E-commerce

Amazon eyes anonymous mobile payments system

Amazon may be cooking up its own anonymous mobile payments system.

Published yesterday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the Amazon patent application appropriately dubbed "Anonymous mobile payments" describes a system that would let mobile users pay for items without having to reveal their name, phone number, e-mail address, or other personal details to the seller.

The invention follows in the footsteps of other mobile payment systems. However, Amazon takes it a few steps further.

Beyond shielding the personal information of the buyer, Amazon's system would use a special code, or temporary identifier, to conduct … Read more

Amazon creates specialty store for 50+ customers

Amazon leaves practically no demographic or product category untouched for it shoppers. The company just launched a "50+ Active and Healthy Living Store" with hundreds of thousands of items that end up on the shopping lists of seniors.

Amazon is tapping more directly into the large addressable market for seniors. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 40 million Americans were 65 or older in 2010, and more than 80 million were 50 and older. By 2015, those aged 50 and older will represent 45 percent of the U.S. population, according to the AARP. Those … Read more

Amazon's Bezos defends heavy investments in Prime, Kindle

Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos today defended the company's stance on heavy investments in certain areas, saying it's focused on its customers, not its rivals, and that it believes its strategy is the best for the long term.

For years, Bezos has demonstrated a preference for plowing resources into initiatives to build market share but take years to generate profits. That seeming indifference to near-term profits worries Wall Street, with many expressing reservations over the years about the impact on margins. Amazon is believed to make little, if any, money on its gadgets, instead relying on customers to … Read more

DDoS cripples Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox after trading resumes

Update at 6:15 a.m. PT Friday: Bitcoin's tumble continued after trading resumed. As of now, the digital currency is trading at $69.

Less than two hours after the resumption of Bitcoin trades following a lengthy suspension, currency exchange Mt. Gox is offline, the apparent victim of a distributed-denial-of-service attack.

"We are experiencing a stronger than usual DDoS," the Tokyo-based exchange said tonight in a Google+ post. "We are working in it."

Mt. Gox, which handles three-quarters of the trades in the digital currency, announced a suspension of trading this morning after a rollercoaster … Read more

Bitcoin drops another 35 percent as exchange reopens

Bitcoin's wild ride continued this evening, immediately carving 35 percent off the value of the digital currency as Mt. Gox, the world's largest Bitcoin exchange, resumed trading after an extended suspension of operations.

The value of the peer-to-peer currency began trading at $78 a Bitcoin against the U.S. dollar, falling as low as $65 before recovering to trade as high as $135. The plunge followed yesterday's rollercoaster trading day, which saw Bitcoin's valuation drop 61 percent before recovering a bit with a 37 percent loss.

The decentralized digital currency, which had quadrupled in value in … Read more

Bitcoin bubble burst? Currency suffers dramatic correction

After a meteoric run-up in the valuation of Bitcoin in the past month, the virtual currency suffered a dramatic correction today, losing more than 60 percent before mounting a bit of a recovery.

The peer-to-peer currency, which has quadrupled in value in the past four weeks, traded as high as $266 per Bitcoin today before plummeting to $105. It recovered to trade at $145 as of this writing, a one-day loss of 37 percent. Despite today's losses, Bitcoin is still up more than 1,000 percent in the past three months.

Today's drop came amid another distributed denial-of-service … Read more

Startup raises $500K to create Bitcoin trading platform

Bitcoin got a boost of confidence of sorts today from a group of investors interested in creating a trading platform for the virtual currency phenom.

The decentralized peer-to-peer currency traded as high as $240 per Bitcoin today before closing at $233, up nearly $45 for the day, according to Mt. Gox, the world's largest Bitcoin exchange. Overall, Bitcoin has appreciated more than 1,500 percent since January, a meteoric rise that observers credit largely to financial uncertainty in Europe and nascent investor curiosity.

Coinsetter is hoping to capitalize on that interest with the launch of a Forex trading platform … Read more

Barnes & Noble launches new publishing platform

Barnes & Noble is replacing its self-publishing platform, PubIt, with a new system presumably designed to make publishing with the bookseller easier than doing so with rival Amazon.

Nook Press lets authors compose the book within the platform, instead of requiring them to upload a file and convert it to the system's formatting. An author need only upload the content once and then write and edit within Nook Press, and preview the work, before it turns into an ePub file.

Theresa Horner, Barnes & Noble's VP of Digital Content for Nook Media, said this allows authors to avoid … Read more

Redesigned Google Play app plays up entertainment

Google is giving its Google Play marketplace app a makeover, with an emphasis on a simpler layout and content discovery.

Rolling out today to Android phones and tablets, the app's redesigned user interface specifically is intended to improve the entertainment experience, whether it's listening to an album, reading a book, or playing a game. The new interface features a lighter background and larger images that are set in cards, the same presentation format Google uses in its Google Now predictive search feature.

The makeover also automatically groups together similarly themed content to help users discover related magazines or … Read more