E-commerce

The 2009 holiday season thus far is revealing much stronger online sales figures than what was witnessed in 2008, market-research firm ComScore announced late Wednesday.

According to the company, which has monitored spending for the first 30 days of the November-December shopping season, sales are up 3 percent to $12.26 billion, compared to the same period in 2008. Cyber Monday sales hit $887 million in online spending, tallying a 5 percent gain over the same day last year. That amount also matched "the biggest spending day on record, December 9, 2008."

"We've seen an encouraging … Read more

I am consumed, as I am sure all imperfect beings are, by the furor surrounding Tiger Woods' sudden and somewhat vertical descent from his image pedestal.

There will be those who will have much sympathy with his plight, as there will be those who will have none.

However, I was reading a quite brilliant editorial on Yahoo Sports offered by Dan Wetzel.

I was fully absorbed by Wetzel's strong, persuasive arguments that Woods should really not bleat about the tabloid world, when my right eye was drawn to an ad from the Professional Golfers Association. I immediately took a … Read more

Now that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are just a memory, the holiday season is in full swing. For those of us who like to be organized when we hit the stores, creating a shopping list is really the best way to go.

Unfortunately, though, there aren't many services that do a great job at creating those shopping lists. Too often, they provide very simple functionality. Realizing that, I've compiled a handful of services that do perform well for anyone looking to get organized this holiday-shopping season. In this list, you'll find a few sites and a few iPhone apps to check out.

Let's get started.

Amazon Shopping List Not to be confused with the company's Wishlist, Amazon's shopping list helps you keep track of all the products you want to buy.

Overall, Amazon's Shopping List is useful. It's not the best service in this roundup, but it if you're looking for simple, one-click experience, Amazon's tool provides it. That said, I should note that you can't simply add any product on Amazon to the list. Unfortunately, I could only find items that could be added in the grocery, beauty, gourmet food, and health and personal care pages. Even then, not all the products listed in those categories were capable of being added to the shopping list. It was a little disappointing. But if you're a heavy Amazon customer who shops in those categories, try it out. If not, there are some better services out there.

Boxedup Boxedup is one of my favorite services in this roundup. It makes it quick and easy to find products anywhere from the Web and add those to a shopping list.

When you start using Boxedup, you'll need to download a Boxedup button that's added to your browser (I was using Firefox, which it works well with). From there, simply go out to any online retail site and click on the Boxedup button when you want to add the item to your shopping list. Upon doing so, it's added to your Boxedup list for later viewing. You can also add items to your profile right from the Boxedup page, but to be quite honest, that's not how the service was designed and that functionality is a little suspect. Regardless, having the option to add content to your list from just about anywhere on the Web is fantastic. Boxedup works quite well. Check it out.… Read more

Despite the recession, people are expected to be in a charitable mood this holiday season, as they shop online.

In the United States, cumulative online donations to charities could hit more than $4 billion during the holidays, according to a survey released Tuesday by marketing firm Convio. More than than 63 percent of those surveyed said they plan to donate money via the the Internet over the holiday season (November 1 through December 31, 2009), up from 51 percent in 2008.

Convio's "North American Technographics Omnibus Online Survey" for the fourth quarter of 2009 found that despite … Read more

Cyber Monday came and went, but online retailers had a much better day than last year, marketing-optimization firm Coremetrics has found.

According to the company, which received Cyber Monday sales data from many of its 2,000 online-retail partners, including Macys.com, Office Depot, Nordstrom, and Abercrombie & Fitch, to name a few, sales were up 13.7 percent, compared to those during the post-Thanksgiving Monday last year.

Consumers also spent more per Cyber Monday order than they did last year. In a Tuesday report, the company said consumers this year spent an average of $180.03 per order in … Read more

eBay is criticizing a French court's ruling that orders the company to pay a $2.55 million fine to European conglomerate LVMH.

The auction giant and its European unit were fined 1.7 million euros on Monday by the Commercial Court of Paris, which ruled that the company violated a 2008 court order by not preventing the sale of legitimate LVMH perfumes and cosmetics. LVMH's brands include Christian Dior, Guerlain, and Givenchy perfumes.

In June 2008, the Commercial Court fined eBay $61 million in a lawsuit filed by the conglomerate, which is officially known as LVMH Moet Hennessy … Read more

I don't get "Black Friday," and I don't get the people who actually spend Black Friday at the mall. (Also, when did "doorbuster" become part of the argot? I missed the memo on that one). I do get the people who do their holiday shopping online, though, and there are more of them every day.

Here are the latest numbers from ComScore, which says that online holiday shopping is up a bit this year. That's not saying a lot, since last year's sales were soft. But for the record, sales are up … Read more

The unveiling of the iPhone, the debut of Twitter, and the growth of Craigslist are just three of the decade's most influential Internet moments, as judged by the Webby Awards.

The folks behind the Webby Awards, presented each year for excellence on the Internet, dove into the top 10 craze this week, laying out their picks for the Internet developments of the past 10 years that have had the greatest reverberations. (And no, they're not a year ahead of schedule, despite the tendency of list makers to rally in years that end in '10. The decade technically runs … Read more

eBay is playing virtual Santa this holiday season with a free "Deals" app for the iPhone that leads consumers to the better buys on the auction site.

Launched Tuesday, eBay Deals is designed to deliver a stream of the best deals on the site from across hundreds of millions of listings. Like eBay Mobile, the company's regular iPhone app, Deals lets you search, shop, and pay for your items from your iPhone or iPod Touch.

All featured deals spotlight items with no bids, no reserve price, free or fixed-rate shipping, and less than four hours remaining to … Read more