E-commerce

Amazon today unveiled a textbook rental service for the company's Kindle e-reader. Students can rent e-textbooks for as few as 30 days and extend rental periods in one-day increments.

A key feature is you can keep annotations and highlighting after the rental period ends. The notes are stored in the Amazon cloud and can be automatically synced if you re-rent a textbook. The amount of storable highlighting allowed is determined by the individual publishers, according to an Amazon spokesperson.

Of course, the devil is in the details. John Wiley & Sons isn't saying how much highlighting they allow … Read more

Netflix today started offering a bare-bones DVD plan as it increased the prices of its DVD-and-streaming plans.

The company's new $7.99-per-month plan, offered at a new page on the Netflix site, allows users to have one DVD out a time on an unlimited basis. According to a Netflix salesperson who spoke to CNET today, those who want to include Blu-ray discs in the new plan will need to pay $9.99 per month. Internet streaming of video content is not included. If customers want two DVDs out at a time, they will need to pay $11.99 per … Read more

Amazon is trying a new tactic in its bid to fight states that force online retailers to collect sales tax.

On Friday, the online retail giant filed a petition for a referendum with the California attorney general's office, the Associated Press is reporting. The referendum would ask voters to overturn a new California law that forces online retailers to collect sales tax there.

Amazon is especially concerned with one of the law's stipulations, which requires online retailers to collect sales tax if affiliates operating in California push customers to an online retailer's site to buy products.

Amazon … Read more

Foursquare has created a daily-deals program that relies upon services that consumers are already using.

The location-based social network that allows people to "check in" at different locations, has formed agreements with LivingSocial, AT&T, and fashion-focused Gilt Groupe, among others, to deliver the deals. According to the company, the daily deals are an expansion of its current Specials program, which allows merchants to advertise deals to the social platform's users.

Foursquare's new offering will help people find deals around their current location. The deals Foursquare offers will be tailored to the person based on … Read more

Local social-app maker Foursquare has signed revenue-sharing distribution partnerships to target deals sites to its users' locations, the company will announce tomorrow and The Wall Street Journal is reporting tonight. We'd previously broken the news that Foursquare was in talks to strike such a deal with Groupon. That one is not finalized yet, but other partnerships with LivingSocial, Gilt Groupe, AT&T, Zozi, and BuyWithMe are.

These partnerships are a huge test for Foursquare, which has 10 million registered users but is working to move on from its early gamification tricks to "making the world easier to use.&… Read more

How well does Netflix really know you? How far has Amazon crept under your pores in order to determine with arrant certainty that you would enjoy a little more Danielle Steel and a little less Tony Blair?

A vast-brained MIT professor insists that these brands know you about as well as your subway train driver.

Devavrat Shah, the school's Jamieson Career Development Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, furrows his brow at the relative pointlessness of asking humble, subjective souls to rate books, movies, and even cars on an absolute scale, such as a five-star rating system. … Read more

Groupon sent out e-mails to its users this weekend about changes it has made to its privacy statement and terms of use.

Among the most notable changes is more information about the Chicago-based social buying start-up's collection and use of mobile location information.

Said Groupon:

"In short, if you use a Groupon mobile app and you allow sharing through your device, Groupon may collect geo-location information from the device and use it for marketing deals to you (and for other purposes listed in the "How Groupon Uses Personal Information" section of the Updated Privacy Statement)." … Read more

eBay announced today it has agreed to acquire mobile payments provider Zong for $240 million in cash to bolster its PayPal platform and reach.

Zong provides a mobile payments platform that facilitates carrier-direct billing for digital goods and services. Users pay for their purchases by entering their mobile phone number and payment is billed to the customer's wireless service account.

The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company helped develop Facebook Credits and has partnered with many of the social gaming and virtual worlds' biggest companies, including Zynga, IMVU, Walt Disney's Playdom, and IAC's Zwinky.

The company claims a … Read more

A federal judge has denied Apple's request to immediately stop Amazon from using the term "Appstore" to describe its digital downloads storefront.

In an 18-page opinion filed today with the U.S. District Court for Northern California, Judge Phyllis Hamilton denied Apple's request for a preliminary injunction preventing Amazon's use of the term, which Apple claims it has trademark rights to. As expected, Hamilton ruled that Apple had not established the likelihood of confusion between the competing brands, but she also said she did not agree with Amazon's contention that the mark is purely … Read more