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Max Sanders decided it would be funny if he sold his vote in the upcoming presidential election on Ebay - minimum bid $10. And while I agree that it’s pretty funny, he’s now been charged with one count of bribery, treating and soliciting, a felony under an 1893 Minnesota law that makes it a crime to offer to buy or sell a vote. The law was used extensively in the 1920’s says this article, when people sold their votes for liquor.

A whole slew of Minnesota government officials are apparently looking at this as a meal ticket. Sanders faces a maximum penalty of up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The eBay listing has been taken down.

I’ll be listing my vote on Ebay, too, in protest of this. This is absurd. Thanks for the tip Matt.

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Skype is getting a major, much-needed upgrade: Skype 4.0. President Josh Silverman calls it the “biggest new release in Skype’s history.” The new software client, which which will be released here in beta tomorrow (for Windows only), takes up the whole screen. Video is front and center.

“Our old UI was purpose-built for voice ,” Silverman tells me. (I put an excerpt from my interview with him up on TalkCrunch, or you can listen to the audio file directly). Now by going full-screen, the functionality can be spread out and made much simpler. It also makes it a better video-chat client. There is a big green “video call” button now. There is picture-in-picture functionality, and you can move the thumbnail around that shows your video.

The peer-to-peer technology ensures good quality video, and there is more space available for text chatting or sending files while the conversation is going. When you do a video chat, it really has the feeling of being in a video chat room. You can also pull in videos from Metacafe and DailyMotion (but not from YouTube). While Skype can handle up to 25 participants on the same call with voice, it is limited to one-to-one video chats at this point. Although, those can be combined with multi-party voice and text chats where everyone else just hears the audio. In comparison, Paltalk can do thousands of simultaneous video chats in a similar room-like environment.

The other major change in Skype 4.0 is that the entire experience is now centered around conversations and managing those conversations, whether those are with groups or individuals. Skype 4.0 lets you import contacts from Outlook, Outlook Express, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. (No Gmail, another snub to Google).

There are also other improvements, such as automatic detection when you plug in a new headset or if your laptop lacks a built-in microphone. It also has software tools for testing your audio and video quality. All in all, Skype 4.0 is a step forward.

Skype, which is owned by eBay, boasts 309 million registered users and had $126 million in revenues in the first quarter.

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Here’s one for the conspiracy theorists: It turns out that Google App Engine, their new platform for building and hosting third party web applications, is blocking applications from integrating with PayPal for payments.

Developers who are building apps that use PayPal to handle payments usually require the application to send a request to the PayPal service. The URL’s used in these requests are all on the paypal.com domain name, and there is a test environment setup on a URL at www.sandbox.paypal.com. In Google App Engine apps, requests to either of these URL’s returns a generic ‘download’ error with no specific details.

A number of developers complained in a Google App Engine forum discussing the issue (also on Hacker News), where they also found a way to bypass the restriction by using a third-party proxy (like TinyURL). Then, early this morning, a Google employee named Marzia Niccolai wrote a comment, saying that the error was caused by their anti-phishing protections:

Thanks for the report! This is a bug, and we have located the problem. There was an error in our anti-phishing protections that was blocking some specific URL domains from being fetched using the URLFetch service. This was an oversight on our part, and these specific domain restrictions will be removed in the next few days.

Normally something like this wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows. But there’s too much bad blood between Google and eBay not to question this, and Google’s anti-phishing blacklist does not, of course, list the paypal.com domain as a phishing site.

Most developers who have commented on this so far strongly believe that this was a deliberate block by Google. So far, we can only take Google at their word that blocking Paypal was an accident because of the way their anti-phishing rules work. But with so many phishing sites involving Paypal, you would think that when implementing their rules they would at least check that the real Paypal site still works. Besides, the Google.com phishing test shows that Paypal is considered a safe site.

Why would it be different for App Engine? To make things more suspicious, that phishing test tool was launched last month.

We have emailed Google for a comment and will be updating this post as news comes in.

Update: In the post we mentioned that some developers were using a third-party server and/or domain to proxy requests to PayPal. It turns out that even those proxy requests no longer work (they did at some point), leaving one of the developers on that thread to conclude ‘I guess they are blocking PayPal at their (Google’s) gateway..’.

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Sometime around May 16 a bug appeared in PayPal’s subscription payments page that stops people from paying if they live in a different country than the site collecting the money. The original complaint and discussion about it are here. More discussion here.

We’ve been hearing about it for a few days now, but bugs generally aren’t big news and we don’t cover them except in unusual circumstances.

Here’s what makes this different - it’s been going on for nearly ten days now, and the bug appears to be nothing more than a small issue with a drop down menu (see video above). A couple of days ago PayPal took the time to note the bug, but still no fix. People are starting to get really angry about it.

It appears that they simply aren’t storing the value of the country when a user changes it, a very simple thing to change, perhaps a single line of code. In fact, it probably took them longer to write the blog post noting the bug than it would have taken to simply fix it. The most likely explanation for the ridiculous amount of time it has taken to fix it: it’s probably stuck in a bug queue, and has to wait its turn. Meanwhile, PayPal merchants are losing money.

One merchant comment sort of says it all:

It’s staggering that PayPal has not fixed this most basic payment issue immediately. I contacted support when I received the first customer complaint about five days ago and PayPal support already knew about the error but could not provide an estimated time to fix it. Clearly PayPal cannot be relied upon to provide a stable payments system.

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MySpace is announcing a broad ranging embrace of data portability standards today, along with data sharing partnerships with Yahoo, Ebay, Twitter and their own Photobucket subsidiary. The new project is being called MySpace “Data Availability” and is an example, MySpace says, of their dedication to playing nice with the rest of the Internet.

A mockup of how the data sharing will look in action with Twitter is shown above. MySpace is essentially making key user data, including (1) Publicly available basic profile information, (2) MySpace photos, (3) MySpaceTV videos, and (4) friend networks, available to partners via their (previousy internal) RESTful API, along with user authentication via OAuth.

The key goal is to allow users to maintain key personal data at sites like MySpace and not have it be locked up in an island. Previously users could turn much of this data into widgets and add them to third party sites. But that doesn’t bridge the gap between independent, autonomous websites, MySpace says. Every site remains an island.

But with Data Availability, partners will be able to access MySpace user data, combine it with their own, and present it on their sites outside of the normal widget framework. Friends lists can be syncronized, for example. Or Twitter may use the data to recommend other Twitter users who are your MySpace friends.

The data sharing is dynamic, meaning it is updated constantly. And that also means user permission is not a one time thing. At any time a user can change or revoke the rights of a third party to access the data. Those third parties are “being held to strict terms of service,” says MySpace, which prohibits them from storing the data or using it once permissions are revoked.

For now, just the four launch partners will have access to Data Availability, and the features should go live in the next couple of weeks. More partners will be added over time, and MySpace says they eventually want to give even “mom and pop” websites ways to be involved.

What About Open Social?

MySpace is a partner in Google’s OpenSocial project, but this is being done outside of that framework. MySpace says they’ll adopt the Open Social APIs that evolve around data sharing once they are developed and announced.

The Center Of All User Data

Historically MySpace has lagged Facebook in terms of innovation. But they definitely “get it” this time. Sharing user data so openly (with user permission) is a terrific way to incentivize users to store all their core data at MySpace to begin with. Users eventually need one place on the Internet to store their data, or lots of places to store different types of data. But what they don’t want is today’s world where they are recreating and storing the same data over a plethora of social networks just because all those sites refuse to share. We’re starting to see the floodgates open and the idea of data sharing become a reality (thanks largely to the efforts of DataPortability and other activists in this space).

By acting first, MySpace takes the lead and has a shot at being the long term winner - meaning lots of people use MySpace as the place to store data, and share it out to other applications from there. Look for Google to make their move next.

See my post on “The Centralized Me” for more of my thinking on this.

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Shopping on eBay is more like navigating a street marketplace than visiting a department store. Disparate vendors sell their wares without any real coordination. As a result, buyers must visit each and everyone of them to ensure that they’re getting the best deal. And with each visit, they must cope and make sense of new advertising spins and types of service.

Wigix launches in public beta today with the intent to standardize online marketplace listings, and consequently make it easier for consumers to find the products they desire. Its SKU-based system (SKU, as in the fact sheets used to describe inventoried items) forces sellers to group their goods with others who are selling essentially the same product. This allows buyers to get a more complete overview of their options, and it allows for many other opportunities as well.

For example, with the SKU system, buyers and sellers can search for item listings using more intelligent search. Type “ipod” into Wigix’s search, and it will automatically suggest all the possible iPod models that one can sell and buy through the site. The search results don’t show actual items for sale, but types of items (”Apple iPod photo 160GB” or “Apple iPod mini 4GB”). It’s only once you click on one of these results that you can see who’s selling it.

Each SKU page shows not only the current sellers but general overview information for the product as well. This includes the current market value, the recent changes in that value, reviews, specs, and more. Users who own the product but haven’t officially put it on sale can list themselves as owners just in case someone wants to come along and make them an offer they can’t refuse. This Zillow-make-me-move-like feature should change the way many people view their possessions (not just dead items but stores of exchangeable value).

Wigix can also track how prices for goods change over time, which in addition to the bid/ask aspect of the site, makes it operate very much like a stock exchange.

The service’s biggest hurdle, of course, will be to draw enough vendors and shoppers away from eBay. It’s hoping its pricing structure will produce the right incentives to do that. There is no cost to list items under $25. Between $25-100, the site takes one dollar from the buyer and one from the seller. And for more expensive items, it claims an additional 2% of the sale price.

Wigix also supports its operations by running targeted advertisements on SKU pages, such as ones for items on Amazon. Since Wigix is a place only for identifiable goods (no collectibles here, at least yet), it’s easy to serve up ads for the same products found elsewhere on the net.

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eBay has gone on the record saying that they will sell Skype if they fail to find ways of using Skype to support its core ecommerce business.

Richard Waters at the Financial Times got the scoop directly from eBay’s CEO John Donahoe:

“What we’re testing this year are the synergies,” Mr Donahoe told the Financial Times this week after Ebay reported its latest earnings. “If the synergies are strong, we’ll keep it in our portfolio. If not, we’ll reassess it.” That could lead to the disposal of the business, he indicated.

eBay purchased Skype 3 years ago and has failed to find ways of using Skype across its other products in this time, so it is unlikely that miracles will start happening for Skype in the next 8 months. A sale is likely late this year or in the first half of next year.

The news comes despite strong Q1 figures for Skype and others reports suggesting a Google buyout or alliance may be in the works.

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How much is a Twitter account with nearly 1,500 followers worth? Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron wants to find out, and launches a publicity stunt that will spark a debate about trust and privacy: He’s selling his Twitter account, including the followers. His explanation for the sale:

I really love my Twitter account but I feel like I haven’t been using it the way I want to. Quite honestly, I feel sorry for all of my followers because they wind up with my tweets in their timelines and I haven’t been able to utilize the medium the way I want to. I also participate in another Twitter account over on Rocketboom so I’m thinking I’ll post more over there and start up a new account to do what I want to do next.

It would be silly to just delete this account I have here, especially if there is someone out there that had like interests and had something to say or wanted to get involved in some relevant conversations. In terms of monetary value, I have no expectations or needs at all so I decided not to put a minimum bid on this. Whatever will be, will be.

At the time of writing the current bid for the account, complete with 1400 followers is $26. [Editor’s Update: The bid is at $1,125 as of 4/13, 9 PM ET). You can follow the auction here.

Twitter, of course, will almost certainly delete the account if a sale occurs (I’d suspend it immediately if I were them). But they may not have considered this possibility when drafting the terms of service or privacy policy - a sale or transfer of an account isn’t specifically prohibited.

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Since launching four and half years ago, Skype users have talked to each other for 100 billion minutes, and that is just counting free Skype-to-Skype phone calls. Of course, many of those calls would never have been made if Skype didn’t exists, so you cannot count the entire 100 billion minutes as a loss for the phone companies. But a significant chunk of that has got to be eating away at phone company profits.

Skype’s owner, eBay, is not necessarily the winner here either. While Skype has been a boon for consumers, it’s eBay that is footing the bill. Even at the reduced $3.1 billion acquisition price after the write-down, eBay still ended up paying roughly 3 cents a minute for all of those calls. I think I pay less with Verizon.

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When Michael profiled the Gizmo Project in July 2005, he noted that it had more features than Skype, but lacked instant messaging. The one time Skype competitor has become the Jaiku to Twitter, having pretty much dropped off the radar as Skype was acquired by eBay and went on to become the leading desktop VOIP/ IM solution.

The open source SIPphone owned Gizmo has continued to be developed, and this week added MySpace IM support on top of support for MSN, Yahoo, AIM and Jabber (including Google Talk). Today’s Gizmo is more IM platform than predominantly VOIP platform, and it makes for a fairly decent product.

Gizmo offers an attractive feature set. On top of the wide IM support that makes it a competitor to Adium and Trillian, the VOIP side offers competitively priced calls to external numbers, as well as free calls to those using the SIPphone platform. Services such as file transfer are supported, although video calling is only supported between Gizmo users, and not with users on other services. Cross platform voice chat is supported however.

Notably Gizmo 5 can be installed on a range of mobile phones and run locally, complete with VOIP calling, a decent value add if you’re on an unlimited data plan with your mobile phone. Unfortunately there isn’t a version (site or download) for the iPhone yet so I was unable to test it.

Gizmo has long since lost the battle against Skype to become the dominant VOIP service, however if you’re looking for a fully featured mobile IM client that also offers cheap calls it might be worth a look again.

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I just got off the phone with Meg Whitman, eBay’s departing CEO, and John Donahoe, her successor. Whitman talks about her biggest successes (going global and buying Paypal) and her biggest mistake (losing Japan), gets a dig in at Skype’s founders, and ruminates about whether Facebook can become a platform for commerce. Donahoe talks about eBay’s renewed focus on fixed-price items, its commitment to distribute listings across the Web, and how he sees those listings as a huge advertising inventory. Here is the interview:

Q: If you had to pick one thing you did over the past decade, what was your best move?

Donahoe: You could say we are already in the advertising game with millions of listings a day and expanding that with other advertising on eBay and off. We have our Yahoo and Google partnerships and we will continue to find ways to get our listings out there.

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A Federal Court judge has found that MercExchange LLC is due $30 million from eBay in compensation for a patent breach of MercExchange’s “Buy It Now” patent, a long standing feature available on eBay auctions.

The case started back in 2001, and in 2003 a jury found in favor of MercExchange. According to the Wall Street Journal, the case triggered a review by the U.S. Supreme Court over whether injunctions or damage awards are sufficient remedies in patent cases, with a ruling in 2006 that “all but req