Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay (EBAY), is launching a for-profit news startup in Hawaii, where he and his family live. This is important news, and not just because he’s involved.

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EBay Inc.’s (EBAY) PayPal plans to unveil a new system that makes it easier for software developers to integrate the online payments system right into their programs–as the company takes new steps to protect its turf.

With the new open software, called Paypal X, users won’t have to type their username and password into a separate PayPal Web site in order to complete a payment. Instead, people will be able to sign into PayPal and make purchases, such as virtual weapons, right inside an application such as a game.

“We’re taking all of our product capabilities and making them open and that much easier for you to use,” said Scott Thompson, PayPal’s president.

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A self-described iPhone freak, designer Norma Kamali spends each morning reading the day’s headlines on her gadget’s current-events application. To unwind, she plays Scrabble on a game app. When her miniature dachshund Zeke acts up, Ms. Kamali looks up her iPhone’s encyclopedia on canine ailments.

Last month, Ms. Kamali entered the iPhone app business herself, launching a free application to sell looks from her three collections. From their phones, users can purchase 15 new looks from Ms. Kamali’s lines at eBay (EBAY) and Wal-Mart (WMT) as well as her high-end designer line. “In the fashion business, you see the runway collection, and then it’s a few months later that you actually get it, in stores,” Ms. Kamali says. “But we know that everybody is taking pictures during the shows and downloading them on YouTube—and what’s the big secret?” She adds: ” ‘We want it now!’ That’s the kind of attitude we’re at.”

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Music-download service 7digital faces plenty of skepticism since its U.S. launch two weeks ago.

According to Ben Drury, its co-founder and chief executive, many of the questions–how do you compete with iTunes, how do you stand out amid a sea of music services–are valid ones.

“We didn’t want to just launch a ‘me-too’ store,” he said in an interview in New York, where he’s attending the CMJ Music Marathon and meeting with media companies old and new, including CBS (CBS), eBay (EBAY), Pandora and AOL, to discuss potential partnerships.

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Microsoft says a phishing scheme is behind the exposure of passwords to thousands of Hotmail accounts late last week and adds that it’s helping affected customers regain control of their accounts.

On Monday, the Neowin technology blog posted a story saying that an anonymous user on Oct. 1 had uploaded a list with password details of more than 10,000 Hotmail accounts to a Web site called pastebin.com, where developers typically share programming code with each other. Neowin said it had seen part of the list, which has since been removed, and notified Microsoft of the issue.

After an internal investigation into the leaked Hotmail credentials, Microsoft (MSFT) said in a statement that it determined the passwords were obtained through a phishing scam. In a phishing scam, hackers send out legitimate-looking emails under the letterhead of banks, eBay (EBAY) and other institutions, usually telling consumers they need to reset online passwords to their Web sites for security purposes.

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With Google (GOOG) releasing 100,000 invites to test the beta version of the much-hyped Wave, one enterprising blogger decided to capitalize on all the buzz surrounding the new messaging and collaboration tool by selling his invite on eBay (EBAY).

Hagan Blount, a 30-year-old food blogger based in Baltimore, had been listening to the chatter about Wave and hatched the idea to auction his invite on eBay. “I figured there’s a whole lot of buzz. I wonder how many hits this would get?” he said.

Of course, Mr. Blount hadn’t yet received his invite, but he said that a software developer friend of his who did not wish to be identified had promised to procure one for him. Mr. Blount commenced the auction on Tuesday night, and by the time he had woken up at 6 a.m. Wednesday, the day that Google would be releasing Wave invites, his auction had already received 12,000 hits.

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Last week, former eBay (EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman officially launched her campaign for governor of California, hoping to clinch the Republican nomination.

Also last week: News broke, thanks to proceedings in a London court, of a worldwide scam involving potentially millions of dollars and thousands of customers duped into buying counterfeit golf clubs, of all things, as well as clothing, airline-lounge passes and other luxury goods sold on eBay.

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There are growing signs of tension between some of the players behind the $2 billion deal to sell eBay’s (EBAY) Skype to a group of investors.

On Friday, Joost, the U.K. Internet video company, said that by shareholder vote it had removed Michelangelo Volpi from its board of directors and from his position as chairman of the company. Volpi, a former high-level Cisco (CSCO) executive, stepped down from Joost’s CEO position in July, and is now a general partner at investment firm Index Ventures. Joost in a statement said it was also “conducting an investigation into Mr. Volpi’s actions during his tenure as CEO and as Chairman.”

In his role at Index, Volpi helped organize the group of investors that’s buying Skype from eBay. Yet Volpi’s relationship with Joost could prove important to the Skype deal coming to a clean conclusion.

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Tech CEOs spend a lot of time taking questions in front of the camera. Lately, eBay’s (EBAY) top boss John Donahoe has been spending some time behind one.

Amid a turnaround effort at eBay’s online marketplace, he has been meeting with the company’s merchants and taping the conversations with a Flip camcorder. He’s posted many of these to a video blog for eBay’s internal employees.

Recently one interview with an eBay merchant named Quick Ship Electronics even made its way to YouTube.

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As eBay Inc. (EBAY) looks to offload Skype, the executives who sold the Internet telecom firm to eBay have formed the hub of a European network of investors and executives that they hope will rival and even exceed the one in Silicon Valley.

The sale of Skype to eBay for an estimated $3.3 billion in 2005 became renowned as one of Europe’s great venture-capital successes, with more than half the sale price going to employees, according to estimates based on filings for the Securities and Exchange Commission and in Luxembourg. While those kinds of gains have been seen in Silicon Valley, they were practically unheard of in Europe, making Skype alumni stars among European tech entrepreneurs and giving them a cachet in the U.S. that few Europeans could match.

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There were a flurry of stories over the weekend about the electoral dreams of former eBay (EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman and former Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Carly Fiorina. Whitman is the current Republican front-runner in the race to be be the next governor of California. Fiorina has formed a committee to mull a run against Barbara Boxer for a U.S. Senate seat. Both are supposed to bring financial savvy to the government roles they seek, although both left amid serious questions about their job performance.

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This was a strange earnings season. But it has been a remarkably strange economy. But when you look at the big names in tech, including Intel (INTC), IBM (IBM), Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), eBay (EBAY), Microsoft (MSFT), and the big names on Wall Street, there was a bizarre disconnect over what was expected, and what was realized.

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Last week, Costco (COST) quietly rolled out a new partnership with Web site Gazelle to encourage its legions of discount shoppers to trade in their old technology for credit they can spend on new gadgets.

The Costco customer program works pretty much like the one that startup Gazelle has offered to everyone for about a year. Enter the make and model of your old gadget (say, a third-generation 8GB iPod Nano) into the Costco Gazelle Web site, and the company tells you how much cash they’ll give you for it ($47, as of Friday, July 17) if you put it in a box and mail it to them. Gazelle then resells your old gear on eBay (EBAY) and to wholesalers–or, if it’s really old, they’ll recycle it for the value of its tech innards.

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The average Internet user in the U.S. spent more than 4.5 hours on Facebook in June, more time than he whiled away on Google (GOOG), eBay (EBAY), Yahoo (YHOO) and other online hubs, according to new data from Nielsen.

Google’s family of Web sites retained the biggest U.S audience, reaching 155.6 million home and work users, the report shows. The ranking of the top 8 remained unchanged from May, while No. 9 Apple (AAPL) knocked Amazon (AMZN) down a peg (the online retailer was ranked No. 9 in May), with 59.7 million and 59.6 million June visits, respectively.

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Even in a recession, lunch with Warren Buffett turns out to be a hot commodity.

The investment guru and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway has an annual ritual of auctioning a steak lunch with himself on eBay (EBAY) to raise money for San Francisco’s Glide Foundation. Last year’s winning auction tally of $2.1 million broke all previous records.

Despite many predictions that a lunch with Buffett isn’t worth nearly as much during a recession, the folks at Glide say the pace of this year’s auction is way ahead of last year.

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