I wouldn't for a moment think that anyone working late on something frightfully significant in Redmond would conceive of alcohol as a means to help them through their engineer's block.
But just in case there is one tortured soul who might be tempted to have a six-pack delivered to his cubicle, I have some difficult news.
i-Booze, the Seattle-based folks to whom you used to be able to turn online for a swift delivery of soothing liquids, seems to have fallen on difficult times.
For Techflash has delivered the information that not only has i-Booze failed to secure a license to sell liquor but that its enterprising founder, Karim Varela, uncorked a plea bargain on two misdemeanor charges of selling alcohol without a license and illegal possession of alcohol with intent to sell.
In truth, i-Booze isn't i-Booze any more. While the idea reportedly came to Varela when he was in jail for DUI, there were those who felt the name might be something of an incitement to excess. So the company recently changed its name to Dilky.com.
Which some might find a more neutral moniker, but I find my neural association membrane immediately goes to "alky."
In speaking to Techflash, Varela did not sound confident of Dilky's resurrection: "We are still working with the city and the liquor control board to regain a license, but it is a difficult battle."
Prohibition is not quite at hand, though. Anne Radford of the Washington State Liquor Control Board said the board will look into the matter over the next couple of weeks.
Meanwhile, Varela is hoping that former customers and those who would like to be current customers might lobby the board with a human rights appeal. Or perhaps offers of a free wine-tasting trip. (Some details exaggerated here.)
What hope he has, Varela is putting into the presence of a new Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes, who replaced someone called Tom Carr.
"We feel our downfall was mostly due to ex City Attorney Tom Carr's battle against bars, clubs, and alcohol in Seattle and we just got caught up in the middle when really we're providing a beneficial service for the community," Varela told Techflash.
A beneficial service, indeed. I would happily use it were it to descend to the Bay Area. However, it might also have helped if the service had benefited from a name such as i-Pinot or i-(De)liver rather than the somewhat provocative i-Booze.
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 start to the online holiday shopping season and it would appear that retailers' aggressive and early marketing efforts have so far succeeded in persuading consumers to open their wallets online," ComScore chairman Gian Fulgoni said in a statement. "Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday were atypically strong online sales days this year, and Cyber Monday has continued that trend by outperforming the season-to-date average growth rate and matching last year's record day of $887 million in online spending."
The good news doesn't stop there. Cyber Monday also saw an increase in the number of buyers, ComScore found. The total number of online buyers grew 6 percent to 8.7 million people. That said, the average amount each person spent dropped 2 percent to $102.19.
True to the day's origins, the majority of sales originated from work computers. The company found that 52.7 percent of all purchases were completed in the office. Just 41.6 percent of shoppers picked up items from home, ComScore said.
ComScore wasn't the only company reporting strong numbers this week. eBay said that Cyber Monday transactions outpaced Black Friday's by a whopping 35 percent. More than 2.4 million transactions were completed on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, eBay said. The site even has a heat-map graphic that shows how the transactions pored in over the course of those days.
ComScore and eBay's data follows another strong report from marketing-optimization company Coremetrics, which said earlier this week that sales were up 13.7 percent at some online retailers that it received data from.
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 shot of it, because, well, please look at it.
_610x457.jpg)
(Credit:
Chris Matyszczyk)
Some clever word-associating media planner or algorithmic program has managed to juxtapose this article about revelations in the life of Woods with an offer from the Professional Golfers Association to reveal the secrets of Woods' great rival, Phil Mickelson.
His, um, golfing secrets, as far as one can judge.
This touching coincidence approaches the poignancy of the Twitter billboard seen recently in Mobile, Ala. And one wonders how quickly anyone will notice that perhaps this is not in the finest of tastes, especially as it is coming from an organization that makes quite a lot of money from Woods' exertions.
As I am typing this sentence, the "Phil's Secrets Revealed" ad has moved on. One wonders just how quickly it will return.
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.
Get your shopping on
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.
My Amazon shopping list needs more products!
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)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.
Boxedup helps you add content from just about anywhere.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
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 tough financial times, almost 6 out of 10 people questioned plan to give the same amount of money or more compared with last year, while only 23 percent plan to give less.
Convio, which helps nonprofit organizations with marketing and fund-raising, stressed the importance of an online presence for charities. The survey discovered that charity Web sites have the biggest influence on a consumer's decision of whether to donate (44 percent), followed by word of mouth (40 percent).
About 56 percent of those surveyed believe that nonprofits have made it easier to donate online, while 46 percent think that charity Web sites make it easy to find the information they need in order to decide whether to give. And 39 percent said they made an online donation after visiting a nonprofit's Web site.
"Despite the difficult economy, American consumers will be going online in record numbers to support charitable causes in the final four weeks of the year," Convio CEO Gene Austin said in a statement. "As we enter the critical holiday giving season, charities that have focused on their online fund-raising and marketing programs stand to benefit from the changing demographics and behaviors of today's consumer. The Internet provides a cost-effective and efficient channel to engage consumers and allow a charity's most ardent supporters to help tell the story."
To ask questions about online support for nonprofits and compile survey results for the study, conducted from October to November 2009, Convio commissioned Forrester's Technographics. Convio's projections for U.S. online spending during the holiday season are based on the survey results, data from its own clients, and other industry studies.
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 2009, compared to $130.24 in 2008. That increase represented a 38.2 percent gain in sales over the prior year.
While consumers spent more, they also got more for their money. Coremetrics found that consumers bought almost 30 percent more items per order this year, compared to Cyber Monday 2008.
The success of online sales on Monday was felt across several sectors. Coremetrics said apparel and jewelry retailers enjoyed the "biggest jumps in the average dollar amount consumers spent per online order, up 26.4 percent and 14.3 percent, respectively." Department stores attracted a whopping 33 percent more consumers this year than they did on Cyber Monday 2008, Coremetrics found.
See also: Cyber Monday bargain hunters out earlier
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 Louis Vuitton. LVMH had asserted that eBay had not done enough to stamp out the sale of fake LVMH goods on its site. The court went a step further, ruling that eBay-traded LVMH products--even authentic ones--were not being sold by an authorized reseller. As a result, eBay was ordered to remove all listings of these products.
eBay criticized the ruling then, saying it was an attempt by LVMH to "protect uncompetitive commercial practices." eBay likewise condemned the new ruling.
"Today's outcome hurts consumers by preventing them from buying and selling authentic items online," Alex von Schirmeister, general manager of eBay in France, said in a statement. "The injunction is an abuse of 'selective distribution.' It effectively enforces restrictive distribution contracts, which is anti-competitive."
Despite its objections, eBay argued that it has complied with the 2008 court order. The company said it has used state-of-the-art filtering software to check millions of listings each day, making thousands of authentic LVMH products invisible or inaccessible to French eBay users.
eBay also discounted the proof brought against it, claiming that LVMH offered details on only 1,341 listings out of 200 million posted on the auction site each day. eBay believes those listings were deliberately posted by people to sneak past the filters. In 1,091 of the listings targeted by LVMH, the seller did not accurately describe the item, using misspelled brand names, no brand names at all, or only pictures to describe the product.
As a result, eBay asserts that both the fine and ruling are unjustified. The fine itself is disproportionate given that eBay complied with the injunction," said von Schirmeister. "It is out of step with our legal victories in France, U.K., Germany, Belgium and the U.S."
eBay plans to appeal the new ruling and two other cases tied to LVMH. "We believe that the higher courts will overturn this ruling and ensure that e-commerce companies such as eBay will continue to provide a platform for buyers and sellers to trade authentic goods," said von Schirmeister.
eBay has been in and out of U.S. and European courtrooms for years, sued by companies trying to clamp down on the sale of fake versions of their legitimate products. It's faced courtroom battles with several European powerhouses, winning cases against L'Oreal and Tiffany, but losing suits filed by LVMH.
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 3 percent so far, and Web sales were up 11 percent on Black Friday.
(Credit:
ComScore)
But note that consumers say they're spending less overall than they did less year: they told interviewers they intend to spend 8 percent less than they did in 2008.
Not surprisingly, people spent a whole lot of time on the Web's most popular retail sites on Friday: Traffic at Amazon, Wal-Mart, Apple, Target, and Best Buy, sites were all up, ComScore reports.
Next up: Dutiful reporting on "Cyber Monday," tomorrow's artificial construct. Still, I'm not complaining. This is way better than trudging out to the mall for the annual "interview of shoppers in a parking lot" piece that newspapers still insist on assigning.
Story Copyright (c) 2009 AllThingsD. All rights reserved.
Additional stories from AllThingsD
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 from 2000 to 2009, with 2010 being the start of the next decade.)
The Webby Awards rundown of the decade in chronological order:
- Craigslist moving outside San Francisco in 2000 to revamp the whole notion of classified ads, striking fear in the hearts of newspapers everywhere.
- The launch of Google AdWords in 2000, opening up a new world of advertising for businesses both large and small.
- The start of Wikipedia in 2001 showing off the Internet's ability to let online strangers collaborate, leading to more than 14 million articles in 271 different languages.
- The takedown of Napster in 2001, triggering a revolution in the way we now grab our music and videos.
- Google's IPO in 2004, creating a massive, dominant, and far-reaching force on the Internet.
- The online video revolution in 2006 triggered by beefy bandwidth, cheap camcorders, and YouTube, flooding cyberspace with an array of professional and not-so-professional videos.
- The expansion of Facebook and the debut of Twitter in 2006, creating a fresh way for us to interact and communicate with friends and family.
- The launch of the iPhone in 2007, helping us hop onto the Internet anywhere, anytime through a cell phone.
- The U.S. presidential campaign in 2008 tapping into the Internet with videos like "Obama Girl," social networking use among voters, and online fundraising.
- The Iranian election protesters in 2009 using Twitter to spread their word, a movement that prompted the U.S. State Department to ask Twitter to keep the site up and running.
That's a pretty good list, but of course it immediately started us thinking about the influential Internet-related moments and developments from 2000 to 2009 that got short shrift or that got left off entirely.
Our list, in no particular order:
- The debut and growth of Firefox: The first browser to challenge the IE monopoly, Firefox now holds a 25 percent market share, paving the way for other players like Google Chrome.
- The arrival of blogging: Started as simple online diaries, blogs have grown to become a valid and valued source of news, opinion, and information. As a corollary, there's the rise of RSS, which lets the latest information come to us instead of our having to go out and find it.
- The surge in broadband: The availability of DSL, cable, satellite, and now Fios put a nail in the coffin for dial-up access, letting us download files in seconds, watch each other on webcams, and stream high-res videos.
- The allure of torrents: Whether used for legal or illegal file sharing, technologies like BitTorrent let us share and download all types of content across the Web from movies and TV shows to software. And speaking of movies and TV--the popularity of sites like Hulu and Netflix demonstrated that you no longer need a costly cable TV subscription to indulge your viewing inclinations.
- The reinvention of the telephone. On the one hand, there were VoIP services such as Skype, which saved us from expensive long-distance bills. On the other was 3G technology and mobile broadband, which let us jump into cyberspace from our phones, Netbooks, and a host of other portable gadgets.
- The rise of home workers: Thanks to the Internet, you can now run a full-fledged business or work for your employer without having to leave the house. There's also online education--with many accredited schools now online, today you can attend college or graduate school and get a full degree from your own computer.
- The ascent of Salesforce and cloud computing: With the success of cloud-computing providers like Salesforce, companies can now run much of their business online without the hassle of maintaining their own internal resources.
- The looming menace of cyberwarfare: On the downside, the Internet showed signs of becoming a new virtual battleground between countries, as in the purported cyberattacks against Estonia and Georgia.
- The lessons of the dot-com crash: The decade was barely under way when that bubble burst hard; wildly inflated stocks were tanking and Wall Street was reeling, frenetically hyped Web companies were imploding, and our retirement plans took a beating. That seem so long ago now, what with the current miserable state of the economy, post-housing bubble crash.
Do you agree or disagree with those picks? Sound off in the comments section below.
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 bid.
You can browse deals across eight categories, including apparel, computers, electronics, and collectibles. If you spot a deal you like, just tap on it, and its listing pops up where you can watch it or bid on it. Not crazy about the current deals? Just shake your iPhone or iPod Touch, and a new set of deals appears.
If you spot a deal that may be better for someone else, you can e-mail it or share it via your Facebook or Twitter account.
Besides browsing eBay's virtual aisles, you can search for your own deals by entering a product name, category, and price range. You can save your customized search results to return to them later.
Starting Friday, eBay will also be unveiling a "12 Days of Deals" feature promoting a new promotion each day until December 8. Friday's deal will offer Samsung's N120 Netbook.
"As the world's leading online marketplace we have insights into how people really want to shop...and they clearly want to shop on their phones," eBay Marketplaces President Lorrie Norrington said in a statement.
Though designed for the mobile crowd, eBay's daily deals can also be found online at the auction site's Deals page.
eBay has been busy lately sprucing up its mobile auction site for the holidays. The vendor recently added social networking to its eBay Mobile app, letting you share a listing through e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter.
Since its launch in 2008, eBay's mobile app has been downloaded more than 5 million times, said the company. With a purchase made every two seconds, the company said, more than $500 million worth of items are likely to be traded through eBay mobile this year.
