This is especially an important opportunity for anyone who recently received a letter from HMRC regarding your online trading. It gives you the chance to get some additional anonymous help free of charge from the people best positioned to assist you.

If you think you may owe any outstanding taxes then HMRC have an ebusiness campaign running and you have until the 14th of June to notify them that you want to put your tax affairs in order. By contacting HMRC before the 14th of June you’ll avoid heavy penalties if they then catch you later down the line (and the chances are high that they will).

To participate in the Twitter Q&A simply follow @HMRCgovuk on Twitter and if you want to post any questions use the hash tag #emqa to make sure that they see your query.

According to the research Interactive TV will have the most influence, as by the end of 2014 25% of us will regularly use interactive television to shop. By bringing together television and the internet, it will generate nearly £750m worth of direct sales by the end of 2014.

eBay already have a “Watch with eBay” iPad app available in the US which was released in 2010. The Watch with eBay app surfaces merchandise related to what consumers are watching on television, from the latest fashion trends at red carpet awards shows to sports memorabilia, to DVDs, signed autographs and other items related to favorite shows and actors. As “Couch Commerce” takes off eBay are bound to release International versions of the Watch with eBay app.

Other technologies which will become part of the mainstream shopping experience are:

• Augmented Reality – enables consumers to bring the real and virtual worlds together by overlaying digital information onto real products, spaces and places. This will range from allowing shoppers to view 3D projections of products that aren’t physically present or allowing them to virtually try on clothes
• In-store technologies – this cluster of technologies will enrich the consumer experience and improve store efficiency. Innovations such as iPads replacing tills and electronic shelf labelling will boost productivity
• Image recognition – allows devices to identify consumers or objects based on their attributes. Consumers could perform visual searches for products they point their devices at, and more significantly micro QR codes could replace barcodes and help retailers bridge the gap between tracking on and offline behaviour
• Smart devices – everyday appliances become intelligent and empowered, for example a fridge making recommendations on what food to order. Retailers could develop greater personalisation and gather deeper insight into their customers

The use of much of this technology can be seen with high street retailer Debenhams. Back in October 2011 Debenhams launched a series of pop-up stores at various UK historic sites where users could virtually try on clothes with an augmented reality iPad app. Shoppers could try on 10 party dresses in a virtual world and if they liked their new look they could make the purchase on the spot.

The virtual changing room will change the way we shop in the future and eBay’s US Fashion app also allows you to virtually try on clothes and build an outfit from various listings and virtually try them on before you decide to buy.

Debenhams already have a mobile app with smart shopping using QR codes for both adverts and instore shopping and can also deliver offers such as a free instore coffee to attract shoppers to their stores. If you’ve walked past a Debenhams store recently you’ve probably seen QR code posters in the shop window, scan it and you’ll receive more information and an instant offer delivered direct to your mobile.

eBay estimate that the UK’s ten largest retailers could each see incremental sales of £235m in two years by investing in these new technologies. The challenge for smaller retailers is which technology to invest in and when, in order not to get left behind. One thing is for sure though, the way we shop online and offline is changing and eBay will attempt to be at the forefront of these changes.

eBay.com sellers can list up to 50,000 auction listings with the Buy It Now feature for free today, Wednesday the 16th of May. Time the promotion is open to all sellers on eBay.com – both eBay Stores subscribers and sellers who do not have an eBay Stores subscription.

According to eBay the only thing that could stop you listing 50,000 items today is existing selling limits on your eBay account. More likely of course if you’d just finished listing 50,000 items on Sunday you simply have nothing left to list!

Full details of the promotion are on eBay.com

Hopefully the glitch will be fixed quickly and everything will be back to normal, but if you’ve been having issues using the site at least you’ll know that it’s not something that you did to break the site.

What no one has done so far is to connect SoLoMo commerce with payments, but now Moocho has found a way to cross Facebook with Square and create a totally new payment phenomenon. Reminiscent of how Facebook started Moocho has introduced a seamless mobile payment app at seven major US universities. The program also gives students access to exclusive discounts on everyday purchases.

With Moocho Open Tab technology, students can make purchases at Moocho merchants by just using their name. It’s like the old days when it was common to say, “Put it on my tab” at the pub. This makes a Moocho Open Tab purchase simple, convenient and fast. Plus with Moocho Open Tab students accumulate loyalty rewards with each purchase.

Students sign up for a free Moocho Open Tab account at moocho.com by linking a credit or debit card to their account. Each student immediately receives $1 to $5 free credit at every participating merchant and access to exclusive discounts. Plus, every purchase earns more credit to use next time.

For those financially strapped students with amenable parents Moocho has also introduced “Parent Mooch”. With this program parents automatically pay for food and groceries at any participating Moocho merchant.

I have to admit to a certain amount of skepticism whenever I’m told of the latest great idea. However there are a number of key pointers that could make Moocho a success. Firstly students are naturally some of the most avid consumers of technology, that’s partly what made Facebook a success. Students are open to new ideas and will share them with their friends until everyone is in on the latest craze.

More importantly the team behind Moocho aren’t strangers to building and growing a technology company. Matt Levenson, Moocho’s Founder and CEO, was the founding COO for StubHub which sold to eBay for over $300 million and he’s not the only one in the Moocho management team that came from StubHub.

By launching at Colorado State University, Ohio State University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Pittsburgh, University of Virginia, University of Wisconsin – Madison and West Virginia University Moocho have pretty much cancelled out their competition. They’re starting small but expansion to other universities will be easy.

Of course one day their early customers will grow up and leave university and the chances are that in a few years time Moocho could expand beyond their academic target market and we could all be Mooching. Once upon a time access to Facebook was only through academic institutions and look what happened there.

It’s not really a surprise that the Yellow Pages and Thomson are less attractive to businesses these days. Any copies I receive along with BT’s telephone directory go straight into the recycling bin unopened. Why when I have a computer and a smartphone would I ever want to refer to a paper directory which only covers a tight geographical area? Most of the businesses I want to contact aren’t based in Thatcham where I live so the print directories are worse than useless and slower than a smart phone.

Small businesses are shifting their marketing to lower-cost media like Facebook and Twitter and away from legacy media like the directories. They tell us that one-to-one marketing is their most efficient and most successful way of generating new business – the fact that Facebook has become the number one source of new business within just a few years of its creation is remarkable.
Simon Best, founder of BaseKit

Whilst online retailers may struggle to figure out how to best use Facebook to generate sales, the same isn’t true for other forms of businesses. If you provide services, anything from Window Cleaning to Accounting, or have a business such as restaurants, hotels or holiday lets then you should be figuring out how to use Facebook and Twitter to work for you.

The report also highlights how many businesses are becoming “Digital Dinosaurs” with 60% of UK small businesses yet to get online. Of those that are online 11% say their websites use out of date technology and a further 11% describe their company’s online presence as either “poor” or “embarrassing”. That’s a pretty sad state of affairs for the country who’s consumers spend more online per head of population than anywhere else in the world!

The offer is valid until the 27th May 2012 for full price menu items but can’t be used in conjunction with any other offer. To get your 35% discount and treat your staff to lunch order simply online at Dominos, enter the voucher code MKNCUAQX at checkout and pay with PayPal.

They’re looking for stories of how Alibaba has helped the set-up or growth of your business, interesting story about how you started your business, the challenges you had to overcome or how working for yourself changed your life. If chosen you could be featured on an Alibaba TV advert similar to the one shown here.

The deadline for entries is the 17th May 2012 and you’ll need to complete the Alibaba survey with details about your business and Alibaba suppliers, as well as your short “Go Global” story.

The two companies are investing $25 million on a 50:50 basis in the new company and will each have three directors on the board.

PayPal and SOFTBANK also announced PayPal Here in Japan, the fifth country to receive this global mobile payment solution that is already available in the USA, Canada, Hong Kong and Australia. PayPal Here will enable millions of Japanese small businesses to accept credit/debit cards and PayPal payments through a smartphone.

eBay don’t have a great record in Japan having pulled out in 2002, trying again with an eBay/Yahoo! partnership in 2007, and currently eBay/GMarket in 2010. The current “eBay Japan” marketplace is branded Qoo10 in association with eBay.

For eBay to have a better record in Japan for payments than they had with marketplaces it’s essential that they partner with a Japanese company. SOFTBANK already have local market knowledge, 29 million mobile subscribers and a distribution network including thousands of retail outlets and sales staff across Japan. PayPal add the products and services to make payments work.

As an aside PayPal Here is now available in USA, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan and Australia but not anywhere in Europe. Could this be because payments are more advanced in the UK and EU and swiping a credit card is so passe? We need a Chip and PIN solution so PayPal will need to provide new solutions to meet the needs of European payments. It does seem strange that PayPal are handing out free swipe versions of PayPal Here around the world when even the US will soon move away from swiping credit cards and retailers will bear all losses from fraud if they continue to swipe cards. I’m guessing that PayPal will have an announcement soon for an EU payments solution as the market is simply too big to miss out on.

You’ll still need a merchant banking facility for online payments, but there are several advantages to using Actinic Payments for your website.

Firstly the fees are low, between 16p and 40p per transaction but importantly there is no percentage charges or monthly fees from Actinic – the only other fee you’ll pay is from your bank. Crucially there is only one point of contact for support for both your website and for payment processing. If something isn’t working then Actinic can help you to resolve any technical or operational issues.

Managing payments is made easy, all of the third man authentication information is provided directly within Actinic Online alongside your customer’s order. You can refund, void and commit pre-authorised payments from your admin console with no need to log into a third party gateway payment website to manage payments.

For the technical bit, Actinic Payments is 100% PCI-DSS compliant (to level 1), offers a sophisticated fraud screening service as well as 3D Secure (Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode), AVS for verifying a customer billing address and CVV2 (the 3 digit card verification number). Actinic Payments is powered by Credit Call .

The real killer selling point is that once you have a merchant account number that can be used for Internet payments and your Actinic Online account is opened then Actinic set up Actinic Payments for your website and you have no integration work to do. Everything is done for you and you’re ready to start selling.

The hiatus was caused when Yahoo! investor Third Point, who own 6% of Yahoo!, raised the issue of Scott Thompson’s credentials. Third Point CEO Dan Loeb and two of his nominees will join Yahoo!’s board so they appear to have got what they wanted from the mess.

It’s not just at Yahoo! that Thompson’s CV claimed the disputed Computer Science qualification. Although during his time at eBay and PayPal it doesn’t appear to have been an issue – he was recorded as having “a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting and Computer Science from Stonehill College”. Not quite the degree in “business administration with a major in accounting” that he actually held. It appears that the description of his qualifications was carried across to Yahoo! and no one ever verified his actual qualifications at either company.

I do feel sorry for Scott, I’ve never been asked for my ‘O’ Level or ‘A’ Level certificates which are happily gathering dust in a cupboard somewhere. If you asked my what my qualifications are I’d probably get the details wrong but it really doesn’t matter what education I had a over a quarter of a century ago – it’s my current experience that counts.

Up until Friday Scott Thompson was still listed as President of PayPal on the eBay Singapore site and on eBay he also apparently had a Computer Science qualification. This link has now been redirected to the up to date eBay Inc leadership page. Mind you it’s not unusual for eBay pages to be out of date but unless they cause embarrassment they’re never changed. According to eBay Australia Meg Whitman is still CEO of eBay even though she resigned in November 2007.

Updated to add: News has surfaced that Scott Thompson told the Yahoo!’s board that he had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer before announcing his resignation. Our thoughts are with him and his family.

The Royal Knickers come from the estate of Baron Joseph de Bicske Dobronyi and whilst their provenance isn’t proven that they belonged to Queen Elizabeth II, the chances are that she did indeed leave them on a chartered plane used by her during her first trip to Chile in 1968. However both Buckingham Palace and the garment maker have neither confirmed or denied that this pair of underpants are from Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II.

If you fancy a 40 year old pair of Queen Elizabeth II’s frilly knickers (and quite honestly why would anyone want them?), then this is probably your only opportunity to acquire a pair. Currently sitting at just over $4,000 the auction has just over a week left to run so it is likely that the bids will soar before they are eventually sold.

Ina of course is well connected within eBay and fired off a few emails and voice mails and was pretty quickly assured that eBay were working on it. The result was a retraction notice to the AuctionBytes Internet Host requesting them to cancel any blocks or redirects they had applied to the account.

It’s good that eBay are scanning for phishing pages, but there are two strange things here. Firstly surely someone who’s job at eBay is to hunt out and take down phishing sites would keep abreast of industry news and be aware of a site such as AuctionBytes – that suggests a human may not even have looked at the page prior to firing off a take down request. Secondly eBay would probably recognise the comment fields of a blog, but AuctionBytes now require you to create and account and log in prior to commenting. That combined with the content of the post in question could have been enough to trigger eBay’s alarm bells.

We don’t require Tamebay readers to create an account in order to leave a comment, but even if we did eBay should be able to recognise the difference between a log in on the Internet and a log in to eBay. Of course if you wanted to comment with your eBay ID as an alias it could be tempting to use the same password but we’d strongly recommend that you don’t.

No one will be sorry to see these adverts gone, advertisers have in the past made horrible flashing adverts and some in the past have even played music on mouse-over (although eBay were quick to ban those).

eBay will be adding new ads to eBay Australia though, they’ll start to see merchandising adverts at the bottom of search results and also as per the UK and US they’ll get adverts on the view item page below the seller information box from the 30th of May. This of course is the worst possible news as eBay have yet to redesign the view item page so Australian sellers can look forward to acres of wasted white space at the top of eBay listings to accommodate the new adverts.

The start price needs to be £1 or more to qualify for free insertion fees (you already get free insertion fees for auctions with lower start prices as a private seller). All the normal terms apply – private sellers only, no professional listing tools – you can only use the Sell Your Item form, Quick Sell form or mobile apps to list.

Full details on the eBay free listing day promotion page.

PayPal are going to speed up transfers between PayPal and your bank account. Both ways!

It will mean that money movements between PayPal and bank account will be according to faster payments standards and a new policy section will be included to cover this. It will mean that when you withdraw funds from your PayPal account they’ll appear in your bank account perhaps not instantly, but definitely within a couple of hours.

It will spell the end of the £5.00 charge to withdraw money from your PayPal account within a day instead of 2-3 days as all withdrawls will be faster payments. It will also mean if you top your PayPal account up from your bank account this will also be instantaneous (again at least within a couple of hours).

PayPal will progressively roll out faster payments during summer and should be completed for all users by late summer. The update will be done gradually because of the volume of payments that go through PayPal.

Great news for selling on eBay though, list it, sell it, get paid by PayPal and five minutes later the cash could be in your bank balance and available to spend.

eBay have published a full list of all the affected categories and the new fee structure that applies to them. The fee increase will be effective after the 12th of June, but in the mean time the credits mean you’ll pay lower fees.

If you sell curtain fabric then there’s one final sting in the tail, up until now you’ll have had up to 12 images for free, the category changes mean that you’ll now be paying for all images bar the first which remains free. With a bit of luck this won’t be for long though, it’s high time that eBay gave all images for free in the UK as they already do so on eBay.com

eBay claim to be the UK’s biggest online marketplace for fashion, and leading brands now selling on the UK site include French Connection, L.K. Bennett, Dune and House of Fraser. These hot high street brands are showcased in eBay’s Spring/Summer 2012 campaign, which celebrates UK women’s individual ‘mix and match’ approach to style. The iPhone app complements this campaign perfectly enabling buyers to snap a friends outfit and the find similar garments from current designer to classic vintage looks on eBay.

I get the feeling that the new app will be more appealing to women shoppers than to most men. If you’re anything like me you’re pushed to have a favourite colour, although I know some guys out there have a tad more fashion sense than me. In general though if it fit (more or less!) I’ll wear it, but for anyone who loves to browse for hours you’ll find the new image swatch matching really addictive.

The eBay press release also added “Following a recent update to include image recognition and Milo technology, the RedLaser barcode scanning app now searches thousands of online and local retailers for the best price products faster than ever”. Sadly when we asked eBay couldn’t name a single UK retailer who have signed up with Milo who we’ll be able to compare prices with. If you have an iPhone and find a local UK retailer recommended please do let us know.

The New York center will grow to around 200 people starting with 25 moving over from Hunch which eBay recently acquired. This site will be headed up by Chris Dixon, the founder of Hunch, and will be dedicated to improving eBay’s recommendations technology. eBay really need to crack this one, they have a habit of showing me the same products that I recently purchased (I recently bought a bed on eBay and they now seem to think I want about a zillion more, rather than suggesting bed linen, other bedroom furniture and curtains which I might be interested in), or of recommending totally unsuitable products such as women’s clothes when eBay should know that I’m a man.

The second site in India will be a Global Development Center focused on the eBay marketplace and PayPal and eBay will hire up to 1000 technologists over the next three years. eBay already have a Global Development Center with 2,200 employees in Chennai India.

It looks likely with the expansion plans and new centers focused on technology that there might be a few new entrants into the “eBay Inventors Club”, an incentive program for employees who’s work results in new patent applications. There is also the “PayPalian”, the most prestigious award given to employees of PayPal, which the new team in Bangalore will hopefully also win a few of in the future.

I asked Social Media expert John Hayes of iContact what are his top four ways for a company to use social media and he told me:

1. To distribute information about their company, products, service and wider industry as a whole and perhaps build their reputation as the go-to person or thought leader in their particular field of expertise
2. To engage socially with existing customers and prospective clients in their own environment, field customer service issues and humanize your approach to business
3. To recruit an army of virtual (unpaid) brand ambassadors who will not only help you sell your products or services but also field customer service issues
4. To monitor sentiment towards your brand (and your competitors’ brands), glean new ideas and stay ahead of the game in terms of new developments in your industry.

Looking back I had social media cracked. I wasn’t aware that it would be named “Social Media” in the future. I didn’t have John’s guidelines for using social media. I just knew what I had to do to sell, but it appears I instinctively followed the four steps and:

1. Answered questions about printers and established myself as the go-to person for all printer related questions.
2. Engaged with people looking to purchase a printer and gave helpful advice on which model or technology to use (and if you haven’t already scrapped your inkjet and invested in a laser printer I still say that you should!)
3. I didn’t try to recruit an army of brand ambassadors, it just happened naturally. So many times over the years when someone asked about a printer another PowerSeller would say “Ask Mountie, oh and he sells them as well” or “Ask Mountie, I bought my printer from him!”
4. Because I was the PowerSeller printer expert I knew pretty much what printers customers were considering and what PowerSellers needed. I knew their businesses, how they operated and what was available on the market. I was the printer expert!

If you’re interested in learning how to apply these Social Media lessons in real life then John Hayes is running “A Crash Course in Email & Social Media Marketing for SMEs” at various locations around the country. The next is in York on the 19th June.

I never kept records of how many printers I sold on the PowerSeller board (and sorry eBay, but many of them were “off-eBay” sales so I didn’t pay eBay fees on them). I do know one of the first printers I sold was to Tamebay’s Sue, and her husband still has it running in France. Did you buy your printer from me and did you hear about it on the PowerSeller board?

John Pemberton, founder & CEO of GMDC Global, a leading online seller of designer clothes; Alistair White, founder & CEO of Ultimate Styling, a leading car parts internet retailer; and Maksim Burdilov, founder & CEO of Smart Parts, a leading online seller of electronics in the UK who are all eBay Top Rated Sellers will provide an insight into how they have built their businesses and how they are positioning them going forwards in order to capture the enormous future growth in the e-commerce sector.

The panel is in partnership with iwoca, and the ecommerce experts shed light on the role access to finance plays in expanding their businesses. Industry specialist Anthony Trollope, founder & CEO of The Wholesale Forum, the UK’s leading wholesale community will also be on the panel so if you want to discover how to accelerate your business this is one session not to miss at Catalyst.

They all lost, years later a little company called Skype came along and conquered the voice over IP market and now you don’t initiate a “VoIP call” you simply “Skype” someone. Sure Google Talk is out there, but the majority of the world is on Skype.

There was no need for Skype to win the VoIP market, if manufacturers had cooperated instead of working to block competitors integrating with their technology they could perhaps have all been winners, and now the same situation is developing with payments.

PayPal is of course pretty much the defacto payment system today, at least on eBay. As they start to develop digital wallet solutions others are chasing fast. Google has had a go with Google Checkout/Google Wallet and not got very far, but there are far bigger payments companies breathing down their necks.

I constantly see adverts for Barclay’s new Ping It app on the TV (I hate to think how much they’re spending, but it’s an elegant solution if you want to do bank to bank transfers in the UK). Mastercard also have a new wallet out (an extension to PayPass) similar to V.me from Visa and Serve from Amex.

Competing payments companies are arguing over the pros (ease of use and security) and cons (no one has the hardware in place) of Near Field Communications (NFC). Other companies like PayPal are ignoring NFC completely and looking to other solutions and Square can even operate based on a picture of your face for verification of a transaction.

What’s bothering me though is how many digital wallets will I need in the future? One retailer will accept my PayPal wallet whilst another will take Google Wallet. I’ll go for a meal and pay with Square and my face, but my mates will want to send me their share of the bill with Barclay’s Ping It. One awkward chum will have Amex and another will be on V.me.

I just want one digital wallet that serves everyone. I want interoperability in payments and be able to send and receive payments from my digital wallet regardless of what solution you use. I don’t care if you prefer Google, Square or even Nochex, I just want to be able to pay you.

In offline payments I’ve never yet been told I can’t pay by Visa because the merchant prefers Mastercard. How can we be allowing a situation where I can’t pay with Google Checkout because the merchant prefers PayPal?

Unlike the UK, for the eBay.com promotions you can use listing tools, but unless you’ve a huge inventory 50,000 listings is a lot. Don’t forget there’s a duplicate listings policy so you can’t simply list the same items multiple times.

The promotion runs from today, the 7th May and ends on Sunday the 13th May. Full details of the promotion with what’s included and what’s excluded is on the free listing promotion page on eBay.

The Corvette was a favourite amongst the astronauts of the day and Armstrong’s car delivered to him on the 15th of December 1966. A year later it was purchased by a NASA employee who drove it until 1981 and it’s been in storage ever since. Sadly storage has left it pretty dirty and rusty so if you want to restore it to pristine condition it’ll cost you a pretty penny, although with the bid price that probably won’t bother you too much if you can afford to buy it in the first place.

As well as picture based search Rummage also gives you the ability to open up a large overlay image with the basic eBay buying information and if you spot something of interest simply hover over an image and you can “pin” it with Pinterest.

Rummage haven’t bothered trying to rebuild eBay search, all they’ve done is to grab eBay’s search results and display them in an interesting way. You can still sort Rummage results by Best Match, Recently Listed, Ending Soonest, Price Highest, Price Lowest or Most Bids.

Sadly Rummage is only available for eBay.com, but it is cute and it does give eBay something to think about next time they’re redesigning search results.