shopping

The Coupons App for Android is a bit like an inelegantly designed Swiss Army knife for bargain-shopping. It serves up location-relevant coupons, sniffs out the lowest gas prices in your area, and even helps you compare products with its built-in bar-code scanner.

Usability is certainly not this app's strong point, but once you have it figured out, it works well enough. Swipe left and right through different filters including Food, Stores, and Gas, then once a filter is loaded, swipe up and down to see the deals. If you find a deal you like, tap it to open up … Read more

Who the heck wants to shop for wine on their mobile phone? All the pinch zooming, typing "Domaine de la Vougeraie Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru" and then having it autocorrected... ugh.

But today I have been converted. Now I think shopping for wine on your smartphone isn't such a bad idea. In fact, it will help Wine.com, an online wine retailer, close the nine percent of shoppers that log onto its website with their smartphones. Now there's a chance they'll actually make a purchase, thanks to Wine.com's just-launched and fully functional mobile website. … Read more

There is a house in my neighborhood that is already festooned with Christmas lights, while an inflatable Santa and snowman sit in the front yard. I first noticed this premature display of holiday cheer last week, and I grumble each morning as I drive by it. I'm still eating my kids' Halloween candy; I'm not ready for Christmas or Christmas shopping.

Thus, I hesitate to write a holiday shopping-related post, but Billeo has forced my hand with the release of an iPad app last week that could streamline your shopping efforts this (expanded) holiday season. Billeo, the online bill-pay assistant, now wants to assist those shopping from their couch on an iPad with a free app called ShopSmart. … Read more

I have two useful new mobile apps to recommend for those gearing up for the holiday gift shopping orgy that will soon be upon us.

Shipping tracker First, Slice is releasing a mobile app. Slice is a useful utility that reaches into your Yahoo or Google e-mail inbox and extracts all the receipts that are sent to you. It gives you a list of everything you've bought online. It also collects all your shipping alerts and then tracks packages that are on their way. It will send you a nice alert when a package is out for delivery. If, … Read more

Are you ready? Black Friday 2011, the day that U.S. retailers and thrifty consumers have been waiting for all year, is just around the corner.

Whether you're looking for a $2 toaster or a $200 laptop, you're going to need a plan of attack to help you succeed. Here are a few sites that will help you develop and carry out your strategy this year:

FatWallet FatWallet has been around a long time and is a popular destination for deal hunters. It maintains a Black Friday section each year, to help you sort out all the deals. … Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif.--eBay knows that half of all Christmas shoppers miss its December 16 shipping deadline for getting presents under the tree in time, and it wants to help the stragglers.

The e-commerce giant's idea is to make it easy for shoppers to find the item they're looking for--say, a Nintendo Wii--that's for sale and in stock at a store near them and to select and pay for it in advance through a mobile app.

The technology has been rolled into the latest version of eBay's RedLaser mobile app, which allows users to search for … Read more

Black Friday is coming! Black Friday is coming!

Meh.

This is the time of year when Black Friday ads are leaked weeks in advanced, pre-Black Friday sales emerge on a daily basis, and the media goes hog-wild about Black Friday ads, apps, sales, and people willing to stand in line at 4 a.m.

If you'll pardon the expression, I'm not buying it. Much as I understand the importance of this day to American retail's bottom line, I just can't muster much enthusiasm.

See, as a 365-days-a-year cheapskate, I see killer deals all the time. … Read more

If you're in the New York area and you are a gadget-loving human, clear your calendar for CNET Gotham.

A parade of CNET editors is coming to town this week, and we're bringing with us all the gear you've been wanting to see but can't get your hands on yet. We're setting up shop in the Openhouse gallery space in Nolita, re-creating real-life experiences with home theater setups, in-car technology, and mobile devices you've only heard about so far. … Read more

As the holiday shopping season rears its (insert your adjective of choice here) head, a just-released study from IBM shows that mobile devices are continuing their push toward making it a post-PC world.

According to the latest IBM Coremetrics Benchmark numbers, traffic to retailer Web sites from mobile devices will more than double this November, with 15 percent of people who log on to such sites doing so with a mobile gadget.

October numbers from IBM show that year over year the amount of people who used a mobile gadget to touch down on a retailer's site jumped from 4.2 percent to 11 percent. In the same period, total mobile sales shot up to 9.6 percent from last year's 3.4 percent

iPad users will no doubt be welcomed by online retailers in the next couple of months: IBM says site visitors on that device will make more actual purchases than visitors using other mobile gizmos. That prediction is based on the fact that conversion rates for last month were 6.8 percent on the iPad versus 3.6 percent on other mobile gadgets.… Read more