Tag archive: Barnes

Last week, Barnes & Noble announced its own device-independent electronic bookstore, offering broader range of titles than that available to owners of Amazon's Kindle ebook reader…thanks in no small part to hundreds of thousands of public domain titles via the Google Books project. Not to be outdone, Sony has now announced its own deal with Google, making more than a million public domain books avaiable to owners of its… Read More

Online retailer Amazon.com continues to push its Kindle ebook platform: hot on the heels of announcing the Kindle DX, the company has announced that it has optimized its online Kindle Store so that it works seamlessly with its free Kindle for iPhone application. Now iPhone users can follow “Get Books” links from within the Kindle store and get easy access to more than 250,000 book titles, all specially formatted for the iPhone… Read More

Amazon's Kindle reader for iPhone has proven to be a resounding success…at least for folks who have a Kindle. Now, Amazon looks to be increasing its presence in both the iPhone market and the broader ebook market by acquiring Lexcycle, makers of the popular iPhone ebook application Stanza. Unlike the Kindle, Stanza supports ebooks published in the open epub format from the International Digital Publishing Forum; over 100,000… Read More

After losing heaps of money trying to run its own online bookstore, Borders essentially turned over its online store to Amazon.com. Links on the Borders bookstore turned users over to Amazon, and Borders got a commission on the sale. Borders might have been the second largest book retailer in the United States, but even it couldn't make money selling books online. Now, seven years later, Borders has decided to give e-commerce a second… Read More

Looking to increase its share of the online search market—currently dominated by Google, with Microsoft target Yahoo in a distance second place—Microsoft has unveiled Live Search cashback, a program that rewards users for purchasing selected products through Windows Live Search. Microsoft is hoping that offering buying deals will lure online shoppers away from Google and Yahoo…and encourage retailers to partner with… Read More

Market research firm ForeSee Results has released its Top 100 Online Retail Satisfaction Index for spring of 2007, and finds that Netflix, QVC, and Amazon.com lead online retailers in terms of customer satisfaction, while PCMall and PCConnection.com have “the most opportunity for improvement.” ForeSee's results are based on more than 20,000 surveys of consumers who visited the top 100 retail sites, as defined by the… Read More

Online transaction processor PayPal wants users to do their end-of-year holiday shopping online—and to encourage them, the company is offering customers cash rebates of up to $20 for using PayPal to pay for purchases on eBay and qualifying merchant sites in North America. “With nearly 123 million PayPal accounts worldwide, we know that merchants see increased traffic and sales when they accept PayPal on their Web sites,”… Read More

New Zealand actor (and blogger) Peter Calveley got so annoyed with delivery of books from Amazon.com that he has successfully filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to re-examine the validity of Amazon.com's notorious “One-Click” patent. The USPTO ordered the re-examination on May 12; Calveley paid the $2,520 re-examination fee in part from contributions made via his blog. Amazon.com's… Read More

Online retailing giant Amazon.com has been award three new patents which may shut down other sites collecting consumer reviews of products and services, or force them to pay Amazon a royalty for the privilege. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued three new patents to Amazon.com. One, U.S. Patent 6,963,848 covers methods and techniques to encourage customers to write reviews and submit ratings of items they've purchased,… Read More

Toshiba announced today that it's expanding the company's MyConnect Internet service to give users the option to pay only for time they're connected to the Internet at a flat rate of $3.95 per hour. Called the Pay-for-Use program, the service entails a one-time $10 setup fee, but otherwise users pay only for the time they're online, with no monthly charge if they do not connect. Connectivity minutes divided into… Read More