Ebay has abandoned its much criticised policy of making sellers offer free postage on some items, it revealed today in a statement.

The online auction giant had come under fire for insisting anyone selling items such as cds, books and dvds must offer to send the item to domestic buyers for free.

In a stroke ebay almost killed off the second hand trade of many smaller items - for example, why sell a book which might only fetch 99p, for the postage to cost more - so leaving the seller out of pocket - a point I made some time ago?

It seems to me that it was a bid to take on play.com and amazon - only they are massive giants able through the economy of scale, to reduce their costs and do deals with postage suppliers.

In ebay's case they were basically insisting that people trying to sell an unwanted book or cd to do the same thing, making many of the purchases uneconomical.

Perhaps ebay felt that the postage, which they don't get a cut of through fees, was an area of possible revenue growth. They may have reasoned that if people bid up to within a close shave of play or amazon, they'd get a cut of that - rather than as before with bidding ending £1.50 or £2 short, with the buyer taking into account the postage. That £2 end price was fee chargeable for ebay - but the postage was not.

In any case there is now maximum postage in place, but at least the small seller market may recover.

Ebay claims it is in response to seller feedback that the change has been made. A cynic would suggest that a dramatic plunge in numbers of items of these categories being sold and therefore a drop in profits might be a more persuasive influence.

Sometimes trying to squeeze a few extra pennies out of something can lead instead to pounds going west...

Satellite TV and the digital revolution is making humanity more and more invisible to inquisitive aliens on other planets, the world's leading ET hunter said today.

That might be good news for anyone who fears an "Independence Day" - style invasion by little green men. But it is also likely to make the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence by Earthly scientists harder, Dr Frank Drake believes.

Dr Drake, who founded the SETI (Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence) organisation in the US 50 years ago, said the digital age was effectively gagging the Earth by cutting the transmission of TV and radio signals into space.

Some of the world's finest scientific minds have assembled today to discuss the question of UFOs.

Eminent academics and scientists are attending a two-day conference in London organised by the Royal Society - the UK's national academy of science.

World leading astronomers, biologists and astrophysicists including professor Colin Pilger, principal investigator for the British Beagle 2 Mars lander project, will address questions such as: What will alien life look like if we find it? Will we be meeting life-forms incredibly similar to ourselves or will they be the frightful monsters of sci-fi films? How do you break news of alien discoveries to the world without creating wide-spread pandemonium?

Stonehenge can be explored with the click of a mouse from today as the nation's most famous sites have been added to Google's Street View mapping.

Over 20 historic locations across the UK - including castles, landscapes and country houses - have been scanned using a panoramic camera, bolted to the back of a tricycle, and added to Google's online mapping service.

Users can now take a 360-degree, ground-level tour of sites such as Corfe Castle in Dorset, Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire, Lindisfarne Castle in Northumberland, and Plas Newydd in Wales.

Technology has made trust a thing of the past with the launch of a new iPhone app catching prying partners who read their loved one's texts.

The iTrust app works by creating a locked, dummy screen to stop suspicious eyes poring over the owner's text messages, emails or social networking accounts.

But as well as guarding sensitive information, iTrust also records any clandestine activity while the owner was absent - storing a fingerprint record of every button pressed on the phone's touchscreen display.

Sir Terry Wogan's grand finale as he bowed out of his breakfast show and Top Gear's Bolivia special have helped BBC iPlayer smash new records.

The on-demand service received a total of 115 million requests for TV and radio shows in December and created a new record for the number of requests in a month.

The BBC said the last two weeks of December also saw a massive increase in people accessing shows through games consoles.

Police have again come a cropper after a member of the public put a video up on the internet.

No it wasn't yet another panda car parking on double yellow lines outside a sandwich shop.

Officers had found a new use for riot shields in the snowy conditions - as a sledge.

According to the poster, local policing area commander Supt Andrew Murray said the snow had "a habit of bringing out the child in all of us".

He added: "I have spoken to the officers concerned and reminded them in no uncertain terms that tobogganing on duty, on police equipment and at taxpayers' expense is a very bad idea should they wish to progress under my command".

A large screen version of Europe's best-selling games console - the Nintendo DS - will launch in the UK on March 5, Nintendo said today.

The handheld DS console has sold more than 40 million units since its European launch in 2005, and the new DSi XL boasts a 93% larger screen than its predecessor the DS Lite.

Nintendo said the dual 4.2 inch screens will make playing games, such as Mario Kart and the Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, easier and more comfortable to play.

The DS handheld apes the split-screen design of Nintendo's classic Donkey Kong Game and Watch machine from the early 80s and features Wi-Fi capability and a touchscreen control system.

The DSi XL will be the fourth model in the DS range, which boasts combined sales of more than 100 million units across the world. No price has been confirmed.

Below: the new console and its' predecessor.

Claims that two students set up a Facebook group dedicated to an Adolf Hitler drinking game are to be investigated, a university said today.

Two students at Huddersfield University are said to have created Hitler - The Drinking Game, which involves laying out cards in a swastika shape and "leaves players completely ruined beyond belief".

The group currently has nearly 12,000 members and its creators label themselves as "Fuhrers" on the group's information page.

Google will stop censoring its search results in China and may pull out of the country completely after discovering that computer hackers had tricked human-rights activists into exposing their e-mail accounts to outsiders.

The change of heart heralded a major shift for the internet's search leader, which repeatedly said it will obey Chinese laws requiring some politically and socially sensitive issues to be blocked from search results available in other countries.

The acquiescence had outraged free-speech advocates and even some shareholders, who argued Google's cooperation with China violated the company's "don't be evil" motto.ll requests.