and education, a rewarding career can be found in the manufacturing industry. In an earlier article, we discussed how Hewlett-Packard was downgrading production but hiring in development. This is a booming job market if you can be placed in a job that focuses on the promise or specialization of a market that is beginning to cycle forward quicker than usual, in an effort to come out of the recession ahead of a respective field. Some newer jobs with high skill levels are opening up and they are really only requiring some vocational training and/or apprenticeships.

Computer control operators use computer numerically controlled machines (or CNC) to make precision products for a variety of machines and automobiles. CNC programmers develop programs that run the tools the operators use. They review computer aided design blueprints of the products and determine what the machine will have to do, in a sequence of events, to cut, shape, and assemble the part. The number of jobs in these fields is projected to decline slightly over the next seven years, but with this type of training, it is inevitable that a CNC operator or programmer will have endless opportunities in development fields of all sorts, especially in a society that is always technologically developing, also due to the limited number of professionals entering training programs and difficulty companies have in hiring workers with the necessary skills and knowledge. Operators and programmers need either a two-year degree or combination of vocational degree and apprenticeship. An operator can make $33,000 a year and a programmer can make $44,000.

Although the financial services industry has significantly declined over the past year, especially in the recession, actuarial services, an overlooked financial sector, is still booming. Actuaries develop, price, and evaluate financial insurance products such as life, auto, health or homeowners insurance. The demand is already up, and experts agree that this sector of the financial field will grow exponentially before 2016.

Even amid the downfall of the financial industry in the recession, financial analysts and planners are still necessary and popular. Analysts evaluate the economic outlook of sectors and industries for organizations to invest in or assess. Personal financial planners and advisors help individuals with personal investments and finances. Financial analysts can work in a variety of industries, though some might consider going the self-employment route as they can make three to five times what a salaried employee is making, more along a freelance line. An actuary needs a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, statistics, or finance and the related professional certification and makes a median salary of $86,000. A financial analyst normally needs a bachelor’s degree in finance and can make around $48,000. A financial planner needs a bachelor’s degree in finance and to pass the certification examination. He or she can make a median salary of $61,000.

Computer industry leader Hewlett-Packard’s sales have dropped 17% for the quarter, their quarterly report indicated yesterday. HP products affected are personal computers and printer ink, indicating that consumers just still are not secure enough in their finances to shell money out for technological expenses they see as unnecessary. HP also said layoffs would occur for an additional 6,400 workers, or 2 percent of HP’s employee work force that totals over 300,000. The layoffs will be on the cusp of the announcement of 24,600 jobs HP was already dumping as part of its acquisition of Electronic Data Systems, a technology services provider they bought for $13.9 billion last year in order to compete properly with IBM.

The new job cuts will come from HP’s product departments. The affected departments produce PCs, printers, computer servers, ink and toner cartridges. The quarterly results, reported Tuesday after the market closed, puts into question whether technology spending has fallen as far as it’s going to in this recession. Hewlett-Packard is not optimistic as shares fell in extended trading and is laying off workers in an economy which has bottomed out in the way of job losses. Chief financial officer of Hewlett-Packard, Cathie Lesjak, said in a recent interview that it’s still “too tough to call” whether technological sales have bottomed out.

Hewlett-Packard’s major supplier, Intel, which deals primarily in computer electronic chips and microprocessors, reported bottomed out PC sales totals in the first three months of the year, but according to their quarterly report, sales were returning to normal patterns. HP says PC shipments stayed flat over the last several years, but revenue from those machines fell. The recession has caused retailers to cut prices on PCs in order to bring customers into the stores, which is one explanation for how HP can make less money on roughly the same number of computers. The growing popularity of “netbooks”, stripped down, cheaper, smaller laptops, also skews the numbers due to their excessive financial benefits for the consumer, bringing down profit percentages.

Laptop sales fell 13 percent to $4.7 billion. Desktop computer sales were down 24 percent to $3 billion. Some areas improved, particularly China and consumer sales in the United States. The last area to improve will likely be business sales, due to the fact that HP is one of the pricier computer manufacturers, likely due to excessive quality, coupled with the fact that in the economy we are in, individuals will be much more likely to upgrade their computers before corporations will upgrade their systems.

In HP’s printer division, overall sales were down 23 percent to $5.9 billion. Within that, the supplies revenue, which includes ink, fell 14 percent. Lesjak said the printer/ink sales decline was only partially caused by demand (or lack thereof) from users. She said a big reason for the decline was that HP adjusting the amount of ink retailers retained in inventory.

Even with the drop in the offer price, IBM is offering Sun a 91% premium on the stock price, which closed at $4.97 on March 17th (the day before talk started).

The deal would be IBM’s largest acquisition to date, and analysts say it will likely face intense antitrust scrutiny in the United States and Europe because it will give IBM a substantial lead in high-end business computers.

Some also say that Sun’s software assets will help IBM compete more efficiently as large technology companies like Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO.O) seek to offer customers a comprehensive set of products including computer hardware, and Web-based software.

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If an institution, such as my college, would turn off 1,000 computers every night then the university could save $28,000 a year. That could be used to buy scantrons for the students or for professors to print out notes for class.

The amount of energy wasted by leaving the computer on overnight (across the country) is equal to 20 million tons of C02, roughly the amount produced by 4 million cars on the road.

I think we should all take a stand against wasting energy and I will vow to turn off my laptop every night. Even if it takes more than 10 minutes to load in the morning, it’s not worth the lasting impression I leave on the environment from the inconvenience.

Apple is an image and Microsoft wants to show people that it can also be an image, an image that says I have a great computer and didn’t have to pay a fortune for it.

In the commercial from advertising agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Lauren goes into an Apple store, quickly walks back out and reports, “For $1,000 they only have one computer available, and that’s a 13-inch screen. I would have to double my budget, which isn’t feasible. I’m just not cool enough to be a Mac person.” That statement is a direct hit against Microsoft’s longtime rival that implies you don’t get much computer for your money when you buy a Mac.

Last week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer set the stage for the new ad’s debut when he said, “Apple gained about one point, but now I think the tide has really turned back the other direction. The economy is helpful. Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment — same piece of hardware — paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that’s a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be.”

Lauren was excited when she entered a retail store with a variety of PCs. She tries out a few keyboards and looks at the specs on a few others. Finally, the look of one PC draws her. She settles on a Hewlett-Packard model that meets all her qualifications — for under $1,000. The commercial ends with Lauren telling the camera, “I am a PC and I got just what I wanted.”

Everytime I see an Apple product I feel like I want it and I think that’s part of their marketing scheme. It’s “cool” to have a Mac or an I*something*. Other than their computers, look at their MP3 players, an iPod is $300. You can get a video player by Sony for much less…hmm.

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Here’s the skinny on the higher education portion ($32 billion) of the $790 billion stimulus bill:

The maximum amount a student reieves right now with Pell Grant is $4,731. The stimulus added a measure where on July 1, it will increase to $5,350 and then again to $5,550 for the 2010-2011 school year.

An extra 800,000 students will be eligible for Pell Grant.

There is an increase in the tuition tax credit. The stimulus increases it to $2,500.

Computer expenses will now be included as an allowable expense in 529 college savings plans.

The bill also includes $15 billion for scientific research, which will mostly go to universities.

I think the announcement was made in haste because Google just announced Google Book Search. Book Search is a free service for mobile phones that is basically ebooks on your cell. Amazon did not release which phones it would be offering the Kindle books for or when…I think it just wanted to stay relevant next to Google’s free service.

I don’t really understand how people can read entire books on a screen like that. I can’t look at a computer screen for more than an hour, let alone read an entire book on one.

Friday night Chris and his parents go to Wal-Mart to return the Playstation 3 he got for Christmas. His mom was assured when she bought it that it had a 90 day return policy, opened or not. I called the store before we went and I was told 15 days. After deciding what I was told was a load of hooey, they went to customer service anyway. There they were told 30 days and she was 6 days out, right AFTER Christmas. This is from their website:

As an added convenience for customers, Wal-Mart has adjusted its return policy for the holiday gift buying season for items that have a limited return/exchange period (15 days, 30 days, etc.). For these items purchased between Nov. 15 and Dec. 25, the limited return period will begin Dec. 26. This includes items such as TVs, cameras, computers, DVD and music players which can have a 15-30 day return period.

Their original return policy (not during the holiday season):

All merchandise purchased from Walmart.com may be returned either to a store or by mail within 90 days, unless otherwise noted below:
ELECTRONICS

* Computer hardware: Must be returned with any included software within 15 days of receipt.
* Computer components and computer accessories: Must be returned within 45 days of receipt.
* Computer software: Must be returned unopened.
* Camcorders and digital cameras: Must be returned within 30 days of receipt.
* GPS units, digital music players and portable video players: Must be returned within 15 days of receipt.

Wal-Mart ended up accepting the Playstation 3 return. Probably because they were called out on their “discretionary” return policy.

So far 10,000 websites have been compromised since the flaw was discovered and the number is growing.

Microsoft officials haven’t released a statement telling IE users to switch at this time. They say they are working on a fix for the problem.

“Security pros fear that the attack will soon spread beyond the theft of gaming passwords and into more criminal arenas, as the malicious code can be placed on any website and can be adapted to steal any password stored or entered using the browser,” says Christopher Null: The Working Guy on Yahoo! Tech

People need to switch from Internet Explorer as soon as possible to avoid this risk. Some of the choices are Mozilla’s Firefox, Opera, Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome.

First up is the five day unpaid vacation. It is voluntary, but it is a leave that is unpaid.

Second is a hiring freeze. At the end of 2006, Dell employed somewhere around 90,000 people, at the end of 2007 it had 88,000. In May of this year, Dell began a 10% reduction in staff.

What’s the problem with Dell right now? Dell is in the middle of a retooling period, it is trying to position itself differently in the market. Not long ago, Dell was a direct-to-buyer company; You would order the computers directly from Dell. Now, it is trying to position itself more into retail stores (this is why you can get a Dell computer at WalMart now). It’s not such a bad thing, until you look at the fact that retail sales are down.

Some of the users who have the pirated software are angry because they see Microsoft blacking out the screens as holding their computer ransom. This is where I believe when you download the software illegally, you assume the risks associated with it. If I download a movie off a p2p network and get a virus, that’s my fault. It messes up my whole computer and I have to PAY to get it fixed. That’s the risk I assumed by downloading that movie.

The latest wave of new fees by Ebay gives ample reasons to list with greatly lower listing fees and the new 30-day listing features which where previously only available to Ebay Store owners, however it comes with a range of final value fees that differ by category. Before FFV where pretty much standard across all categories except autos now they differ “GREATLY” depending on your listing category. Click here for the new listing fees.

With sellers constantly having to come up with ways to save on listing fees and FFV fees, PayPal fees and etc we are left with fewer and fewer options as our costs rise. I and several other Power Sellers are experimenting with listing our items in different categories than what they actually are. Because of this I wouldn’t be surprised if the category “Computers & Networking” has a spike in listing because that category carries the lowest FFV, almost half of every other category, as long as you target your keywords right you should reduce your fees without harm to your over sales volume.

Yes, their products are sleeker and more stylish, but they’re also slower and not as compatible with software and hardware… Our entire journalism department is full of brand new iMacs and Macbooks. I even own an iPod. My car’s stereo only functions with an iPod, I can use another MP3 player, but I could not use the radio controls to change the songs or volume.

So why has everyone decided that Apple is the gold standard? I’m not very sure. They claim to be stable, but my first 2 iPods crashed so bad they had to be replaced, and when working in the journalism lab, I’ve had the macs crash on me at least 3 times. My personal PC has only crashed once, due to a video card error.

There are cheaper and faster technologies available, so why are people so crazed over Apple?