Business

Changes to business digitisation brings

US Internet Sales Pass $100 Billion
High spending Americans splashed out over 100 billion dollars buying stuff on the web last year, with the popularity of Internet shopping set to keep on soaring.
Research firm comScore Networks calculated that high-clicking consumers ratcheted up 102.1 billion dollars via online retail spending (excluding travel) in 2006 -representing a hefty increase of 24 percent over 2005.
The build up to Christmas proved to be a bumper season for selling, with 24.6 billion dollars flying into online cash tills during November and December, up 26 percent from 2005’s total.
“E-commerce is becoming more mainstream,” said Jeffrey Grau, senior analyst at the research firm eMarketer.
“A larger segment of the population is buying online, and people are buying more things than they have in the past,” he added.

Investment firm Cowen & Co. put the total sales figure for 2006 slightly higher at 108 billion dollars, predicting that it will hit 225 billion by 2011.
In their report, the company estimated that US e-commerce sales will grow 20 percent in 2007, citing growing broadband adoption, lower online prices and added convenience as the driving forces.
According to their figures, e-commerce would end up grabbing a hefty 4.7 percent chunk of total US retail sales in five years time, a mighty leap up from the current figure of 2.7 percent.
Jim Friedland and David Geisler, analysts at Cowen, reckon online sales will eventually pass 10 percent of total US retail spending, fuelled by a consumer shift to more music and film downloads, adding, “We expect a dramatic long-term shift in the media category from physical in-store purchases to Internet downloads.”
[Via Yahoo]
15 January, 2007
TiVo: Broadband Music Deals; TiVoToGo For Mac; Emmy Award: CES 2007
TiVo has been shipping their PVRs with an Ethernet port since their series 2 model, promising content delivered over broadband.
At CES this week they told the world a bit more about what they’re going to do about it.
TiVo have signed deals with both Music Choice and RealNetworks to deliver music videos and songs to their panting subscriber’s TVs starting “later in 2007.”
The Real Networks deal is self-described as a “first-of-its-kind integration of the Rhapsody digital music service with the TiVo service,” which will give TiVo subscribers access to over 3 million songs on-demand only using their TiVo remote.
TiVoToGo for the Macintosh
TiVoToGo – the Tivo add-on service that lets subscribers burn the content they have on their TiVo to DVD and transfer it to portable devices – is now available on the Mac, a year after it was introduced for the PC.
They achieved this through a joint venture with Roxio, utilizing their Toast 8 Titanium software, letting subscribers transfer programmes either one episode at a time or automatically as soon as the TiVo DVR has recorded them.
The standard charge will be $99, but for a limited period it can be bought through the Roxio site with the bonus of getting a FREE TiVo Glo remote.
Emmy Award
TiVo has had a pretty long path to where they are now, which at times has been a little bumpy, so we imagine there is much happiness when they heard that its Interactive Advertising Platform was presented with the Emmy Award for Outstanding Innovation and Achievement in Advanced Media Technology.
The collective ears of the advertising business must be ringing when TiVo’s CEO, Tom Rogers said, “We have proven that consumers will opt in to an advertising message if relevant and provided the ability to not miss their favorite shows.” The Ads-types will see grasp hold of this, praying that this will lead them out of the valley of (income)-death.
TiVoTVToGo
12 January, 2007
Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0 Beta Released
Yahoo! has launched a beta version of Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0, a customisable mobile search application designed to help users find stuff fast.
Employing a carousel-style interface, the application comes with Yahoo! Go ‘widgets’ offering e-mail, local information and maps, news, sports, finance, entertainment, weather, photo sharing and search functionality.
New for version two is Yahoo! oneSearch, a new mobile search service designed to give fast answers to perambulating punters.
Yahoo claims that oneSearch can recognise the ‘intent’ of a search term and present relevant content on the results page and not just a stream of links.
Yahoo! Go also makes it easy to get to other websites, without the need to faff about with al that fiddly http://www stuff – just type in the name of a website and you’ll be taken to the site.
The included Local & Maps widget looks to take on Google’s marvellous mobile mapping application and offers speedy access to interactive maps, driving directions and real time traffic updates, backed by local business directory information across the US, with ratings and reviews from the Yahoo! community.
Users can input their location and get relevant info, with local guides offering updated ‘what’s on’ listings with details of popular places to nosh, shop and visit.
News, Sports, Entertainment, Weather and Finance info can accessed via various widgets, with the ability to add new content via customised RSS feeds.
There’s also a Flickr widget to let users upload and manage snaps from their camera phone.
The Yahoo! Go 2.0 beta can be downloaded from their site, with support for over 70 other mobile devices, but not Palm (*shakes fist).
Yahoo! To Go
10 January, 2007
Image Spam Creates Growing Problem
In just six months, image spam has become so prevalent that it now represents a hefty 35 per cent of all junk email, according to internet security firm F-Secure.
In ye olde days, spammers just used to send out bucket loads of text-based emails, but these were proving progressively less effective against smarter anti-spam software employing tricks such as dictionary-based content filters.
In an attempt to bypass content filters, spammers have taken to sending text displayed in a GIF image, coupled with random text content nicked from legitimate web sites.
All spam is annoying, but with its bundled images, this new technique adds a double whammy of gobbling up more precious bandwidth to deliver its spam-tastic cargo.
According to F-Secure, spam makes up 90 per cent of all emails worldwide, with image spam hogging 70 per cent of the bandwidth.
“Image spam is a serious and growing problem. It also is taking up 70 per cent of the bandwidth bulge, on account of the large file sizes every single one represents,’” commented Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure.
Sadly, the root of the problem with spam is the chumps who keep on responding and buying the dubious wares on offer (a bit like the mad fools who come down to Brixton to buy ‘drugs’).
“We will never rid ourselves of spam until people stop buying the products advertised in these mails. Spam obviously works, otherwise it would not be so prevalent,” said Hypponen.
Say it like it is, Mr Hypponen!
F-Secure
10 January, 2007
Festive Scams To Look Out For: Amazon
Christmas is certainly the time to be purloining down Lagos way, with the Digital Lifestyle office receiving an upsurge in deceased relative scams, phishing emails and the usual “YOU HAVE WON 2,575 TRILLION DOLLARS” nonsense.
Naturally, we dump these mails straight in the bin, although we were impressed with yesterday’s scam which purported to have come from Amazon.
We were selling a Sony camera on Amazon, and received an enquiry about the camera’s condition through the site.
The email came from a European sounding source, so we replied and about an hour later had a confirmation email from Amazon saying the camera had been sold.
Pretty nippy work we thought, but a closer examination of the mail instantly raised suspicions.
First off, a rummage through the headers revealed that the email was a better-than-average forgery, with the obfuscated email originating not from the company themselves, but from an [email protected] address.
Although we could see how people may be fooled by this mail, the address should raise eyebrows amongst even the most trusting of souls: “Unity rd pipe line bus stop, Lagos, Nigeria” (we’re not saying all web financial transactions from Nigeria are dodgy, but let’s just say there’s more than a bit of history here).
A bit of rummaging around the web revealed that thie consultant.com address has been regularly used by scammers and features on the outrageously funny 419 Eater website, which has a rather unique way of dealing with Nigerian scammers.
Naturally, we reported our experience to Amazon, but were unable to resist replying to his email thus:
“Great news! It turns out that my work colleagues are flying over to Lagos in three days so they’ll be able to bring over the camera for you!
They’re coming with the Metropolitan Police Force rugby team, who are doing a Christmas tour of Nigeria, so will you be able to meet them at the airport?
I’ll naturally refund you any postage charges as a result.”
We’ll keep you posted if we get a reply.
Identifying Phishing or Spoofed E-mails (Amazon)
Recognize phishing scams and fraudulent e-mails
Anti-Phishing Working Group
20 December, 2006
UK Monthly Online Sales Hit £3bn For The First Time
Santa’s sleigh bells are in danger of being drowned out by the ringing of virtual cash tills, with a new report revealing that UK Internet retail sales hit £3 billion for the first time during November.
The Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) estimates that £3,260,000,000 was spent by the UK’s 25 million online shoppers during the month of November, raking in an astonishing average of £4.57 million per hour – nearly 45% up on the same period last year.
IMRG calculates that November’s online sales were up more than half a billion pounds on the previous month, when their Index recorded a value of £2,729 million for October.
This adds up to a whopping ten times growth on the average monthly increase of £50 million recorded during the first ten months of 2006.
Looking back to 2004 reveals just how dramatic the increase of online sales has become, with the year only averaging a comparatively feeble growth rate of just £16 million per month.
Commenting on the figures, James Roper, IMRG’s CEO, said: “In 2000, the first year in which the IMRG collected hard online sales data, Christmas trading was worth well under half a billion pounds, and we thought that was huge at the time. Now we can see that the e-retail market is just getting into its stride, with large potential for long-term growth.”
The Interactive Media in Retail Group
[Via Net Imperative]
18 December, 2006
Storm In A T(C) Cup: How Sam Sethi Was Sacked From TechCrunch UK: UPDATED
There’s a right kerfuffle going on in the blogosphere at the moment centering around TechCrunch UK, but with possible implications for two of the biggest names in the blogging world, Six Apart and the main TechCrunch (TC) site.
Here’s the background.
- TechCrunch was a partner in Le Web 3 conference, organised by Loic Le Meur, the European representative of blogging tool supplier, Six Apart.
- Many people have blogged that they were unhappy with the Le Web 3 conference in general, and specifically they were very unhappy with three French presidential hopefuls being parachuted in at the last moment. One of those was Nikolas Sarkozy, who was accused of racist comments, triggering the Parisian riots last year. The attendant bloggers reaction to this wasn’t very positive – to say the least.
- Sam Sethi, editor/publisher (you take your pick) of TechCrunch UK writes a review after the event saying it wasn’t that good. Attending bloggers write much stronger pieces saying that the event stinks. Even the BBC reported the dissent.
- Loic Le Meur (event organiser) leaves a comment calling Sethi an “asshole.”
- Mike Arrington (founder of TechCrunch) has a private discussion with Le Meur who said he commented in haste, being emotional.
- Arrington asks Sethi to remove the Asshole comment. Sethi refuses and posts his own comment mentioning the comment. Other parts of the Sethi comment disturb Arrington, particularly about conferences being organised by Sethi that he doesn’t know about.
- Private chat between Arrington asks Sethi – result Sethi is fired for non-“ethical behaviour.”
- Sethi posts this to Tech Crunch UK (TC UK). His comment is then removed by Arrington (these are later re-published elsewhere by bloggers who read them on their RSS feedreaders).
- Arrington posts a comment “Putting TechCrunch UK on Hold” on TC UK.
- Next – All hell breaks loose in the blogging world with everyone sticking in the comment on their blogs or on TechCrunch, CrunchNotes and Tech Crunch UK.
- Arrington comes back on the site and says that he doesn’t like the comments he’s been seeing and may well just shut down TC UK.
- Cue lots more comments on how ridiculous Arrington is – and the odd one supporting him.
- UPDATE:Mike Butcher got in touch with us to let us know that he’s now resigned as co-editor of TC UK. Lots of detail in his post.
Truly a storm in a T(C) cup, but it does raise a lot of interesting issues.
What’s the fall out?
Arrington has come off very badly in this and from reading the many comments posted about it, I think it’s highly likely that many of the previous fans of TechCrunch may well stop reading it, in disgust of the way they feel it’s been handled – particularly those from Europe who attended Le Web. TechCrunch UK may well have been terminally damaged through this.
Prior to this, not a bad word has been even whispered against TechCrunch. It was hugely widely read making it one of the most popular sites on the Internet – its RSS feed alone has 144,000 subscribers. Now, in the matter of a couple days it’s possible that it may struggle to maintain its position.
This also extends to Six Apart, because of the Le Meur connection. The size and success of Six Apart was built on support from bloggers – but it’s arguable that they are now sufficiently popular with the general public that they are beyond being damaged by bloggers railing against them.
Only time will tell if Six Apart stick by Le Meur. This could well be dictated by the reaction of the bloggers as they look to continue to rant on the subject and run out of things to say about TC. At the very least I suspect Le Web won’t be hitting number 4.
What issues are raised by this?
Again accountability and transparency of business relationships (many question the deal between Le Web and TC) have been shown to be of the upmost importance in the world of blogging – and quite right too.
It also raises the issue of who owns a comment once it has been posted to a site – is it the poster, or is it the owner of the site it is posted to?
If you want more details – and there’s plenty more of them, you can find them on TechCrunch UK; CrunchNotes or more generally on a search for Sethi on Technorati
On a much lighter note, well done to Jemima, writing for the Guardian, in digging out this photo of Mike Arrington, which we’re sure will be referenced many times over the next period of inevitable fuss around this issue.
Sarkozy Image courtesy of Feuillu
14 December, 2006
£180m To Be Spent Online Today In UK
It’s being predicted that today will be the biggest Internet-based shopping day of the year in the UK. The Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) research points to a massive £180m being spent just on this day, more than double the £82 million average for 2006.
They see most of the e-shopping (as it used to be so sweetly called) being done in peoples lunch hours, between 1-2, when £14 million will be chucked over the line towards various online shops. This far out weighs the average of £4 million-per-hour being spent online in the 10-weeks run up to Christmas.
It’s not just those chomping the lunch sarnies that are clicking-until-they-drop, eDigitalResearch.com’s director, Chris Russell, chimes in with, “The evening Internet shopping peak is a recent phenomenon that has become possible with consumers’ acquisition of broadband at home. The evening peak – between 7 and 9pm – is now 80% as high as lunchtimes, when the highest sales are still recorded, between 1 and 2pm.”
Figures like this point to 38% of the sales taking place outside of traditional shopping hours, either before 9am or after 6pm. IMRG are really keen for you to notice this – differentiating them from ‘normal’ stores.
It’s not just today that is rather large in the sales department – the shopping joy/nightmare will be spread over the whole week. They estimate online sales worth £1.145 billion (!) will be made in the week 4-10 Dec, with the whole of December ringing up £3.55 billion.
IMRG
4 December, 2006
BitTorrent Ups Its Game: Funding And Content
The one-time force for evil (in the eyes of the film industry), Bit Torrent has had a good couple of days, first they sign a distribution deal with some of the major film and TV companies, then today they announce that they’ve closed another funding round.
Content deal
The content deals add to those they signed back in May this year and will provide films with a Download-to-Own (DTO) basis or for rent on a Video-on-Demand (VOD) basis.
Pricing for them hasn’t been announced, as they plan to disclose pricing details closer to the time of the launch of their online retail marketplace, which is set for February 2007.
It’s not just the old junk that the studios don’t care about anymore that will be available. The majority of the deals include new film releases day-and-date with the DVD release, popular TV series, deep catalogue titles and cult classics.
The exception is Palm Pictures, as they plan to be the first studio to utilize the BitTorrent platform to release full-length feature films before the theatrical and DVD release dates.
The most recent partnerships are with 20th Century Fox, G4, Kadokawa Pictures USA, Lionsgate, MTV Networks, Palm Pictures, Paramount Pictures and Starz Media, which build on the previous deals with Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, Egami Media, Hart Sharp, Koch Entertainment and The Orchard.
What about the money!
Today the series B funding has been announced (although TechCrunch scooped it a couple of days ago). They’ve raised $20m from new investor Accel Partners leading the round, with participation from initial investor DCM.
Given Bram Cohen wrote the majority of the code for BitTorrent himself, what, you may ask do they need the money for?
Almost to prove how corporate they’ve become, BitTorrent (BT) use the cut and paste phrase that it will “support the company’s growth, building on its leadership in high-performance content distribution on the Internet.” So more jobs for people will large salaries it sounds like.
What is more interesting is the longer terms plans for BT. They intend taking the technology, using it to “power other websites with the performance and efficiency of BitTorrent’s content delivery service.” It’s words like these that will get companies in the content delivery game worried.
Not just to the PC
BitTorrent signed a deal with a number of consumer electronics companies back in the end of October. ASUS, Planex and QNAP are among the first CE manufacturers to implement the BitTorrent download manager into digital home devices. ASUS and Palnex will build it into a number of their routers, QNAP into their NAS Servers.
This alone is a major change for the once-feared BitTorrent – it takes them away from the computer and closer to the TV in the lounge, while eliminating the need for the user to get involved with setting up and running it.
Bittorrent
1 December, 2006
MPU Expanding Ads Grow Up
We spent a fair bit of time watching online advertising, as the income for Digital-Lifestyles comes in solely from it.
While we were researching the story about Engadget’s Dafur Gears of Peace auction, we noticed an advert on the right of the page by Best Buy, a major US electronics retailer.
It’s a format called MPU, which has, over the last year or so, become a favorite with adversities and publishers. The reason Message Plus Unit (MPU) is popular is its small size (250 x 250) lets it be placed within articles, heightening the hope that the reader of the site will pay some attention to the advert.
What Best Buy have done with the limited 250 x 250 size is the interesting part. We’re not focusing on the design, although it must be effective, or we wouldn’t have paid attention to it in the first place.
The reader is encouraged to place their mouse over the MPU. When it’s kept still there for 2-3 seconds, the graphic changes completely, expanding an additional 200 pixels to the left-hand side.
This is where it gets smart. The reader is able to select items from a list of six (you know the sort of thing, Nintendo DS Lite, LCD TV, etc) and drag and drop them to a dream xmas list.
Once the oh-I-really-want-one-of-those items has been selected, there’s a field to the email address of the person that is going to be mugged into buying them. Who it’s from and a suitable begging note can also be entered.
We love the theory of this – getting people to directly interact with an advert without having to go to another site and then spreading it to others too. The reality is that we couldn’t get the process to complete. Selecting items was easy enough, but we found the ad reset itself a number of times, losing all of the details in the meantime. If we hadn’t been looking at it for this article, we certainly wouldn’t have bothered re-entering the details.
It would be really interesting to find out how Engadget are being reimbursed for this. It must be above the standard rate of an MPU, the fact that it’s active will boost this alone. We suspect that Engadget must have sorted out a better deal, that will probably be related to the reader making an action, or even on the potential value of the purchases that might fall out of the end of this.
23 November, 2006