John McCain’s presidential campaign is sidestepping heat in what they now call a “boneheaded” statement by one of the campaign’s top economic policy advisors. The gaffe occurred September 16 while discussing McCain’s economic experiences on the Commerce Committee during his years in the Senate. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the campaign’s senior domestic policy adviser, reached in his pocket and held up his BlackBerry cell phone.

“Telecommunications of the United States, the premiere innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create,” Holtz-Eakin quipped.

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eBay [EBAY] has announced that it will ban the sale of dog and cat fur on their German-language sites in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, beginning Tuesday. This is in response to complaints from animal rights groups, who claim that vendors are selling fur and faux-fur products made from the pelts of dogs and cats.

eBay attracted the attention of animal rights groups when a cat-fur coat was posted for sale on their French site in February. Dog and cat fur, produced mainly in China and distributed primarily in the U.S. and Europe, is sold in unlabeled or mislabeled fur products. Millions of cats and dogs – many domestic – are killed for their fur each year.

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While it’s not Madden Day, nor does it match the hysteria of the first iPhone release that we covered, today’s Apple [AAPL] iPhone 3G launch is not without its own quirky drama.

From professional line-waiters making a few hundred bucks by waiting to buy for someone else, to the publication of “iPhone line” restaurant lists, to and the Warholian fame of the first in line (the story arc of Dale Larson’s wait reads like pop-culture tragedy), iPhone Day 2.0 was already making for an entertaining Friday even before the stores opened.

San Francisco line-waiters began lining up at Apple’s downtown store early Thursday morning (see Mathieu’s pictures). Doors opened at 9:00am, and customers entered 30 at a time. As each group of customers entered, they were greeted by clapping employees, who were required to greet the customers with cheers. But maybe they should have been greeting them with hugs instead, as problems quickly developed.

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The French court, Tribunal de Commerce of Paris, has ruled that auction site eBay Inc. (EBAY) must pay a fine of almost 40 million euros for allowing the auction of imposter merchandise of Louis Vuitton and its family of expensive brands.

The world’s largest online auctioneer was found guilty of knowingly auctioning off fake goods from Louis Vuitton (LVMHF) and its sister company Christian Dior Couture for violating the distribution network set up for four perfume brands: Christian Dior, Givenchy, Guerlain, and Kenzo.

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1978: L’Atelier, an emerging technology future watch department, is established within Compagnie Bancaire as the banking group’s “inside evangelist.”

1983: L’Atelier introduces the first online financial service in France for the Group and its customers.

1987: L’Atelier becomes an “outside evangelist”, publishing Le Journal de l’Atelier , a new print newsletter on innovation and new technologies for professionals in such fields as finance, consulting, IT, commerce, marketing, and communications. From this point forward, it also conducts numerous information-gathering trips to the United States, Japan, and throughout Europe.

1993: L’Atelier establishes its own electronic bulletin board system, attracting over 10,000 users in this pre-IP era.

1994: L’Atelier launches its French web site www.atelier.fr , one of the very first in France.

1998: L’Atelier creates Canal Atelier, the first French-language video-streaming channel devoted to technology.

2004: L’Atelier begins broadcasting its weekly digital national radio show on new technologies. It is carried by business channel BFM.

2005: L’Atelier celebrates its 25th anniversary, and opens an office in San Francisco, California.

2006 : L’Atelier launches its English-language web site www.atelier-us.com , and develops activities focused on China and Asia (http://asie.atelier.fr/)

2007: L’atelier opens an office in Shanghai

2008: L’Atelier lunches its American weblog.

Hewlett-Packard has responded to the MacBook Air with its own lightweight luxury laptop: the new Voodoo Envy 133, a piece that is a touch thinner, if slightly heavier, than its Apple counterpart.

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Yahoo! is teaming up with McAfee Inc. to alert its search engine users of potentially harmful Web sites that come up in search results.

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PayPal will soon block people using old Web browsers from using their site in order to curb phishing scams.

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On Friday, April 4, 2008 Myspace announced a new project called Myspace Music, a possible competition to Apple’s iTunes.

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