Amazon.com has just launched an online store for jeans it calls the Denim Shop. To attract shoppers to its Denim Shop, Amazon is offering free shipping on some men and women's jeans. It is also offering shoppers free returns for purchases that for whatever reason don't work out. Customers will have up to 30 days to return their jeans for a full refund. In the terms and conditions part of the site...
It could be said that the Google Books case is becoming the new Microsoft-Yahoo deal, having created all sorts of controversy and dragged on and on. And on some more, as it turns out, since the involved parties are pushing a target date back again. A revised proposal concerning how Google and its critics could settle their differences was originally supposed to be submitted to Judge Denny Chin in...
Not long ago, Eric Schmidt estimated that Google would start making monthly acquisitions. Today, it's almost looking like the dial got bumped up to hourly, since following this morning's confirmed acquisition of AdMob, a report has indicated that Google's bought Gizmo5, too. Gizmo5 is a VoIP firm. Two recent company blog posts are titled " Introducing GizmoVoice - A Free Phone Line Using Google...
While TV is the most common way for people to watch sports, the Internet is the most popular way for both men and women (36.1% and 32.7% respectively) to get sports news and information, according to a new report by Burst Media. The Internet is trailed by local TV programming (23.7%), national TV networks (15.1%), local newspaper (6.7%), national newspaper (3.6%), and sports radio (2.9%). Among the...
CoTweet, a company that helps businesses use Twitter, released some details about a new service today, and in doing so, demonstrated that there's a real demand for such things. The CoTweet Enterprise Innovators Program already has at least six major customers despite costing $1,500 per month. Coca-Cola, Ford, McDonald's, Microsoft, SunTrust, and Whole Foods are among the early adopters, which is quite...
Google said today it has signed an agreement to acquire mobile display advertising firm AdMob for $750 million in stock. Google says its acquisition will improve its existing expertise and technology in mobile advertising, while also giving advertisers and publishers more choice in the growing new area. Highlights of Google's purchase of AdMob include: The deal will bring new innovation and competition...
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Monday that his office has stopped social networking site Tagged.com from misappropriating the contacts lists and identities of its members and from sending out millions of deceptive and unsolicited emails. Through an agreement with Cuomo's office, Tagged will pay $500,000 in penalties to the state and take measures regarding the access and use of its members'...
Don't be shocked if ads for 420,000 square feet of office space start popping up all over MySpace. It seems that the social networking company no longer intends to use a particular facility, but until it can unload the space, has gotten stuck paying over $1 million per month. Matthew Garrahan reported late yesterday, "The company is locked into a 12-year lease worth about $350m that it signed...
Mozilla is celebrating the fifth birthday of its Firefox browser today. Mozilla says in the first four days of launch, more than 1 million people had downloaded Firefox 1.0 Now that number is at 330 million users globally, accounting for almost a quarter of all Internet users. Currently Firefox is available in more than 70 languages and offers users more than 7,000 add-ons to customize their browsing...
Social network games - and by extension, social networks themselves - received a strong endorsement this morning as a major acquisition was announced. Electronic Arts has bought Playfish, a maker of said games, for at least $300 million. Barry Cottle, Senior Vice President and General Manager of EA Interactive, explained in a statement, "Social gaming, with its emphasis on friends and community,...
I have never been a very fast typist (or a fascist type for that matter), in fact I operate a keyboard in a fashion that might be called “touchhunting”. Lately if I’m writing something that runs more than 300 or 400 words I feel my shoulders and neck tighten up and I get more headaches [...]
Microsoft has plans to announce an advertising campaign with JiWire that will focus on enticing users to try out its search engine Bing in exchange for free WiFi where available. The campaign is being supported by JiWire's mobile advertising network, which reaches about 20 million unique users monthly. The Bing campaign will run across WiFi hotpsots in airports and hotels nationwide. "We're all...
In a recent interview we wrote about this morning, Rupert Murdoch indicated that News Corp. may block search engines from indexing its sites. Now, it doesn't exactly look like Google's going to offer money him (or throw a fit) in response, as the search giant's more or less replied by saying "fine." Actually, depending on what sort of tone you attribute to them, some of the comments made...
There's a chance that the content produced by the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and a number of other important organizations will soon become impossible to find using Google. Rupert Murdoch indicated in a recent interview that News Corp. may block search engines. News Corp. is the world's second largest media group. It owns enough stuff that even hitting the highlights would take far too...