<<<... Lisa Tonks, of Peru, Indiana, was vacationing with her family at Yellowstone National Park in the 1980s when she lost her wallet. Twenty years passed as the wallet sat in a police evidence room gathering dust. A police technician saw the wallet, noticed the Social Security card in it, traced the number to Tonks, and sent the wallet back to the grateful woman ... along with the $177 that had remained safely in it for two decades. Those are great stories (readers who are aware of more, feel free to send 'em my way!), but in each case, someone loses something, only to regain it again, long after they'd given up hope of ever seeing it again. Of course, these are the exceptions. I lost my wallet about twenty years ago in a movie theater in Kansas City, Missouri, and I've never heard tell of it since. But that's nothing: I've lost shoes, umbrellas, books, pictures, CDs, sunglasses, and even underwear (don't ask). None of it has ever made its way back to me. The big story in the news over the last week or so hasn't been about a loss, however - it's been about a gain. eBay agreed to purchase Skype, a peer-to-peer-based Voice over IP (VoIP) app, for a whopping $1.3bn in cash and $1.3bn in stock, with another $1.5bn to come down the road if Skype met financial targets by 2008. VoIP has been in the news a lot in recent months, with Microsoft buying Teleo, Google rolling out Google Talk, Yahoo! acquiring Dialpad, and even AOL introducing a new service designed to let users make phone calls over the net. Now eBay is joining the party by snapping up Skype... more >>>