E-Commerce

Amazon has launched its own line of consumer electronics products, starting with audio video cables and blank DVD media. It plans to add more accessories and other items in the coming months. The company is leveraging its formidable brand name for this endeavor, positioning AmazonBasics products for...

For this week's installment in the E-Commerce Times' series on travel-planning Web sites, I took a spin around Orbitz, completing my tour of the top three aggregators. Thus far, my biggest complaint about travel sites in general has been overcrowded user interfaces that waste space with self promoti...

Online retail sales are projected to increase by 11 percent this year to US$156 billion, according to Forrester Research. Although that's good news, it's a small decline from last year's growth of 13 percent. It's clear the down economy, with the lack of credit access and low consumer confidence, ha...

The federal government has launched Apps.Gov, an online app store for federal agencies and workers, in the hope of reducing the $75 billion a year it spends on IT. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra introduced the site Tuesday. The goal is for the federal government to leverage the efficiencies ...

Adobe's planned acquisition of Web analytics firm Omniture took nearly everyone off guard when it was announced Tuesday. Now that the idea has had a chance to sink in, though, it seems to be growing in popularity. "I think it really does make sense," said Steve Ashley, an analyst for investment rese...

Innovations of the past few years provide an interesting hint at the future of e-commerce. Consider the following scenario: A CIO of a retail company gets off the phone, sits back, and begins to read his new monthly retail systems contract. The days of dealing with large development teams, countless...

It's not perfect, and it won't solve the advertising crisis in traditional publishing, but Google's Fast Flip news-viewing product may represent a small step toward helping pen-and-paper publishers make a profitable leap to the digital age. It allows users to slide through tiled screenshots of news ...

The growing popularity of online video has become the tipping point for advanced CE in the home. Consumer interest and demand for this content -- from user-generated videos of stealthy cats to streams of classic 1980s shows like "Airwolf" -- have prompted service providers and CE manufacturers to ex...

Just as the evolution of the speed-skating boot set new standards for the sport, innovation in today's constantly evolving e-commerce landscape has worked as a catalyst to move it forward. E-commerce practitioners from all industries need to be ready to step up and embrace innovation as a means of s...

The Department of Justice has asked Yahoo and Microsoft to supply it with more information about its proposed search advertising tie-up that the duo announced earlier this summer. Both companies have said they are cooperating with the inquiry. Indeed, they all but predicted this would happen when th...

My first impression of Expedia -- a site that I used to frequent but haven't visited in at least a year -- is that its design is refreshingly straightforward: a three-column layout relatively uncluttered with self-promotion. Not that it's completely devoid of such ads. (Note to Web designers: Most p...

September is shaping up to be a crucial time for the future of Google's much-vaunted digital library. The month has already seen a flood of briefs on a proposed settlement in the lawsuit filed by authors and publishers over Google's effort to digitize the world's books. Next week, the U.S. Justice D...

Google has proposed modifying its proposed digital books deal with publishers and authors in an effort to tamp down growing opposition to the project. The changes would limit the number of out-of-print books it places online. Industry groups were given a venue to complain about the proposed agreemen...

A rose by any other name can raise quite the stink, making the act of localizing Web sites to fit foreign cultures all the more thorny. Even if the product is as sweet as ice cream, it's possible to leave a bitter taste in consumer's mouths. "Ben and Jerry launched their 'black and tan' flavor of ic...

On Facebook, most people make friends the old-fashioned way -- by sending a request to be added to someone's posse of pals. Now, an Australian marketing company hopes to save you time and energy by simply buying you a few thousand buddies. The service from uSocial is mostly meant for businesses, cel...