Getting cash for crashed gadgets

Tech recycling services traditionally are either free or charge you a fee for trying to keep old gear out of landfills. But as long as you're cleaning out closets to make room for another season of gifts, you could finance some of your holiday shopping by sending tired tech toys to a service that will pay for them.

The new BuyMyTronics, (via EcoGeek) from the same people behind BuyMyBrokeniPod, will accept game consoles from a GameBoy to an Xbox, as well as iPods and iPhones. According to the site's online estimate, a dead Wii in the original box would fetch $62.25, sent via PayPal or check. If you like the deal, just sign up and ship out the goods.

SecondRotation also pays for gaming consoles, PDAs, phones, camcorders, GPS devices, and digital cameras. But its estimate rated the value of the same broken Wii as a gaping zero.

Too bad I can't find a site that wants my TI 99/4-A, circa 1981. I guess that's better fit for a vintage computer sale, Craigslist, FreeCycle, or eBay.

At least someone will give me a kickback for mailing in an old Motorola RAZR V3. CellforCash would pay $13, SimplySellular would fork over $23, and SellYourCell would offer $20. SecondRotation beat them all with its $30 trade-in estimate. BuyMyTronics is working to add trade-in options for cell phones, laptops, digital cameras, and camcorders.

Of course, you can also recycle a wireless phone without getting paid, or pay a small fee to GreenCitizen if you find walking into their San Francisco or Silicon Valley trade-in shop convenient. Trade-in services, including curbside pickup, from HP and Dell have good reputations.

Services such as these either refurbish and resell used gear, donate the old tech to schools or needy nonprofit groups, or send the stuff straight into something like a meat grinder for hardware, later reclaiming valuable metals to sell. SecondRotation resells the items on eBay, as does BuyMyTronics, which also donates castoff parts to artists. The staff of BuyMyTronics also aims to be "green" by reusing packaging materials and walking most of the hundreds of goods it deals with each month over to the post office.

However, many other recycling services make it a practice to ship used electronics overseas, where it's likely to poison the health of people and ecosystems. The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition lists recyclers services that recycle responsibly.

How much would you pay for an unlocked iPhone?

Would you pay more money just so you could have an unlocked iPhone?

T-Mobile is going to charge the equivalent of $1,478 for an unlocked iPhone in Germany, after deciding Wednesday to comply with a preliminary injunction issued by a court at the request of Vodafone, a rival carrier. The carrier will continue to challenge the court's decision, but it seems that locking phones to a specific carrier is against German law.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

According to T-Mobile's Web site, "numerous functions remain exclusively available to T-Mobile customers with a Complete rate plan." The only feature that the company singles out as missing, however, is the visual voicemail. T-Mobile also says it has a more complete EDGE network than its rivals, but those looking to switch to Vodafone or other carriers may not care so long as they get data access in their city or town.

It will be interesting to see how much value people place on an unlocked iPhone. According to Reuters, a locked iPhone in Germany will cost you $2,330 over the life of a two-year contract: $1,740 for the service plan and $590 for the iPhone. T-Mobile said it will still offer that deal for iPhones locked to its network, and that the special iPhone rate plans are 40 percent cheaper than the "comparative use" of another data-enabled phone through T-Mobile.

To many, cell-phone unlocking is a matter of personal freedom, in that they bought a device and want to use it with whatever service provider they choose. After all, we aren't hooked to Comcast or AT&T's broadband networks for 24 months after we buy a new PC or Mac. But there's probably quite a few potential customers who don't care and just want to jump on the iPhone train for the cheapest possible fare.

One thing is probably certain: half the mobile phone resellers on the planet just booked flights to Germany. Unlocking iPhones wasn't too difficult a process before, but it did involve modifying software and was subject to retaliation from Apple in the form of software updates, such as the infamous OS X 1.1.1 update. A clean, straight-from-the-factory unlocked iPhone could command a higher price than one that had been jail broken and unlocked using the current methods.

Still, will it command upwards of $1,500 in order to make resale worth the effort? I have no idea, but there's no way in hell I'd pay even close to that much for a phone without 3G data networking or GPS just so I could run it outside of a particular carrier's network. And then I'd still have to pay some carrier how ever much a month, at least $50, to make it work. Even assuming that somebody offers me that cheap a data plan, I'd wind up paying $2,678 over two years, as compared with the $2,330 I'd pay over the life of T-Mobile's two-year contract.

That, of course, is probably not a coincidence. T-Mobile might have to offer an unlocked iPhone, but there's apparently no requirement as to how much they have to charge for it. And if Apple struck the same kind of revenue-sharing deal with Deutsche Telecom, T-Mobile's parent, as it did with AT&T, the companies have to come up with some way to make sure Apple gets its cut.

Apple and Orange (ha!) will also have to offer an unlocked iPhone for the French market to comply with that country's telecom laws. The phone will go on sale next week, and will command a "premium" price, according to the International Herald Tribune.. Now maybe we have some idea of just how much a premium, but will people be willing to pay?

.Mac gets Web photo and video galleries, iPhone and YouTube integration

.Mac, the popular Web services suite from Apple is getting an update this morning. Among the newer features is a much-needed upgrade to .Mac's Web photo gallery service, which now ties in with the freshly updated iPhoto '08 and the iPhone. Users will also be able to upload photos to their online galleries via a specialized e-mail address. The new iPhone integration mirrors some of the options that are already in place to shuttle off photos from the device, with a new option to "send to Web gallery," which lets you send photos to their.Mac Web gallery, and their friends who have allowed the option in their own Web galleries.

Also of note, the updated Web galleries will work with movies made with iMovie '08. There's also a new option right in iMovie '08 to send the video straight to YouTube.

We're not seeing anything revolutionary here that hasn't been done on other services such as Flickr and Zooomr, but it does look pretty slick. The one big catch is that you have to be a .Mac subscriber to take advantage of these galleries. This is a nice plus if you use the service, but it's hardly a competitor to other photo services that are open to everyone. The one real surprise from this morning is the storage bump from 1GB to 10GB, which is necessary when you're splitting that space between e-mail, photos, and videos.

Update: To take a look at a Web gallery yourself, Apple has posted an example here. Keep in mind it might be a little slow today, since a lot of people are hitting the page at the same time.

Apple's iWeb gets tight Google integration, widgets

Apple's iWeb, one part of the iLife consumer apps suite, has received an interesting update this morning. iWeb is Apple's consumer-level Web site creation tool, and it gives users a simple way to drag and drop various Web site elements as well as fill in the included templates. The latest version is getting integration with two of Google's services: AdSense and Google Maps. iWeb users can now sign up for AdSense right inside the application, and pick how they want it to show up on their site. From the looks of the screenshots, it's much easier than having to copy and paste code into HTML pages. The Google Maps feature is also pretty straightforward, letting you drop in a draggable map anywhere on the page.

The best new feature, however, is the addition of Web snippets. This lets you drop in any old chunk of embed code to add various widgets, from YouTube videos to some of the more advanced ones we typically cover here on Webware. This opens up your iWeb-made page to a bundle of third-party services you wouldn't otherwise get in the somewhat limited creation tool.

Of course you could always get most of these features and more on the Web with services such as TypePad, WordPress, and Blogger--but Apple's approach is good for people who like to work with pages visually in a WYSIWYG environment.

T-Mobile: We'll sell iPhone without contract

Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile will allow customers in Germany to buy Apple's iPhone without having to sign a T-Mobile contract after rival Vodafone obtained a court injunction against it.

T-Mobile said on Wednesday it will offer the iPhone without a T-Mobile contract for $1,478 at its shops.

It will also allow those customers who bought an iPhone since November 19 to unlock the device free of charge so it can be used with other SIM cards. However, that will not enable customers to make use of all the functions that the music-playing and Web-browsing device offers.

T-Mobile has an exclusive deal with Apple to sell the iPhone in Germany, where Apple has no stores. Until now, customers had to sign up to a 24-month T-Mobile contract costing a minimum of $1,740 in order to buy the phone for $590.

A German court granted Vodafone a preliminary injunction this week preventing T-Mobile from locking the iPhone's SIM card to T-Mobile when making a sale.

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T-Mobile said it will comply with the injunction until the situation has been clarified by a court.

Vodafone had hoped to win exclusive rights to sell the iPhone in Europe but lost out to T-Mobile in Germany, Telefonica's O2 in Britain and France Telecom's Orange in France.

In Britain the iPhone costs $555 on top of an 18-month contract costing a minimum of $72 per month. It will go on sale in France at the end of the month.

German mobile phone operator Debitel has also lodged a complaint with Germany's telecommunications regulator about T-Mobile's iPhone deal, arguing it was not acceptable to link the use of the iPhone exclusively to T-Mobile's network.

A spokesman for the federal network agency said it had asked T-Mobile to respond but declined to give details.

Podcast: Analyzing 3D tech in 'Beowulf'

The animated retelling of the epic Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf is in theaters now, and it has more modern twists than just a half-naked Angelina Jolie--it was released in 3D. Theaters are showing the film using RealD, Dolby 3D, and IMAX 3D technologies.

So which is better? CNET News.com's Stephen Shankland saw the film in each format and tells us what he found.

Also on today's podcast: Black Friday mania, floating nuclear power plants, Google-DoubleClick's EU troubles, and T-Mobile says it will sell the iPhone unlocked.