By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer

The people now living in refugee camps in Thailand saw much of their lives swept away in the churning waters of the December 26 Indian Ocean tsunami. They scarcely could imagine casting a virtual net and snaring a new source of income through the World Wide Web.

But just nine weeks after the disaster, women from Khao Lak, an area once known for its fishing villages and resorts, are accomplishing just that, thanks to volunteers with Hawai'i ties. In recent weeks, some of them have sold their first woven baskets and bags on eBay.

"It is all about empowering the women," said Greg Wong, a University of Hawai'i graduate now working as an attache in Baghdad for the U.S. Department of Commerce.

"The project goal is not really for the women to make money today on the sale of their baskets, although that is wonderful," Wong said in an e-mail to The Advertiser. "It is about the long-term goal of teaching them a new skill that they can use for the rest of their lives — e-commerce — in a wide variety of occupations."

It's "leapfrog learning," he said. "Teaching a new way to fish — on the Internet."

The project was set up with assistance from the Thai government and from Randy Ching, a Hawai'i-born eBay vice president.

During its trial phase, Wong said, there have been a few problems with connecting to the Internet and other technical issues, so there were no new listings once the current round of eBay auctions ended midweek. However, he said, eBay shoppers can keep an eye out for the products once they reappear through the crafters' sales ID or by searching (see box).

Wong became involved in the project when, during a rest and recuperation break from his Baghdad assignment, he traveled to Thailand to help with tsunami relief.

There, he found people eager to work, but with their livelihoods destroyed.

He and leaders in the region embarked on a three-month trial enterprise dubbed the Tsunami E-Commerce Project. The planning document (subtitle: "The New Fishing Net for the People of Khao Lak, Thailand") proposes to help more than 100 shelter residents place more than 100 items for sale on eBay and to "raise global awareness of the tsunami community and opportunities to help."

"Take out middlemen — let the world contribute directly to the victims," the plan states.

Wong, who is due to move back to Honolulu in August after his current assignment, joined with volunteers from the United States, Britain and Thailand in the project, which receives financial support from the Thai Ministry of Social Development and Human Security.

The government's part has been to provide computer hardware, a high-speed Net connection, school rooms, instructors and the materials to give residents a week of training in basket- and batik-making. After training, they then can buy the materials at low costs and make their own products.

Among the artisans is Sombat Sidanoi, 50, who came to Khao Lak to care for her sister after the disaster. According to the eBay listing for her woven tote bag, her earnings in the past had been limited to housekeeping assignments in resorts, about $3 per day.

"She hopes her new vocational training will help her assist her sister and pay for education for her daughter," project manager Anne Mathuros Bhu-charoen wrote in the listing description.

Another crafter of the $20 handbags listed earlier this week is Sirinee Santaweesuk, 38-year-old mother of two children and one grandchild. She lost her husband, a fisherman, when the tsunami struck, according to the eBay listing.

"She came to the camp to learn how to make the woven baskets in order to pass the sad moments with others, and to make some money to support her family," according to the item description.

The artistic skills already are known to many, Wong said, but the higher purchase prices of the global marketplace were never within their reach. The Internet, he said, can eliminate that barrier.

Immediately upon embarking on the project, the volunteers ran into their first barrier: Charity fund-raisers are closely regulated by eBay and, having failed to get the proper clearances, some of the earliest auctions were shut down.

That hurdle has been surmounted now, Wong said, and the group is nearing an agreement an international shipper to help with the shipping costs.

But there have been moments that have made all the arrangements worthwhile, he said.

"We did manage to sell one basket before we were shut down," Wong said, "and when we announced this to the women, they stood and cheered with delight."

Thestreet.com-USA

eBay (EBAY:Nasdaq - news - research) has hired the top executive from a blue-chip consulting firm to oversee its sprawling network of online marketplaces.

John Donahoe, a 23-year veteran of privately-held consulting firm Bain & Co., has signed on as president of eBay's Business Unit, a newly created position that will report directly to CEO Meg Whitman. Bill Cobb, president of the company's North American operations and Matt Bannick, president of international operations, will report to Donahoe.

In his new post, Donahoe will serve as mastermind of eBay's global auction and e-commerce business and official lightening rod for the sometimes vocal community of eBay sellers. Whitman predicted in a statement that Donahoe would "bring a whole new level of excellence to every facet of the company."

"This is a new position that wraps our North American and international presences closer together," said eBay spokesman Chris Donlay. "As the business expands, we are looking at how to support that growth and John will help us do that."

The appointment of Donahoe comes three months after a top-level management shuffling that left Cobb and Bannick in their new posts as well as putting Jeff Jordan in charge of eBay's PayPal unit. At the time, eBay watchers speculated that Whitman was setting up a three-way horse race for her eventual successor.

Donahoe's slot at Bain will be filled by Steve Ellis, who currently heads the firm's San Francisco office. Boston-based Bain's consulting services range from helping companies make operations more efficient to M&A activity to marketing and product development.

An SEC filing said Donahoe's contract calls for a biweekly salary of $28,000 -- coincidentally, the same amount that a grilled-cheese sandwich with the likeness of the Virgin Mary sold for on eBay not too long ago. He will also receive a three-year retention bonus worth $2 million.

The floor became a tourist attraction after Saturday Night Fever

The dancefloor featured in the classic 70s film Saturday Night Fever, which starred John Travolta, is to be sold.

The floor, which features over 300 flashing coloured lights, belonged to the 2001 Odyssey nightclub in Brooklyn, where part of the film was shot.

It was bought by Hollywood memorabilia company Profiles in History after the club closed down last week.

Company spokesman Brian Chanes said they expected the floor to attract bids of more than $80,000 (£42,000).

"We're getting international interest from all sorts of people," he told the New York Daily News.

Tourist attraction

"We have had interest from private collectors who want the dancefloor for themselves, and from club owners who know the commercial value of having the floor made famous in Saturday Night Fever."

Jay Rizzo, owner of the Odyssey 2001 club, said the floor was particularly popular with European tourists.

"Over the years, we've had thousands of people who come here just to see it. It has literally been the heartbeat of this club," he said.

The floor will go on sale on 1 April and will be auctioned on eBay, as well as in a live sale.

Saturday Night Fever, which was released in 1977, turned John Travolta into a huge star and landed him an Oscar nomination for his performance as the disco-obsessed Tony Manero.

The soundtrack, by the Bee Gees, became one of the best-selling albums of the decade.

Zia plans to post his books on College Junktion, an online auction designed by college students, for college students, that opened for business Friday. Registration to the Web site requires a valid ".edu" e-mail address. Such addresses are reserved for people connected with schools.

President, CEO and University of Miami sophomore Jason Baptiste developed College Junktion with two friends living on the same dormitory hall.

The idea grew from a bulletin board Baptiste passed while going for a cup of coffee on campus. "There was this board with hundreds of flyers of stuff for sale — a car here, a textbook there, this TV. The only way to get exposure was this board," he said. "I thought, 'What could I do to make this easier? Why not create a service to buy, sell and trade them on the Internet?'"

It's no longer a unique idea, with online giants Amazon's and eBay's massive auctions and the regional classifieds on craigslist. But Baptiste, 19, from Norwood, N.J., plans to combine auctions with networking features found on Friendster or thefacebook, which link users by common interests or acquaintances.

Within the next few months, Baptiste said, photo sharing, calendars, blogs and user groups will be added to the site. Eventually, the friends-of-friends listed in a seller's network could become a potential pool of buyers he can contact directly.

On College Junktion Friday morning, Joel Glynn, Miami junior and company vice president, listed a textbook from one of his prelaw classes, Thomas L. Tedford's "Freedom of Speech in the United States."

If a potential buyer wants to know whether Glynn actually found the book useful before placing a bid, a link under Glynn's profile sends a message directly to his e-mail, allowing him to respond without being logged onto the auction.

The key to this transaction is dot-edu; it only works for students, faculty and university staff.

Coupled with an e-mail verification for registration, it's meant to work as an automatic security check. "If somebody signs up with a fake e-mail address, it bounces back to us, so we can see who that is" and keep them off the site, Baptiste said.

That restriction defines College Junktion in a crowded Internet marketplace, said Ina Steiner, editor of the online trade magazine AuctionBytes.com.

"In the time since eBay started — that's been 10 years — scammers have really figured out how to play the system, how to commit fraud," she said. Steiner said that online buyers are now asking, how safe is their personal information?

College Junktion testers at schools around the country praised the limited access, saying they're more comfortable trading with fellow students with similar needs.

"The fact that it's being run by college students is reassuring," said Lisa DePascale, a freshman at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn. "You know you can relate to the person that started it, and that they're looking out for the best interests of someone my age."

College Junktion initially included auction categories for class notes and term papers. Baptiste said he decided to withhold these features Friday over questions of security and plagiarism.

Steiner cautions that a ".edu" e-mail address alone won't ensure safer online auctions.

"Users still shouldn't be lulled into a false sense of security. Whether a college student is more responsible than anyone else is up for grabs."

Compared with eBay, which according to a spokesman had 1.4 billion listings in 2004, College Junktion is starting small. About a thousand listings, mostly for textbooks and electronics, and a few hundred users were registered for Friday's launch, Baptiste said.

Investments from family and friends got College Junktion off the ground. Advertising, premium listing charges, and entry fees for promotions such as +video+ game tournaments will sustain it, said Ben Horwitz, a Miami freshman and the site's chief financial officer. Revenue from the students' other e-commerce company, Miami Merchants Inc., will supplement the auction site.

College Junktion won't charge for basic listings, or take commissions from sales. Baptiste hopes to attract eBay sellers such as Boston-area student Zia, who said he's switching to the new auction to avoid eBay's increased fees on some listing options.

"It costs me an extra three to five bucks (in eBay fees), and I think that's going to double, so that's just money wasted," Zia said.

Online auction watchdog Rosalinda Baldwin, editor of The Auction Guild newsletter, doubts that the free listing options will entice many eBay sellers to defect.

"In general, the people who are selling online, most of us are in our 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. People think, 'Online — oh, cool, young.' No, it's the baby boom generation online," she said.

Monday, February 21, 2005

By Kaukab Jhumra Smith

COLLEGE PARK , Md. — Neftali Pabon thought he had found the perfect Christmas gift for his 8-year-old son. He paid $80 for a new Gameboy Advance console on the online auction site eBay in November and then waited for a package in the mail.

He waited and waited.

Finally, after his e-mails to the seller bounced back and Paypal, the payment intermediary, said the seller had closed her account, Pabon realized he had been had.

The Frederick, Md., resident was the victim of online auction fraud, the No. 1 category of consumer Internet complaints across the nation.

The Federal Trade Commission said it received 98,653 complaints for online auctions nationwide last year, just under half of the 205,568 Internet-related complaints it received for the year.

The non-profit National Consumers League also said that half the Internet complaints it got last year were over auctions, and the Internet Crime Complaint Center — an FBI-led partnership — said that 71 percent of its referred complaints last year concerned Internet auction fraud.

And the numbers have been rising steadily. In Maryland, the number of online auction complaints to the FTC has gone from 401 reports in 2001 to 932 in 2002 and to 1,423 in 2003, peaking last year at 1,731.

Susan Grant, director of the National Fraud Information Center at the National Consumers League, said it is not surprising that online auctions generate so many complaints or that the lion's share are related to eBay, which claims 100 million users worldwide.

"That makes sense because eBay by far has the largest market share," Grant said. "Even though I'm sure that it's only the minority of auction users that are having problems, it accounts for a significant number."

The FTC said most online auctions problems occur when sellers misrepresent the true value of goods, withhold information about the product or the terms of sale, deliver goods late or — as in Pabon's case — do not deliver at all.

Pabon said he filed an online report with eBay about the fraud but got no response. No eBay representative was available to comment on his case. According to its site, eBay provides buyer protection for purchases up to $200.

Pabon also filed a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center, now known as the IC3.

Consumers can also file complaints with national agencies such as the FTC and the National Consumers League, along with local agencies like the consumer protection division of their state attorney general's office.

In fact, IC3 encourages people who think they have been defrauded to file complaints with multiple organizations, including the site itself, the local and state police departments for both the buyer and seller, the shipper, the National Fraud Information Center and the Better Business Bureau.

Pabon's complaint was forwarded by IC3 to the consumer protection division of the Maryland Attorney General's Office, but there was little that office could do, said Jamie St. Onge, director of the office's consumer education unit. She said the office can only mediate disputes between consumers and businesses; it cannot act on complaints between private individuals, which rules out most online auction disputes.

Experts agree that fraud occurs when consumers forget to take preventative measures. Pabon said he made a stupid mistake when he failed to check the seller's reputation ratings on eBay.

"It was sort of negligent on my part," Pabon said. Had he checked, he said, he would have been warned off by critical feedback by other buyers on the same seller.

But his son, Dominic, got a Gameboy for Christmas, after all. Pabon went to a local Best Buy store and bought one for $79 — better than the deal he thought he had landed on eBay.

Pabon, who has not shopped online since, shrugs about his costly lesson.

"It happens," he said. "I just never thought it happened to me."

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Computer geeks who love history have a chance to get their hands on rare documents and technical relics at "The Origins of Cyberspace" sale in New York next week, Christie's auction house said on Friday.

Much of the material on offer might seem dry to the uninitiated but for those in the know, there are some gems.

Lots on offer include an early version of a data storage disc dating from 1951, weighing 5.5 pounds which could only hold about the equivalent of one paragraph of text.

Also on offer is a 1946 business plan for a company to design and build a "multi-purpose rapid computing machine of moderate cost."

The plan was drawn up by pioneers J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, whose list of possible users of their machine is remarkably prescient, if limited. It includes banks, insurance companies and government census offices.

"The cost of such electronic computor (sic), of course, can only be estimated very roughly at this time, but present judgment is that the development work will make it possible to make such a machine for less than $30,000, and possibly as low as $5,000," the document says.

The oldest of the 1,000 or so items gathered into 255 sale lots is a 1613 edition of a treatise by the Italian Lorenzo Pignoria on slavery in Roman times which includes an illustration of a Roman table abacus, or reckoning table.

There are books documenting the history of mathematical calculation from the 17th century to the present day, as well as antique slide rules and a 1966 "Brainiac Electric Brain Kit" designed and marketed by Edmund Berkeley to teach the principles of electronic digital computing. The kit includes wires, bulbs, socket parts, bolts and manuals.

The collection was put together by San Francisco book dealer Jeremy Norman, whose interest was sparked when he saw a historical display at the offices of IBM in the early 1970s.

One of the highlights of his collection is the first English edition of a seminal paper by Luigi Federico Menabrea called "Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage" and published in 1843.

Babbage was a British mathematician who designed an "Analytical Engine" so complicated and far ahead of its time that it could only be partly exploited 100 years later. Lord Byron's daughter, Augusta Ada King, translated the original from French and both editions are part of the collection.

Pre-sale estimates for the lots range from around $200 to $70,000 and the total for the collection adds up to between $800,000 and $1.2 million. At the sale on Feb. 23, buyers will have an opportunity first to bid for the entire collection as a whole and only if it does not reach an unspecified reserve will the lots be sold separately and the collection split up.

NEW YORK Feb 17, 2005 — An inlaid maple secretary with a "JFK" monogram sold for $452,000 on Thursday, the last day of a three-day auction of property from the Kennedy family homes.

"It's something in history. It's something very special," said gem dealer Glenn Spiro, who purchased the secretary on behalf of a client, Iris Smith.

Illusionist Uri Geller bought two lots an Indian bronze pull toy and three small brass West African figures for $3,120. "I knew Jackie very well," he said in an interview from Lausanne, Switzerland. "She was an extraordinary woman."

In a photo released by Sotheby's, an inlaid maple secretary with a "JFK" monogram is shown Thursday, Feb. 17, 2005 in New York. The mid-20th century Chippendale-style piece sold for $452,000 on Thursday. The three day auction includes items from the Kennedy and Onassis homes in New York City; Hyannis Port, Mass.; Martha's Vineyard; Peapack, N.J.; and Middleburg, Va., as well as furniture from the private family quarters of the White House. (AP Photo/Sotheby's)

The Sotheby's auction of more than 700 pieces of furniture, artwork and knickknacks took in a total of $5.5 million, far less than the 1996 Kennedy sale that fetched $34.5 million, including $2.5 million for Jacqueline Kennedy's engagement ring from Aristotle Onassis.

But most lots went for several times their pre-sale estimates, with sets of ordinary objects such as magazines and glass jars selling for thousands of dollars.

"It is the magic of Camelot, the attachment to JFK and Jackie, that brings the high prices," C. Hugh Hildesley, executive vice president of Sotheby's, said.

The maple secretary, a combination desk and bookcase with drawers and pigeonholes, had an estimated value of $6,000 to $8,000.

The second-highest price at Thursday's session was $96,000 for a Faberge gold and enamel picture frame. It was bought by an anonymous telephone bidder.

The auction included items from the Kennedy and Onassis homes in New York City; Hyannis Port, Mass.; Martha's Vineyard; Peapack, N.J.; and Middleburg, Va., as well as furniture from the private family quarters of the White House.

Lisa Johnson of Nashville, Tenn., paid $10,000 for three collections of books a set of volumes about World War II, another set of books about African social history, and a group of books about cooking and gardening.

"We would not be where we are had it not been for the Kennedys," she said. "The Civil Rights Act would never have happened."

The property was consigned by Caroline Kennedy, who said in an introduction to the catalog that she has given everything of historical significance to the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and kept the things that mean the most to her and her children. She said a portion of the auction proceeds would go to the library foundation and other charities.

The sale prices included Sotheby's commission of 20 percent.

This online auction blog is now open and under new management. We will continue to update and share news concerning the online auctions and do our best to maintain the site with the same high quality and integrity that Genia has lent to the world of auctions. Also note that the auctionboard.com will reopen later this week. So please feel free to share your thoughts within the auction blog community.