Commerce

The original Groupon platform might have set the stage, but Groupon Now has gotten off to an even better start.

Groupon today announced that Groupon Now needed just one year to sell 1.5 million deals. The original Groupon platform needed 15 months to hit that milestone. The 1.5 millionth purchase was made at CiCi Nails in Chicago, where a person bought a $42 manicure and pedicure for $30.

Groupon Now is designed as a real-time, location-based offers service for those who want to immediately redeem a coupon. Merchants can customize the instant deal through a dashboard and manage … Read more

When paying for products online, you almost always need to pay with a credit card. Until now.

Wal-Mart announced a new program today, called "Pay with Cash," that allows online shoppers to sift through a broad selection of products, and after deciding what to buy, pay with cash. Of course, there's no cash terminal sitting in the average person's computer, so in order to complete the transaction, customers will need to head down to their local Wal-Mart store or Neighborhood Markets.

According to Wal-Mart, users will be able to fully check out online, and will be … Read more

Google Vice President Marissa Mayer may be adding Wal-Mart board director to her resume.

The vice president of Local and Maps for Google was nominated today by Wal-Mart for election at the retail giant's annual shareholder meeting on June 1 as a new board member.

Mayer, who has held her current job at Google since 2010, oversees product management and engineering for the company's various local and mobile products. Prior to that, she was the vice president for search products and user experience. She joined Google in 1999 as its first female engineer and has been credited with … Read more

Pottermore has finally opened its gates, allowing Harry Potter fans to enter the previously forbidden and potentially forboding Web site.

Initially available for just a select number of users, the site is now inviting anyone to register to gain access. The process may be slow, however. A Pottermore insider blog explained that it plans to activate a steady stream of registrations but said that people may not get access right away

Potter fans can currently find both e-books and audiobooks of all seven books in the series.

But full access to the site will offer more, including interactive tours of … Read more

Amazon Prime has become a key aspect of the Amazon shopping experience. But soon enough, it may be found elsewhere.

Amazon recently posted job openings on its Web site for employees to handle the so-called "Prime Expansion." One listing for a software development engineer seeks someone to handle the task of making Prime "easily expanded" to "a growing list of Amazon locales and beyond."

"Our core team mission is to enable the right Prime programs in new places (on and off Amazon) by designing flexible software architectures that will allow for a rapid … Read more

The U.S. tax season still has a few more days to go before it's over (for punctual filers anyway), but it appears many Americans have already done most of the work needed to file their personal financials.

Research firm Nielsen today released its findings on tax-related-site usage during the busy season. Not surprisingly, given past history, February was the most active site among Americans, with one-quarter of all U.S.-based Web users heading over to tax-related sites. All told, the 53 million Americans who went to tax sites in February viewed more than 1.4 billion pages.… Read more

GrouponLive has a new feature designed to give event-goers the chance to get to the entrance much sooner than they can right now.

Dubbed G-Pass, the new GrouponLive feature lets users skip past the will call window or box office line and head right to their seats on event day. After purchasing a ticket to an event, users will be given their ticketing, seating, and barcode-scanning on their GrouponLive voucher.

Groupon launched GrouponLive last May as part of a joint venture with Live Nation. Users of GrouponLive are offered deals on sporting events, concerts, theater shows, and other live events. … Read more

Amazon has launched a new Kindle bookstore to cover Spanish-speaking customers in the U.S.

Opening its doors today, "eBooks Kindle en Espanol" will offer a slew of popular English titles translated into Spanish as well as Spanish-language bestsellers.

The store is currently home to around 30,000 books, according to Amazon, including those from Nobel Prize winning authors Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Camilo Jose Cela, and Mario Vargas Llosa. Readers will also find more than a thousand free classics and exclusive Kindle Singles in Spanish from such as authors Kurt Vonnegut and Susan Orlean.

Amazon is also offering … Read more

First there was Personal Capital, the "Mint for rich people" that gives users a clear look at their financial information, and, for those who invest $100,000 or more, access to financial advice and trading.

Then there was Wealthfront, which also gives people a dashboard for their investments and which will manage the money you put in, as long as you put in more than $5,000.

And now there's FutureAdvisor, which uses the same Modern Portfolio Theory that most advisers and algorithms use to pick investment vehicles. You tell it about your accounts, your age, your … Read more