craigslist

eBay announced Tuesday that it's lowered listing fees for U.S. residents using the auction site to sell products, with new plans geared toward both frequent and infrequent sellers.

A new rate called "eBay Every Day" offers no up-front fee for the sellers of auction-style (rather than flat-rate sale) listings with a starting price of 99 cents or less. Once they've been sold, a fee of 9 percent is appended, with a maximum fee of $50; if the item doesn't sell, no fee is charged to the seller. An individual can do this for up … Read more

America has been gripped this week by the battle between two men, each with one portion of his head oversized: Conan O'Brien and Jay Leno.

The baiting and the bile have spilled over into the online world. The "I'm with Coco" Facebook group already has more than 157,000 fans and a lovely icon of O'Brien with which people are adorning their personal, but highly public, profiles.

Friday, I awoke to a Leno fightback. The Huffington Post reports that NBC executive Dick Ebersol described O'Brien as "an astounding failure." He also said … Read more

The court case between eBay and Craigslist is increasingly beginning to seem as if it was scripted by John Grisham. It's the little guy against the big machine.

Craigslist would like us to dedicate all our sympathy to its cause, as it describes its dealings with the big, bad wolf, aka eBay. Or, as Monday's court session heard, the big, bad she-wolf.

Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist's CEO, told the court that Garrett Price, an eBay executive, had written him an e-mail that waved a large rainbow-colored warning flag, according to a Reuters story.

"He said he needed … Read more

When rich people sue rich people, it often seems that the only possible winners can be rich people.

Which perhaps doesn't engage the emotions of spectators quite as much as, say, when rich people are caught with their plus fours around their ankles.

Still, the current lawsuit between eBay and Craigslist does offer a small window into our own daily lives. You know, the one through which we decide whether we believe what someone is telling us.

This legal spatula is being flipped in Delaware Chancery Court, its essence revolving around how much of Craigslist eBay really owns. Is … Read more

Buying off of Craigslist can be quite a process, and of all the things for sale, the cars and trucks section is one of the most daunting. Unlike digital cameras and random bits of furniture, cars are (usually) expensive and come with an important history both from the owner, and the manufacturer.

That's why browser extension Craigslist Car Research is so useful. It adds an entire layer of data on top of each listing to make it easier to both find out more about the car, and others like it for sale on Craigslist; all without having to leave … Read more

What's the definition of a great hi-fi? It's the one you're listening to. Not just for background "listening," but actual, focused listening.

Investing a lot of money on a hi-fi isn't the only way to get there. In fact, spending as little as possible on decent gear is the best way to get acquainted with good sound. Who knows, you might become an audiophile.

My friend Matt Calderone might be on his way. He was given a used Denon DP-7F turntable, and recently bought a Kenwood KA-701 integrated stereo amplifier on eBay and a pair of Klipsch speakers through Craigslist. All told, he spent less than $200.

Calderone is 26 years old so I was curious about how and why he wound up with a hi-fi. He says he's always been interested in LPs, and he likes listening to them over a decent stereo, not computer speakers. Calderone thinks good speakers make a big difference.

It's not just that the sound is better, music engages on a different level when heard over a hi-fi. Calderone frequently winds up just sitting on the couch and get this, he listens to entire records! The music is the main focus; vinyl has that effect on some people. Calderone is going to add a CD player soon, but for now his system is analog only.

The hardest part of buying a used hi-fi is picking the right gear. If you're new to hi-fi ask an older relative who knows audio about which brands are worthy, but for starters I'd recommend steering clear of Sony and Bose products. I like Creek, Denon, NAD, Onkyo, Pioneer, and Yamaha amplifiers and receivers; look for used Advent, AR, Boston Acoustics, DCM, Epos, Infinity, Klipsch, Magnepan, Mirage, Monitor Audio, NHT, Polk, Snell, or Vandersteen speakers. For a few hundred bucks you can put together a very listenable used system. … Read more

Tuesday's post on using Craigslist to buy secondhand concert tickets drew a response from a company called FanSnap, which uses live feeds to aggregate ticket listings from online marketplaces and broker sites (such as StubHub and TicketNetwork) and eBay auctions.

FanSnap would argue Craigslist is fine for price-sensitive fans who don't need to go to a particular show and who are willing to meet and negotiate with other individuals, pay cash where necessary, and run the risk of buying a fake ticket. (Although the only time I've ever seen a fake concert ticket was in 1989 on … Read more

Update (5:45 pm): This story now includes a statement from Microsoft.

Want an Xbox 360 but don't care about playing online or taking part in any of the Xbox Live services? Then this is your lucky day.

Thanks to a recent decision by Microsoft to ban as many as a million players from Xbox Live for illegally modifying their consoles to run pirated games, there is now an absolute glut of "modded" Xboxes for sale on Craigslist.

And while a brand-new Xbox Arcade--the lowest-price version of the console--sells for $200 with no free games, it is … Read more

File this under the practice what you preach department.

Remember Henry McMaster, South Carolina's state attorney general, the man who was shocked, shocked, shocked to find illicit sex on Craigslist and earlier this year threatened to file charges against the Web's No. 1 classifieds site? Perhaps McMaster would do well to police his own office before going after anyone else.

Roland Corning, a nine-year employee of the state's attorney general's office, was stopped by police after being found in a Columbia, S.C., cemetery while in the company of an 18-year-old female stripper and in possession … Read more